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It's only "lost" if you don't provide it - that's what the description is for. You can't get the whole grasp of a cache's difficulty and terrain from the D/T rating only, but it's a good place to start. The cache description is a good place to talk about the specifics of the rating, and how it applies to your particular cache. Add necessary attributes (boat/watercraft required, etc) and someone looking at the whole of the cache page can get a good idea of what's in store when they go after your cache.

Let me put it to you very simply. Yes, if you waved the American Flag and posted an exhortation on your cache page to vote for this guy or that guy, or call your Congressman about this issue or that, or even posted a picture of the UNofficial POW/MIA flag, then THIS American and most likely every other on the site who 'gets' what we're doing here would complain about you. This is my HOBBY. This is not my CAUSE. There isn't ANY other space on the internet where I can talk about how pretty my wife's garden is without being subjected to political rancor from all sides and accosted by commercial noise looking to separate me from my money. This is my HOBBY. NO agendas, meaning no CAUSES. Your cache pages should be about what you hid and where you hid it. Creativity and distraction, subterfuge and humor, brain-teasers and plain-text "GO FIND" descriptions are all great and welcome, but DO NOT try to convince me of anything, here in my HOBBY. ------------------ Even seemingly innocuous stuff like a cache page dedicated to collecting money to rebuild a school, or establish a foundation, or send a kid to camp has downsides. Everybody who went to that school would start posting about how bad it was or how great it was instead of what we SHOULD be reading here, and people would complain about the Foundation and the people of this or that persuasion who would inappropriately benefit, or the MYRIAD of complaints I've read about inner-city kids and camps, and suddenly we're a Social Media site. Then, there'll be the claims of bias because THAT Foundation gets a cache page and MINE doesn't, and if it's successful at collecting money, they EVERYBODY who likes money would go through the minimal bother of getting a Cache Page approved, and we're a opportunistic fund-raising site. Then, there's the inevitable physical backlash against your cache by morons who don't believe in YOUR agenda, or worse, by ones who DO! So, keep your opinions and your causes to yourself,....HERE. GS bites back on this rule fiercely (I hope ...still) because it's such a slippery slope. The description of my second cache was rejected because I used the word 'CHEVY', as in, "I was riding in my Chevy". "Commercial tie-in", I was told. I didn't really grok it then, but I do now. It makes NO difference to me whether or not I agree with you and your agenda; take it somewhere else. This...is...a...refuge. There are so many aspects of this thing of ours that are uncharacteristic of the 'internet', that we need to protect it vigorously. I'm out in the woods having a good time, and I don't want to have to weed through everybody's carp when I'm battling mosquitos. </Rant>

Our Prague Giga trip we talk about playing AL and how those could be shown in app. Now creator can select AL start location and it could be miles away where is actual visit loacations. This should be change to sequential AL. If LAB creator select sequential order then lab location should be in main map latest unvisited location. It would be helpful to all players. Also in non-sequential LAB start point should show in middle point of unvisited locations. In progress LABs should view in map different color dot. Now all is viewed in green and then you need open filter to find "in progress" labs.

I am trying to programm some software for the Gamin e-trex wich apperently can link to a PC serial port... Garmin is also so nice as to give the specifications of their Garmin-Protocol to anybody who is interested. The only problem now is: I cannot find the e-trex's specifications in there... What protocols do I use to talk to it ???

I wouldn't consider travelling anywhere at present, unless it was for an important reason, such as medical. Europe is having a surge in Covid. Fine to talk about future trips in years to come, but to talk about a trip this year appears to be living in an alternative universe, where there is no Covid. As for myself, I don't know when I will be able to travel overseas next (our borders are closed); maybe not even next year, unless the few remaining Covid caches in Australia (I think about 15 new cases today) can be eradicated and we can make a bubble with NZ and perhaps some Pacific Islands. Even some state borders are closed to cross border visits. My last new country was PNG in February.

I have a Garmin Etrex Venture and Microsoft 2001 Streets and Trips. I bought a Dell Inspiron 2100 without a serial port so I bought a serial to USB connector from Belkins. The GPS appears to be communicating to the Dell. I try to configure S & T to see my GPS but it only gives me the option of Comm port 1 or 3 when get to the configure page and my GPS is on comm port 2.

Hi all, A couple of geocaching video creators from New Zealand recently shared an interesting talk about the events leading up to Selective Availability being disabled. I thought it was really interesting and wanted to share it here. From the video description: "This Cache Walk is a talk by Jason Kim from the National Coordination Office for Space-Based Positioning, Navigation and Timing, Washington, D.C. He talks about turning off the Selected Availability (SA) feature in 2000 which increased the GPS accuracy to the public allowing the game of geocaching to begin." I hope you enjoy this.

Is there any LACKEY here who is able to say something to the problem? We can talk all day but only Groundspeak staff can do something about it - or say that they don't care what problems we have and that having emojis as first sign is more important than the conviniece of GARMIN users. @Moun10Bike or others, can you contribute something or give this suggestion to your technicians if you agree? Jochen

Why would they need to hide geocaches to battleship the finals? They could just use the saturation checker without actually submitting any caches for review. This is not the first time this topic has come up. Here is one of Keystone's replies to one of the earlier threads: So, suppose I tell you that your proposed location is 110m northwest of the final coordinates for "Cacher Conundrum," a five-star puzzle cache that only four people have ever solved and logged in the past three years. Armed with that intelligence, you track down the container and sign the log at the same time when you move your cache to a spot that's 162m away. What do I get for being helpful? A flaming email from the CO of "Cacher Conundrum," who also posts to three Facebook groups, and files a complaint with Geocaching HQ that I gave away secret information and ruined the puzzle cache. Having had that happen to us enough times, reviewers nowadays are constrained to be less forthcoming with details. Depending on your reviewer, you may get a hint, like "you are less than 161m from "Cacher Conundrum," GCABCDE, or you may get a hint that you should strongly consider moving to the southeast, or you may not get any guidance at all. So, that's how come. In a world where people hack lab caches and share the final coordinates of puzzle caches in Facebook groups, the inevitable outcome of such a feature would be to spoil every puzzle cache, multicache and Wherigo cache, plus a fair percentage of letterbox hybrid caches. There are people who like placing and finding these cache types. Geocaching.com has chosen not to alienate them by ruining the ability to keep the actual locations a secret. "But all I need is a distance and direction," you might say. So, the cheater simply enters enough coordinates into the planner tool to permit them to hone in on the actual location through triangulation. Think that can't happen? Talk to the travel bug stalkers who watch for drops of trackables in unpublished caches so they can figure out the locations and log a pre-publication "FTF." Talk to the group of cachers who hid traditionals in every conceivable spot within two miles of a 5-star puzzle, knowing they'd eventually "battleship" their way to a hit, and then they could do a scorched earth hunt within that area. I foiled them by publishing their cache even though it was 200 feet away from the puzzle final. Reviewers are smart humans*, you see, and that is better than an automated system. *Many reviewers are dogs.

"Desaster Memorials" seems to fit best - even if there are three different desasters. I would talk to bluesnote on this topic - he is officer in the category and helped me with a memorial half a year ago. "Graves of the Unknown" might be a bit tricky as it is a mass grave and the description states that they want unknown individuals. "Graves Mentioning a Cause of Death" came also to my mind, but might also be a bit tricky, because they want to have the names of the ones buried (see WM14TJK as an example). Perhaps Keith as an officer of that category might offer an insight on that.

Yes, the Hanford B Reactor tour is exactly this. It's a free tour of a facility that's really critical to the history of our area, and the tour is really very well done, but a lot of people still haven't done it. I'm hoping to talk to the DOE person tomorrow, so fingers crossed! Meantime, what do you guys think about these logging questions? I'm not really sure of the year-to-year longevity of the #1 requirement, and if it changes (or the others) then the questions could get dropped, or I'll have to go on another tour and come up with more questions! 1. In the large Front Face Room, to the left there is a large diorama of the facility, with red buttons to light up the different areas. How many red buttons are there on this display? 2. In the Valve Pit Room, there's a Safety News bulletin on the wall. How many safe hours are announced on this bulletin? 3. In the Control Room, there's an old calendar on the wall. It says "Hanford Project" on the top of the calendar. What is the latest month/year on the calendar, down in the bottom right corner? 4. If you go back past the Exhaust & Intake Fans, you'll find a mural painted on the wall. It says, "I need you on the job... Full time" at the top. Here you see mention of HEW--what does HEW stand for? Finally, one last request to help prove you were there: 5. Please include in your log a photo of your favorite room. ( But please don't include a photo that gives away answers to the above questions )

I think the OP may have moved on. At least they have not visited the site since the very day of the first post. 11 found caches in 20 years, talk about low-intensity caching...

Thanks for all the thoughtful replies. I am taking Joe_L's advice to heart and sleeping on it a bit. And I've been looking more into Moun10Bike's suggestion of the Hanford B Reactor and that's actually a fantastic suggestion. So I went on the tour and it was really good. I think it would make a great virtual. I have it all written up but when I asked the tour people for permission they really balked at the idea. "We'll have to ask our Department of Energy liaison." Ouch. I haven't heard back yet. It may be a lost cause. I'm going to try to call them today and see if I can talk to that DOE person directly.

When we first started, folks would talk about "the Garmin/Magellan factor", and we thought they were just trying to BS the noobs. - But we'd notice a 26' difference between the two, and knowing who uses what at the time, saw that most came true.

Returning to geocaching after a 12-year hiatus. Have cleaned out the corrosion (leaky batteries after long neglect) on my old Garmin etrex VISTA Cx, installed new batteries and it still works. Renewed my premium membership (surprised that my data was still there) but the website looks so different than I remembered. If memory serves, the big advantage to the premium membership, was the ability to load geocaches directly from the computer to the GPS rather than having to manual load them but I can't seem to even get my old garmin to talk much less load. Perhaps technology has grown faster than my 67-year-old brain has faded. I will search but are there any tutorials here? Anybody on here from Clemson area?

Returning to geocaching after a 12-year hiatus. Have cleaned out the corrosion (leaky batteries after long neglect) on my old Garmin etrex VISTA Cx, installed new batteries and it still works. Renewed my premium membership (surprised that my data was still there) but the website looks so different than I remembered. If memory serves, the big advantage to the premium membership, was the ability to load geocaches directly from the computer to the GPS rather than having to manual load them but I can't seem to even get my old garmin to talk much less load. Perhaps technology has grown faster than my 67-year-old brain has faded. I will search but are there any tutorials here? Anybody on here from Clemson area?

Time to get it out there and start talking about the subject , of adopting ( old ) historic , pioneering caches Time for change , things move on , the constitution was written a long time ago , thing are seen differently , Talk about it , we pay to play , so lets have a say in how we play

Cachly can download a gpx file. That app we can't talk about will do that also.

ISO 8601 not only relates to computers that talk to each other, but generally to date format spelling rules.

I'm going to guess that the link is not secure (http://) and thus Chrome blocks the download attempt. Obviously the solution is for the engineers at HQ to update the e-mail template to use a secure link, because Geocaching.com can definitely talk https://. For now the easiest way to get your results is going to be to download through the Pocket Queries page. Namely: Open https://www.geocaching.com/pocket/default.aspx. Click "Pocket Queries Ready for Download" Download the appropriate query. Alternatively, you can: Right-click "Download now" in the e-mail. Click on "Copy Link URL" Open a new tab, and paste the URL. Before you hit enter, make sure that the URL that you pasted begins "https://" (note the "s").

If one of my caches (usually an obscure puzzle) was coming up to a year unfound I used to flag it up on the local Facebook group as people in the UK like to "resuscitate" caches (find them more than a year since previous find) - I've left all the FB groups since they became dominated by talk of "if you go caching, everyone will die" type talk in April, though. (Culprits now often back FTFing like there's no tomorrow...) On a general maintenance theme, I've replaced about 7 of my caches this year - in most cases winter flooding and winds to blame for missing containers. Not put out a new cache for a long long time. Just looking through my hides - one series put out in April 2018, never revisited (about 35 finds on each so paper not full); another series Jan 2019, only visited the trailhead one for TB dropping. Similar number of finds. I think one bison might have lost its rubber ring but the weather has been so dry since March I'm not worried. Trad placed Sep 2017 never been back. Another Aug 2016. Puzzle placed April 2013, looked at but never touched since placement. It's a black-painted snail on the back of a black-painted urban bus stop and has never been muggled. Aren't I naughty? I think 25 of my 85 active caches have had the container replaced though.

If you sent in the correct answers, the CO made a mistake. You don't say how he reacted when you asked him about it, so I can't say whether you should talk to him more or just ask for an appeal which I assume would be quickly granted. I've run into cases where the question required specific information from the sign -- e.g., available information says the elevation is 600' but the sign says 601' 3" -- but even in a case like that, the CO should allow the "close enough" answer when the sign is missing.

Yes, the leaderboard has been available since the very beginning, on the website and your points on the app. The mystery items are random. It doesn't matter if you log the same cache as someone else they are randomly given. Please see my post on March 30th that includes a response from HQ. Signal items are completely random! You can see more recent posts too that talk about the same thing. App: if you are not viewing the experimental profile then try swiping left at the top where it shows the promotions.

Now you have something to talk about during your event

Look for clues on the page. For example, if there's a mention of "the key". Some ciphers use a key word. But the puzzle may be unique, where the challenge is to figure out "where to start". Look at the Difficulty rating. If it's 3.5 or higher, prepare to attack this one with your game face on. You may first try easier puzzle caches, especially puzzles by the same Cache Owner. Some ciphers are more common for Geocache puzzles. Look for nearby "Puzzle Cache" Events or even "Geocaching 101" or meet & greet Events. If you can talk to the CO or others at an Event about where you're stuck, they may help. Good luck!