3D_geek

We've been caching for only a few months - found a dozen caches and planted three. There are 360 caches within 30 miles of where we live - so even if we find one or two every weekend, it'll be years before we have to drive more than 30 minutes to get to a new one. Since the area we can cover grows as the square of the distance, we will go on for a decade if we're prepared to drive an hour to the next cache. So - at least if you live in a reasonably densely cached area, it should be a long time before you run out of new caches. If people create and archive 10% of the caches every year, we'll never run out! So I doubt that's the reason people give up. I suspect it may be a matter of the difficulty. We are already finding that difficulty 1 and 2 caches are just too easy. I hate it when you drive half an hour to get somewhere and find the cache within the first 5 minutes. This seems to happen a lot. The answer (I think) is to come up with much trickier multi-caches, things with complicated clues that require more searching up-front. Sure we need simple caches for the beginners to find - but the ratio is all wrong. To that end, we just planted a five-stage multi-cache with no lat-long for the first cache (just a cryptic clue), a puzzle to solve and a bunch of tasks you are supposed to complete at each cache.

I think the important thing is that for every part of the world, there should be a reasonable mix of hard caches, easy caches, multi-caches and puzzle caches. So long as they are well-labelled on the web site, I don't think it matters how ridiculously easy or insanely hard a cache is. It's a bit frustrating taking the kids out in early evening to find a supposedly easy cache and discover it's a nightmare to find...but it's just as bad to drive for half a day to a supposedly challenging cache - only to find it after 30 seconds of stepping from the car. I'm a novice - but the spread of difficulty for a two star cache seems pretty wide. Perhaps instead of a "star rating" that's rather subjective, we could have people enter the actual amount of time it took to find the cache. Giving an "average time to find" indicator would be much more useful than a vague and subjective star rating.

A bright Red 1972 bug - pretty much in mint condition. All original German-manufactured parts. Spent all it's life in Arizona & Texas so no rust anywhere. Don't drive it much in Texas though - 100 degrees and no A/C do NOT mix - so no Summer driving. 30 degrees and crappy heating don't mix - so no winter driving. Lousy traction in the wet - so no Spring driving. Car's been sitting there through Winter, Spring and Summer without being run - so it won't start - hence no Autumn driving either. :-) The Official GeoCachemobile is my 2003 MINI Cooper S...called "Yoda" - because he's small, green and deceptively powerful. Factory equipped with GPS & Compass. Green for camoflage, small and innocuous so as not to tip off other 'cachers. 6 second 0-60 time allows for fast getaway with that coveted HappyMeal toy.