Stargazer22

Personally, no, I wouldn't intentionally go after a cache at night in a park after hours just for a FTF. It's well known here that most parks close at night and do not allow night caching. Even if I didn't know it was a park and had gone there, once I arrived and realized it was a park, I would not go in at night to cache without checking posted park hours first. It's very common in our area that park officials request no night caching in the parks. Hey, the FTF would be great, but not at the risk of having geocaching banned from the park. I think it's especially important for the first few finders to 'play nice' and go by the rules. If I were the land manager that approved a cache in my area with the stipulation that no one seek it at night and the very first person to come for it came at night, I would wonder about my decision to allow the cache. A park manager might not understand 'FTF Fever' like a geocacher would. I think anyone seeking a FTF on any cache at night owes the game the courtesy of checking to see if after hours caching is OK first. Knowing that some details don't make it to a PQ makes it a priority (and a responsibility in my eyes) to go on the website and look at the details first before heading out.

We have seen black bears 2 times in the last 3 weeks while caching in the Ocala National Forest. Stopped to clean the 'love bugs' off the windshield and spotted this mom and her cub across a field. She took the baby into the woods heading off in the opposite direction of us (whew!). It took her a couple of minutes to cross the field with the cub so we managed to get a couple of fuzzy pictures. We went again this past weekend and due to recent rains in the area, some of the puddles had quite a bit of water in them. Came around the corner in the jeep and saw a nice big male taking a bath in a puddle that was about 2-3 feet deep. It was a hot (over 90) day and he sure looked like he enjoyed his roll in the puddle. He casually got up and watched us for a minute before he went off into the woods. Only got a poor picture of his rear end on that one so I won't include it. We've seen lots of snakes, spiders, rabbits, and all manner of other small critters. Love seeing the wildlife!

We call them proliferation caches in our neck of the woods. What better swag than a freebie decon container or bison tube you don't have to trade for!

No. I have a container and cache idea in mind. It will be my first hide. I will only place it because I really believe others will enjoy the cache and it will complement existing hides in the area I have in mind. I think the only obligation we have as cachers is to be good caching citizens. Keep the trails clean and enjoy. Attend a CITO if you can. We have a local cacher who attended a CITO recently who was 6 months pregnant with triplets at the time. I figure that if she can manage to get out there and be helpful, I surely can, too. Fortunately we have a lot of great geocachers in the area who are active and supportive of the game with thoughtful hides, so caching here is good. I would not like to see the quality of the hides suffer just to place another cache. I agree with the previous posters, if there are any obligations to placing caches, it should be to place well thought out ones, not just another 'drop one here' for the sake of saying you placed one.

Here's my take: When geocaching, I act like a geocacher. When I'm at a social event, I act like a socializer. When I'm at work, I act like a worker. When I'm fishing, I act like a fisherman. When in Rome..... I have absolutely no problem interacting with anyone and discussing anyting under (or over) the sun. I have spoken with lots of people about geocaching. Sometimes they look at me like I have lobsters coming out of my ears, sometimes they think it's cool. But when I am searching for a geocache, I feel that I have certain responsibilities to the geocaching community in general and specifically to the hider of the cache I am seeking. I try not to damage the terrain or leave a bigger geo-trail than I found (hard to do with my dimensions! ) If I am in the general neighborhood of the cache, I will talk to anyone, as long as I don't feel that I will endanger the cache. I would feel terrible if I were the person to cause someone's cache to go missing. And it's not only the cache hider, but the general community as well. Others may have been planning to find the cache, and I may cause them to lose their chance to find it, too. Whenever I am at GZ or have the cache in hand, I attempt to be as stealthy as possible for the few minutes it takes to do the logging and trading (if we do any) and hide it back at least as good as I found it. Once I am away from the immediate area, my stealth fog dissipates and I revert back to the gregarious, outgoing person I am. I think it's perfectly natural for a person's demeanor to change, depending on their situation. Being stealthy while at the cache doesn't mean someone is an introvert. It's just being prudent. I also don't shout "Hi, Jack" to my friend across the airport, even if his name is Jack and it's been a long time since I've seen him! Edited for spelling error.

To me, it all seems very logical and clear. I play the game for myself and my own enjoyment. When I go out to look for a cache, one of two things happen. 1) I find it. I log a find, since I found it. If I visit the same cache again, I already know where it is, so I don't have to find it again. That warrants a note but not another find. 2) I didn't find it. I log a DNF, since I didn't find it. If I return and manage to find it, it goes back to 1) and I log the find. Simple, logical. I log what I do. If I don't get a chance to search, I may log a note about the woodpecker I saw in the tree in the area or the deer I saw nearby, but no found or DNF since there was no search. It doesn't bother me how other people play the game. My numbers only matter to me as a personal reminder of where I've been and what I've done. I don't have a lot of finds, so mostly they have been ones I specifically wanted to visit because of where they are or other amusing logs I read on the caches and think it might be fun to go there. I say as long as you're having fun at the game and feel good about how you play, it's all good.

Just my opinion, but I mostly like to go to caches that take me some place that is cool, has a nice view, or is a public access point that is mostly unknown except for locals. I don't really need a cache at a school or government building. I spent enough time in schools, and I have to go to enough government buildings for various purposes. I personally don't need geocaching to take me to these places. I already know these places are there and what they are for. I would rather see caches put in other locations. I asked a couple of friends (not geocachers) for their take on this and they both thought that it was a much bigger deal for a scare at a school or government building than most other locations.

You can't use your GPS to navigate because there are too many geocache icons on the screen and you can't see the maps any more.

Last month my wife and I were caching in the Ocala National Forest and stopped to pick up one road-side cache. Since it was right next to a fairly busy highway, we decided to take the cache and step off the road into the woods to do the logging. Found a nice dense set of bushes to block the view from the highway and as I stepped up to the bushes (about 50 feet from the cache), I found an old peanut butter jar cache there. It had been crushed and had some bear teeth holes in it, but the contents were in fair condition. We did a little research and found it was the first version of the cache we had gone for, but had been lost for almost 2 years. It had only been out for about a month when it got "bear muggled". It was interesting that lots of people had been there in those 2 years to log the cache but none had seen the old missing one. Maybe it was hidden deeper in the brush and recently brought out by a critter? Maybe it was uncovered by some of the high winds we had recently. However it wound up there, it was nice to go out and find more caches than we went looking for!

One of our active local cachers sometimes leaves a well-camoed ammo can nearby, with coordinates to the can on the logbook on the FTF page. His ammo cans are a work of art and are kind of like his signature item. Most cachers would be proud to get one, and it helps put another cache out there eventually.

Those are definitely questions for the cache hider to answer. I usually spend most of my recreational time pretty far out from my home. I know the area I frequent very well, having spent several years exploring it many times. I would be most likely to place a cache there since it's the area I know the best and I feel I can place a few hides that might bring others to places they don't know about, even if they live close by. I certainly know that others have done this same thing for me. I have found lots of local places near where I live because of other geocachers hiding caches there for me to find. I appreciate their efforts and I don't really care where they live, I care more about the caches they have placed and the cool spots I have found looking for them. I hope that we don't embrace the NIMBY (Not In My Back Yard) concept with caches. In fact, if someone wants to put one in my back yard, it sure will be a short bushwhack through the lawn for me!

We've only been caching for a few months but we will never forget that first one. It was in a pretty little park near our house, but one we didn't know about before geocaching. The day we went, the park was full of muggles so we had to wait around for quite a while until we had a clear chance to go look for the cache. That really enhanced the feeling that we had become members of a 'secret society'. We'll never forget the thrill of that first find. We kept one item from the cache as a momento and look at it frequently and fondly. We're looking forward to all the new finds and new places we will be going. For us, just finding all the new places is a big thrill!

While it's not a humorous found log, it IS a humorous 'attended' log. Check out the "Trompin' in the Swamp" CITO event GC116RT. Don't miss the earlier log by Jackie and Bob, as it sets up the rest of the story, and Bob's log is plenty humorous in itself. I attended this with my wife who went there without a geo-name and came out as SwampyGirl. Moral of the story: Don't attend a geo-event without a geo-name. You may just wind up being dubbed "SwampyGirl". The name is a badge of honor for her, as she got it at her first CITO, and we will always fondly remember the other geocachers who were there and who will understand her geo-name and it's roots. I was almost reluctant to write my log in the way I did, thinking that I would be viewed as a NUT by some. But SwampyGirl already knows I'm a NUT anyway, so what the heck. I just hope someone gets a laugh from the whole thing. I know we sure did.

I haven't been caching very long but I have also seen the tendency for more urban caches to contain McCrap while the ones that are in the boonies typically (but not always) seems to have better items. I think it's a matter of traffic to the cache, as well as the fact that urban caches seem to be visited by more cachers with child in tow. KUDOS to the gentleman who used caching as a way to educate his youngster to a better understanding of what is fair. I once participated in an experiment in college for the psychology department where you could actually make money doing the experiment. People were grouped in 4's with each person on a different face of a 4 sided table. The experimenter walked around the table with a bag of poker chips, each with a different value. One was 25 cents, one 50 cents, and one represented a dollar. Each participant would take a chip from the bag on each rotation around the table by the experimenter. No one knew what the others were taking out. At the end, you would add up your chips for their representative values. Then the remaining chips inside the bag were taken out and their values added, but then multiplied by 5. The amount you made was the value of the chips you took out, plus 25 percent of the value of the chips left in the bag. I realized right away the best outcome would be for everyone to take out the lowest value chips, leaving the best in the bag to be split 4 ways. That way, we would all make the most money for our efforts. At the end, I made about $4, while the other 3 at my table took home between $7 and $9. We discussed the outcome afterwards and our thinking. Seems the other 3 took the message to be "Take while the taking is good". They told us about 85% of the tested participants took the highest value chips for themselves, (leaving McCrap). Personally, I won't take anything if I can't leave something better or at least as good as I got. And everything I leave is brand new, most of it still in the packaging as long as it will fit inside the cache. I figure as much money as I spend on gas driving to a cache, I can go the extra $1 to leave something a little better. And if I decide to do a bunch in the same weekend and worry about the $$, then I just take nothing, and sign the log.

Personally, I think you have the basis for a good idea. You might want to expand your idea to work into the PC or video gaming market, with a portion of the game that would work for online and interactive players (like so many other successful PC or video games). There are tons of PC and video games out there for a huge variety of game types, and given the growing popularity of geocaching, it's only a matter of time until someone puts out a geocaching video game of some sort. Yes, the whole point of geocaching is to go out there and find geocaches. But there are lots of very popular video games for various sports, car racing, shoot-em-up, and adventures. Does this mean we can't have fun unless we actually go out and play the sport, drive a car, shoot up some targets, or go on a real adventure (think geocaching!)? Not at all. There are some individuals that are handicapped and can only get out on a limited basis. And some geocachers might be interested in playing after dark (once they have found all the local night caches of course!). Also, since everyone who can geocache has to have both a GPS and computer access, I believe many of these individuals would be interested in a computer or video game about geocaching. After all, every geocacher starts as a techno-junkie who has an interest in games. But it won't be everone's cup of tea. However, I stronly believe that whatever happens in the virtual world should stay in the virtual world, with no connection to actual physical geocaches. Just MHO. Best of luck!

As a fresh 'newbie' to geocaching, I can't say that I am a lurker, however I would definitely have tendencies along those lines. I am very much the type of individual that would read many posts before I make one myself. Also, unless I have something to say that I think can add to the discussion, I am most likely to keep quiet. No point in repeating what everyone else has said already. As I heard once, we were born with 2 ears and one mouth, so we should listen twice as much as we talk.

As a newbie to the game myself, I thought my opinions might also be helpful. First and foremost, to me, it is of prime importance not to trample or damage any of the areas I have seen caches hidden in. This is also common sense as well as part of the 'rules'. Whenever I look for a cache I keep in mind what my actions are doing to the landscape. If I am in a deserted area and I am not damaging the landscape, I will look for longer for the cache. If the area is more sensitive and has not been trampled down, I keep my time to look at a minimum. At a certain point, if I have not found the cache, I determine that my impact on the area is more than it is worth and I give up for the day, log a DNF, and come back another day. I think that as geocachers, it is our responsiblity to keep the balance between looking and damaging. I have been to caches where I looked for 30-40 minutes in the cache area while my wife went down the trail to look at the view or some other feature. Half of the time, when she comes back and is ready to leave, she spends 1-2 minutes looking and says, 'right there it is!". She has an awesome geosense compared to mine but that doesn't deter in my enjoyment at all. For us, the visit to the place is the real reward of geocaching. Finding the cache itself is of secondary importance to us. From what I see and hear from other cachers, this seems to be the trend. In all hobbies, there will be some who are intent on the details and specifics of the activity. You can pick apart anything you want, but do you enjoy the activity? If you enjoy going to new places and seeing new things, then geocaching can play a part. We have found several new places in an area where we have lived for over 22 years, and some were right under our noses all the time. We have learned new things about our local history that are not in any history books, not published on any sight-seeing maps, and no pamphlets exist for them. Geocaching should be all about the places, not about the caches themselves. Finding the cache is only a secondary goal. However, the presence of the cache helps many people to find these little out of the way places that are usually well known by the locals, but not publicized. Spending 5-6 hours doing anything that is fruitless spells disappointment and disaster for any reasonable person. I would not reccomend wasting 5-6 hours of time on anything you do not enjoy at the time. Especially being a newbie, like me, I would suggest you limit your searches to a period of time that won't leave you terribly disappointed with a bitter taste for the game. I would not condemn any game based on such a limited experience. Sometimes the best games and hobbies are the ones that take patience, practice, and experience. And yes, even the easy rated caches can sometimes be more difficult than we expect. Until your wife comes along and finds it in 30 seconds!!