Michaelcycle

126K-112K=14K but your point is still valid.

At some point during the night the app logged itself out. When I logged back in it worked fine.

I have the same problem. Running iOS 15.6 on an iPhone 12

All challenge caches, old and new, have logging requirements beyond finding the cache and signing the log. Taking your argument to its logical conclusion , Groundspeak should eliminate all challenge requirements because somebody doesn't like one requirement or another. That argument has already been debated and legislated 6 years ago. I will also point out that the ALRs you are referring to were not part of challenge caches.

In case this discussion has energized some geocachers to check their stats and start planning a trip to GC11E8N the place where it is hidden, Big Basin Redwoods State park (California's oldest state park, 1902) was burned over 97% of its acreage during the CZU fire in 2020. The cache has been disabled since that time. Kealia recently posted that limited reopening of the park is scheduled for 22July22 but access to GZ will not be available. The CO is watching and will replace/repair the cache when it is accessible. The good news is that the redwoods have survived for the most part and their presence will still be a fitting reward for anyone who succeeds in undertaking this challenge.

Your solution to failing to meet the requirements for logging does not square with who you profess to be in your profile. You have cached in every state but Alaska and Hawai'i and you have found more than 50 caches in many of those states. If you had "checked the nuance rules" ie., read the cache page fully first, you could easily have fulfilled the current requirements for the Maryland Fizzy, GC16QQZ, which had an original cut-off date of 4JULY08. The CO has advanced that 5 years to 4July13. (As an FYI the cut-off date is not the only additional requirement, the 81 caches must contain 9 specified cache types in keeping with the original Fizzy Challenge GC11E8N.) Dated restricted Fizzy are difficult (I planned and worked very hard and it took a long time to complete and log the original) but so are lots of other old (and even some new) challenges. When I finished I was exhilarated! That is not the feeling you will have if you log a cache without meeting the requirements. You recently logged a challenge that required 25 EarthCaches in 25 states. Not surprising, ECs are something you enjoy and I suspect you travel mostly by car but I doubt I will ever meet that requirement. Maybe the CO could lower the number to the 18 states where I do have ECs? Ok, so that was sarcasm. I would rather you got the feeling of logging a Fizzy Challenge legitimately so I did some research. Here are two Fizzys that you do meet the requirements for that for a traveler like you would surely be considered local: GC799TJ and GC98CHJ Good luck and keep chipping away on that Maryland Fizzy, it's a nice climb to GZ. As for Alaska and Hawai'i, go, you'll never forget them (be sure to visit the Big Island and take the train from Anchorage to Fairbanks to really experience both )

I would be happy to be a character witness if you decide to appeal terratin. (Not that the word of a rogue like me would carry much weight)

Unfortunately you and many others I see by reviewing the logs did not find the benchmark. As indicated by the arrow and the "NO 2" stamped on the disk what you found is a reference mark. Without going into a long discussion of station types I will just note that these marks are placed as aids to finding the actual benchmark (if you followed that arrow you would find the benchmark) and as backups in case the original benchmark gets destroyed, buried, etc.Benchmarking is a great hobby I suggest you start here https://www.geocaching.com/mark/ as TriciaG recommended and the first post in the Benchmarking forum My friend geoawareUSA9 is correct, the benchmark you were looking for is TU3081 (look up "PID" in those references I listed) The reference mark that you found is NOT listed so you cannot log it.

I have completed many mystery cache puzzles that took longer inside to solve than they did outside to find. At least half the events I have attended have been inside. Most of the conversations I have at events are not about geocaching. They are more likely to be about the things that people "talked" about in the "Cheers" topic in Off Topic: jokes, family, travel personal triumphs and travails, hopes, fears and dreams. Private groups get new members by invitation. For Off Topic all you needed was the cost of a GS membership and the curiosity to click on that forum. As for moderating, I will leave that for another post in the future. I have yet to frame my comments adequately regarding the historical moderating of that forum (at least since 2007)

As I said on Cheers I will not allow Zuckerberg and his ilk to monetize my personal data. Even in a "closed" FB group they they still closely analyze everything that goes on there. Whatever else might be said about Groundspeak I don't think that degree of scrutiny occurred in Off Topic.

Thanks for your efforts Dave, that's great! My benchmarking has slowed down some lately but I always try to include a detail, an eye level and a westward looking setting photo for each benchmark I find. I will try to include handheld coordinates for any scaled marks I find from now on (and maybe go back and get them for some local marks.)

Here is the problem: I live less than ten miles (the default search distance from "home") from another state." So what?" I hear you say. "What" is that there is a large river between me and that other state only crossable by a handful of toll bridges. I rarely have interest in crossing any of those bridges for geocaching so the "out of my home state" caches in the search result are an annoyance that I have to pick through. For a long time there was a way to delimit the search to a specific state as well as a specific distance from home. In another part of my state a cacher's ten mile from home search will include caches across a bay that will require crossing a toll bridge and a 100 minute drive! I know that in other parts of my country there are even more dramatic examples. I have cached by bicycle in enough countries to know that caches can be few and far between in some places in the world. That is not the point. The point is that a cacher used to be able to select a location, a distance and a state all in a single search.

It is a private survey marker in California

elrojo14: Since you are revising this topic I must point this out from the "to err is human" department. Please go back and re-read the first sentence of your opening post. Then re-read my reply. I never responded to your reply because it was evident you missed the obvious. So here is a second chance to get the joke and enjoy a self-reflective smile.

Suggest you read this: https://www.gps.gov/systems/gps/performance/accuracy/ I have abstracted two paragraphs of interest: "For example, GPS-enabled smartphones are typically accurate to within a 4.9 m (16 ft.) radius under open sky However, their accuracy worsens near buildings, bridges, and trees. High-end users boost GPS accuracy with dual-frequency receivers and/or augmentation systems. These can enable real-time positioning within a few centimeters, and long-term measurements at the millimeter level." (my bolding) "Using two GPS frequencies improves accuracy by correcting signal distortions caused by Earth's atmosphere. Dual-frequency GPS equipment is commercially available for civilian use, but its cost and size has limited it to professional applications." So, yes, your hand-held GPSr or smartphone is limited to +/- 4 m in good conditions. But those high end systems have been in use for surveying for some time now. When you are laying out roads, bridges and housing developments you need a lot better accuracy than +/- 4 m.

New county souvenir: Ecuador! I'm not doing any traveling but I am racking up some souvenirs from places we have cached in the past. Pretty cool to stand on the equator: Had to dodge traffic in a busy street to get this: As for the souvenir artwork I think they should have included the Galapagos hawk, they were everywhere at Bartolome and fearless:

I believe that Juvenal and Swift would recognize what the OP has called his "Modest Proposal"

That is not true. If you type the name of my town (the "place" the post office recognizes) into Google you will see a place on the map so labeled. But there are no boundaries on that map because there are none. It has no government or any other hallmark of a "town" With the exception of incorporated towns (Woodbury, NJ would be a nearby example) "townships" are the bounded units of location with associated governments in my state (and at least one other that I am aware of) and those townships may contain several towns.

I don't know any geocachers that live in a library (although, before the pandemic, I visited my local library twice a month) so they had to go outdoors to go to those events.

Sure, Johns Hopkins School of Medicine ( as former faculty I have pretty good faith in their reporting with the caveat that given the woeful lack of testing nationwide no one's numbers are really accurate): https://coronavirus.jhu.edu/data/new-cases day to day numbers second graph (left side of page) One more day was added since I first posted, also slightly down from yesterday.

I agree with your first point. As to your second statement, the USA suffered its greatest single day increase in reported cases four days ago. Each day since has shown a decrease from the day before. Is this the beginning of a steady decrease in cases? Too soon to tell, there have been several single day decreases in the last two weeks.

The testing likely does NOT look for live virus as it does not, as you say, survive digestion. However, the likely testing target is the specific nucleic acid of SARS Cov-2 See:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4434667/

See this article in Nature: https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-020-00973-x

That still leaves the contents, including the log.. Even if the cache has been exposed to the elements usually the contents have not.

Are you sure you are using the correct coordinate format?