SeattleSun

I haven't updated my PQ's in a couple of weeks, but I really used this feature a lot. I just updated the PQ's, tried to view some of my "tinkering" PQ's in maps, and noticed that this feature is gone. I am already missing it mightily. I have a bunch of PQ's I built just to view in maps and never actually run.

I introduced my grandmother and her husband to geocaching and they have since found some on their own. She is 85 and he is 80.

We were there in April and did all the available ones except two we could not get to (the ones that are on islands within the island). It looks like two more have been placed in the meantime, and it also looks like there have been some changes since we were there. Around Moran, we enjoyed Cascade Falls and Orcas Aerie, but they can be a little challenging, depending on how old your kids are. Orcas Aerie involves a hike along a narrow trail on the side of a very big hill and the actual cache was kind of tough to find. Cascade Falls was a nice hike up to the end, when it got a little too rough for my 3-year-old, so I made the grab. It looks like, based on the logs, that the cache is placed in a tougher spot now and people have had a hard time finding it. I'd say the easiest and most rewarding that are still active were Judy's Big Deer Harbor Outlook and the Ferry Godmother cache. I really liked Multiple Obstructions because it's a beautiful hike and it had a nicely stocked ammo can at the final, but it is kind of a tough multi in the woods and it looks like there are a couple of wasp nests near the waypoints now. Rosario Rendezvous was really nice, but it is currently disabled. Like I said, we didn't get to do Jap Island (because the tide was never out at a good time) or the Three Brothers Pirate Stash (because there were no boats to rent in April and we didn't want to swim), but those sounded like a lot of fun, with the caveat that the Pirate Stash doesn't seem to have much actually in the cache. Anyway, hope that helps!

1617, and that includes a lot of water area.

I have gotten unsolicited hints and/or spoilers after logging DNF's in Seattle. Maybe I'm much more pathetic-sounding than you! I don't mind getting them, because with so many caches to find, I don't really enjoy having to visit many of them multiple times. I want to find them and then get to find all the other great caches around here. But I can understand not wanting to get them, too. Sounds like you (OP) may have found a decent solution.

After much consideration, I decided to go with Harry Potter, the Greenwood Park cleanup (to protect our cache there) and the Bite of Seattle instead of getting those last 4 caches to get up to 299 today. We'll just take it easy and do single caches next week (and maybe even other things: like playdates! story time at the library! going to the park to play rather than hunting for caches!) and head up to APE next Saturday. SunBoy actually likes to be out caching in the rain and was happy tromping around all this past week, but this will be a relatively big excursion for us, so I would rather do it when they aren't predicting flooding rivers in July. Thanks for all the input! It was actually reassuring that this isn't too difficult a trek for us, if you all think it is easy enough to do no matter how wet the weather.

We have been planning to go APE for our #300 cache tomorrow, not anticipating that the weather would be so crazy. If we don't do it tomorrow, caching will need to be basically on hold until the following weekend so we don't pass up #300. This would normally be a bit of a burden (a whole week with almost no caching!) but especially so because I am single-parenting while daddy's out of town and one of the main ways I keep my son entertained during the day is with geocaching and we wouldn't know what to do with ourselves all week. Anyway, considering it's a long tunnel but not entirely, should the record-setting predicted rains keep us home? Opinions?

Argh, don't remind me! That's what I want to be doing, too, now that I think about it. Wait, won't you have finished it already? Nine or ten hours should be enough, right? I get the sense they are putting down mulch and that kind of stuff. I don't know if they clean up the grafitti that I saw referenced in one of the logs. I don't really know how much is necessary; I just feel like we need to go to put the word out about the cache. I was kind of joking about getting you out there too, but we would be happy to meet you. Hmmm. It'd be really hard to help while holding/reading my new Harry Potter book at the same time. I'm hoping to not put it down all weekend so I can survive without spoilers. Though I *suppose* I could painfully break my grip for a brief bit of time. Does the park really need all that much cleanup anyway?

I need to double check the posting at the Greenwood library, but my memory is July 21 in the morning, like 9am or something.

I have a weird three-year-old son who really loves yard work, so when I told him about this work party he asked if little kids could participate. So, I think we may just head over there on the morning of the work party and participate and also let them know about it. Hey Kelita, you want to get more involved in the neighborhood? You could come too!

My one and only cache is in a city park. I was at the library today and noticed that there will be a community clean-up party of the park in a couple of weeks, and then possibly a regularly scheduled cleanup after that. Does anyone have experience with talking to the powers that be (at the parks department or otherwise) and notifying them of a cache in the park? I am not sure that I will always be able to find out when the work parties will happen, and I would hate to have the cache "cleaned up" every month or more.

I have heard from many people that the Ergo carrier is the best carrier for bigger kids, up to preschoolers. It's very well-designed to save your back (hence the name). And it's much less bulky than a traditional backpack. http://www.ergobabycarrier.com/

Back now for me, too. Good thing. I was starting to get the shakes.

We are back from vacation, my son says he wants to go caching today, but I don't have any of our home-area waypoints on the GPS right now and can't get on the website. Is anyone else getting a Server Unavailable message?

I am a member of an internet board of 100+ women who are mothers of kids born in September, 2003. One of the moms on the board described geocaching and my eyes practically bugged out of my head as I exclaimed, "Why haven't I heard of this before?!" Probably because I was never an avid outdoorsy type (particularly when I lived in Wisconsin 1995-2004) and then had a kid and wasn't exactly looking for new hobbies. But I knew this would be something I would love, because I love hunting for stuff and I do enjoy exploring urban and non-urban areas. So, my dear partner bought me a Garmin for Valentine's Day and I found my first one soon thereafter at one of my favorite little parks and was hooked instantly. It made me almost itchy to think that every time I left the house, I was certainly passing hidden treasure everywhere I went. It helps that I live in one of the cache heavens, where almost every hide is really worthwhile. I can count on one hand the caches that have made me go, "Bleah." My 3-year-old loves it, too. ("Did you sign the log, mommy?" "Is it an ammo can or a tupperware?" "Did you mark it as found?" "Can I hold the GPS?") I try to save most of the big containers for when he and I both go out and I hunt micros when I am on my own. I am also really excited to branch out farther and farther this summer and as he gets older. It has made us more outdoorsy already and I think that's great for a kid.

I'll be watching this thread, as well. When preschool lets out, my preschooler and I would like to venture a little farther afield (we're in Seattle proper). If anyone has good suggestions for Edmonds/Woodinville and areas not too far north, I'd be interested in hearing about those, too. Edited to add: if you make it over here, there are several (large) caches in Magnuson Park, Discovery Park, Seward Park and the Arboretum that make for nice tours through those parks.

Wow, this is an ancient thread. ... when you hear these phrases uttered by your three-year-old: "Mommy, did you sign the log?" "Is it an ammo can or a tupperware?" "That would be a good place for a cache!" "I don't like micros!"

I have seen people talk about finding new caches before receiving e-mail through the notification service. Is there a way to find out about newly published caches before e-mails are sent out? Today, I received notification of two new caches in my area that had actually been published (and found) yesterday, so I obviously had no chance of being FTF. I realize that part of this might be a recent glitch in the notification service, but can I also infer that there are other ways of finding new caches rather than waiting for that (sometimes elusive) e-mail? Thanks.

Chiming in that performance has been nearly hitch-free this weekend. Such a dramatic improvement over last weekend.

Ah, I think I did do that. Is that inherently problematic in some way? Thanks for the insight.

I ran two pocket queries today. When I went to preview one of them, it told me there were 70 results and four pages of results. However, each page had only about 4 caches on it. And when I downloaded the results to GSAK, there were far fewer than 70 caches on the list. Then I looked at the waypoints in the GPS and compared it to the results on GC.com in google maps and could see that some caches that should have been included in the PQ were obviously missing. So I ran the PQ again (under a new name but with the same specifications) and it produced a list of 22 caches, all of which showed up on the preview list and made it to GSAK. It included the caches that I noted were missing from the previous PQ. I am glad I double checked the results because I was loading these on the GPS and Palm for a trip we are taking on Tuesday and would have been bummed had we arrived and I found at that time that the PQ omitted some caches. Is this a case of a corrupt PQ file? What can I do to avoid this? Do I really have to double-check every PQ I run to make sure it isn't omitting caches? And this could create a problem of running up against my PQ limit. Thoughts?

I see that it is. Thanks for the explanation and update.

Is anyone else having this problem, or has anyone had the problem and figured out a way around it? When I go to the Google maps view, it starts out in the downtown area and I move it to the area I want to focus on. Usually this works fine, but right now it is telling me there are no results in the area shown. I have tried zooming in or out and moving around, but it still says no results. I know that there are at least 20 caches in the area I am trying to view, so does anyone know why I can't see them? Actually, I just started the process again from the beginning and see that no caches are shown downtown, either. Thoughts? Thanks.

Add me to the list of those who have their own mail server and are not receiving PQs. I tried my Yahoo account as well, but no luck. For the record, I received one PQ that was processed at 11:30am today. Then submitted another one (to the same mail account, the one that is on our own server) at 1:30pm and at 6:30pm but have received nothing. And I did check my spam folder.