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Compairing numbers as always - the more the better!? Who is the "better" hider? It is not about the numbers but about many other factors. I "only" have hidden 37 caches in 12 years (plus events which I don't count). My current goal is to hide one (in numbers: 1) cache per year so even less then before. My latest mystery cache took me more than 100 hours of creating and in this time I could have thrown out 100 simple traditionals. So please do not look for the pure numbers if you want to "judge" others. I don't want to compare my overall effort in cache hiding to someone with several 100 hides. And I know that there are great cache owners who created one cache that took them years to build - I don't want to compare with them either. It is not about the numbers but about if you (!) like the caches. And that's subjective, of course, so I don't want to talk about cache quality here (*). :-) Jochen (*) Mine are the best, of course! :-)

And there's the difference. I don't agree with the highlighted statement. Again, we're asking different questions. I agree we're discussing our opinions. I don't pretend to be presenting the only correct answer. But I'm justifying my position, I'm not just pushing one answer. So, for example, please explain why the number you think is better is concrete and meaningful. I think we all agree that all registered geocachers isn't meaningful. I'm using the time period of the last month because it excludes people that have already quit, particularly the fly-by-night phone cachers that everyone loves to complain about. The complaint against that is it cuts out the ardent but occasional geocachers, which I don't deny is a valid concern, but I see absolutely no way to count them concretely. I've also explained why I think I'm interpreting the OP's question as more about boots on the ground and why it seems unlikely they're thinking about people that talk about geocaching without actually looking for geocaches. In other words, I'm discussing our opinions to flesh out what numbers we could actually count and what meaning they'd really have. The observation that we all have different opinions is as obvious as it is unhelpful. What I'd be more interested in are actual ways to count something that would produce a more interesting result, not just people complaining that I'm not including this or that group that they hold close to their hearts.

Perhaps I've in the minority but I often talk about the cache, especially when I find a clean, dry container with lots of room in the log sheet. I may simply mention that the cache in good shape because that provides a real time notification to the owner of the state of the cache. I would also talk about the cache if it's in poor shape and mention a very wet log or broken container as that is also useful information for a cache owner, more so than writing that it was 72 degrees, with clear skies and a light wind. Unless the weather was significantly bad or an exceptionally warm day in winter, I can't see the CO or other log readers caring about the weather when I found the cache.

With all of the talk about the crappy, unmaintained, or boring caches and how to get rid of or discourage them, I thought I'd start a topic about what makes a cache good. Now this is highly subjective, so there's no wrong answers. I'm looking for two things mainly. 1. What is considered necessary to make a quality cache (i.e. containers, contents, any other specifics about the quality) 2. What makes a cache "good" or rewarding. I expect to get a wide range of answers here but things to consider (location, difficulty, cleverness, etc). I think I get just as much if not more enjoyment placing caches as I do looking for them. I enjoy a wide variety of caches, everything from PNG's to bushwacking into the woods. I have kids that tag along so I look for shorter hikes generally speaking. In any case, Let's talk about the positive aspects of caches. I'm looking forward to the answers as I work towards placing my first small series of caches with a bonus puzzle cache. I want to keep them all in my town but want all 6 of them to be different but of good quality. Fire away! And keep the cache bashing out of the discussion, we've all heard about throw downs, power trails, missing CO's, etc etc. I want to talk about the good stuff.

Each summer I usually host two ice cream socials but haven't hosted one since 2019. I've hosted 16 ice cream socials in the same location, a great homemade ice cream shop nearby. I also enjoy hosting GIFF events, I rent a movie theater out and people donate to help pay for it. I'm in NJ but I get attendees from NJ, NY, PA, and CT regularly. It's a lot of fun. Of my 102 geocache hides, 40 have been events. I've learned that "if you host it, they will come. And talk about geocaching."

I don't necessarily talk about the cache, but I might talk about my day or the way to the cache or something I found interesting about the area (especially if it involves social housing in any way...). But I never cut and paste and I'm not padding my logs deliberately. The same here. On the more memorable caches, the ones where my logs run close to or over the length limit, it's mostly the story of my adventure on the way to GZ and back, with the cache itself barely rating a mention if it's just a standard box, and if it's something special that's meant as a surprise for the finder, I won't say anything at all about it that might spoil the surprise. My logs do relate specifically to my journey to that cache, and if several caches were found on the trip, I'll split the narrative between caches rather than just repeat everything. The only time I've done any cutting and pasting was for a series of geoart caches associated with the recent mega here, and even then I tried to add a sentence or two specific to each cache if I could.

I don't necessarily talk about the cache, but I might talk about my day or the way to the cache or something I found interesting about the area (especially if it involves social housing in any way...). But I never cut and paste and I'm not padding my logs deliberately.

Speaking of cynical... No, I'm saying these are people that are always arguing over various ways to improve the game, so they're open to all manner of changes. If they object as a group to any given suggestion, it's because something like it has already been considered at length -- or tried -- so the downside is well understood and you should listen to what it is. Taking off means having a community. I think you're mistaking my use of the word "community" for something specific, like events. Every place is different. Every community develops in its own way. That's why a central solution isn't likely to work for your area, and why the community can only grow from people in the community. Unfortunately, I'm not sure every area can develop a healthy community, but I do think that the only way you can have a healthy community is by first recognizing the it is a community and not mistake it for nothing more than a tiny, indistinguishable part of "geocaching". I'm not sure if anything more could be done to make life more rewarding for cache owners, but I've observed two things. First, cache owners need to be motivated by their caches first, and I've found they usually are. If they aren't, the best any rewards GS hands out will produce is more low quality caches. Second, the more GS produces artificial rewards for ownership, the more minimized the owners that don't need artificial rewards feel. If makes them feel like large quantities of inferior caches are considered more important than the heartfelt caches self-motivated COs put out. Wait. "Inspire"? Yes, that's a great idea. Work to inspire cache owners, not to reward them. GS tries to do a lot of that, and god bless them for it. But it won't help if there aren't any COs in your area to inspire. People regularly talk about this in the forums. I don't read much of what GS puts out, but I seem to recall blogs about the joys of good logs. As you observe, upvoting is already being studied. I don't think it will help, but I'm not opposed to it. The reason I don't think it will help is much the same as why I don't think CO rewards work: while imagining you're rewarding logs of the type you describe, in the end you only reward logs that win the reward, and that often is something quite different. You call it manipulation, but if they do something other than what you wanted them to do, blame the reward. Anyway, I think upvoting will be harmless, so I'll be all for it if only because it will make you happy, so don't accuse me of being negative or obstructive. But I predict it will be soon forgotten and ignored. I'm not sure exactly what you're proposing here. You talk about aiming higher, but I don't understand how a owner-only souvenir would do that. But, no matter, I'm all for it, too. In this case, I suspect that it will just be completely ignored. I doubt many people give any serious thought to next year's rewards. So at the same time I doubt it will do much for your cause of more or improved ownership, I also don't think it will significantly increase the number of bad caches that should never have been placed. So, sure, give it a try. I would have no problem with this if GS wanted to give it a try, but I think they try very hard to make the challenges simple so that anyone can understand it without much thought, so I doubt they use it. But to give it your best shot, maybe start a new thread on this specific idea and start bouncing ideas around about exactly how to structure the points and explain it to everyone. As you seem to understand, the devil's in the details, but I don't see any evil at the end of the road if the details can actually be worked out, so have at it!

Like "child molesters and people who talk at the theater."

Hi, the new system won't upload my fieldnotes at all as in my visits.txt file there are more than a thousand drafts from the recent years and the system tells me that it can't upload more than a 1000 drafts at once and nothing happens. So I conclude that it tries to upload all of them. So probably it is just for the first time as I have never used the new system before (because of that reason!)? That's not very self-explanatory so thank you very much for your information. If I understand you correctly I have to upload an empty visits.txt ONCE to activate the "don't upload drafts before ...." feature and next time using the new system it will only take the newer ones? But if I ever switch back to the old system I have problems again as the systems don't talk to each other? Thanks again. Jochen

I agree that you've pointed out a problem we should consider. It actually never occurred to me before that there was no checking of ALs for overlap, but I suppose that's because there are no rules against overlap, as far as I know. Should there be? I have no idea whether there's any kind of approval process for ALs, but if there isn't should there be? All valid question. The specific example strikes me as a big "meh", though. You friend decided to switch back and forth. More power to him if he finds that the best way. I'd be more inclined to do them one at a time, ignoring any redundancy, and possibly using it to advantage by enjoying the park a second time on another day to do the second AL. I'll certainly concede the example and join you in discussing it. But, in the end, I don't consider this a problem and would have no trouble with the resulting rules and procedures continued to allow overlapping ALs. I'm particularly concerned about forbidding two ALs exploring completely different aspects of the same area. I'd be OK with that if we talk it through and decide to do it, like traditional cache distance requirements, but I'd also want to consider a more EarthCache approach where ALs can be close as long as they don't overlap in subject matter. To me, the only clearly demonstrated problem here is that AL creators have no way to find out about each other so they could avoid such overlaps if they wanted to. Any thoughts about what we can do about that? I have no interest in doing an AL, so I don't know whether there's anything mechanisms already in place that failed in this case.

In response to complaints from community members who want to talk about the souvenir challenge, I've hidden a number of off-topic posts from view.

That's a good question that I can't provide a full answer. Let me just focus on my video and then provide observations from my time out there. I lost count of the number of trips I've made to Nevada and the desert areas of the surrounding states, but at least I've seen a lot. The side road itself was always next to the main road. It's how the sage was cut. The parenthesis curves we turn onto are what I'm wondering about. If these were created by geocachers getting as close to the cache as possible, I wonder why they didn't go right next to the caches. You'd figure people would begin driving even closer to the cache as time went on, yet there wasn't any evidence of that. However, every now and then you might see trucks and campers pulled just as far off the road. The dirt roadsides are also graded every year or two, and you see a lot of tracks from those vehicles. Though it's possible some geocachers might drive over the sage, I'd say geocachers form an insignificant part of the problem as you see quads and offroad vehicles every now and then. And the number of shotgun shell casings and litter that's out there, too... I never did get to do the alien head geoart. I knew it was walking, so the three or four times I was out there, the groups I was with always skipped it because of that. Honestly, it did occur to us to drive it, but then it was followed up with a "you're not supposed to do that" and the conversation ended there. On some other trips, I remember following a power line road and some other roads. Many times, I really wondered why there was a road out here to begin with (prospectors?). Caches tend to follow those roads--you can even see them on satellite imagery. Seriously considering going off road to get closer to caches just never came up. We'd just follow the roads where they led and stop as close as we could while still on the road. That was just what you did. At times, you could tell when one car drove over to a cache. Doing so certainly wouldn't make the clearcut paths you saw in my video, though. And when we saw something like this, we'd just think they were lazy morons who risked tearing up their vehicle or puncturing a tire. Not many caches were that far out there, and those that were a hundred meters distant were just seen as part of the game to walk that final distance. I did get to do the Heart of Mojave Desert geoart (shaped like a Gx) with mondou2 and others. We left the cars in the parking area and walked the distance. There was never talk about driving it and, at the time, I didn't see evidence it had been driven. If I may make a tangent, I remember they were shoving water bottles into backpacks. I walked up, took two bottles and put them in my hiking pants pockets. They looked at me strangely. It was supposed to warm up to 110F (43C) that day and that's all the water I was taking for an eleven mile hike (the outer heart, then I'd be able to guzzle and stock up at the cars again before the inner design). I'm always dehydrated--I still am, while typing this--so the water I take with me is more for emergency purposes instead of normal use. I just don't like having anything on my back or weighing me down. Let's see, then there's Yerington. I guess I've been there about half a dozen times. Larry's caches were usually beside the road, so I didn't see any evidence of offroad driving, unless you want to count if a sage came close to the road. He'd just find a road and put out caches along it. There was the state star series, but we walked that. Sure, there was a way to get off the road, but you had all this sage in the way and it would have been faster just to walk. Other places and power trails, you usually had a berm from people coming by and scraping the road every year. I wanted to do the eagle series, but I knew it was a walking one. Larry told me some people had driven it. I didn't want to do that, so never did find the series. That's fine: there were other things to find. Really, if you want to be critical of cachers' impact upon the desert, I'd suggest instead being critical of all the foot trails cachers make from the car to the cache. It's not major, but you can tell people have walked that way, same as people who have used the desert for other reasons. They don't last--the foot trails, not the other people--which at times is somewhat of a disappointment when you have a few dozen sage bushes to look through and then have to realize it's a small rock pile some thirty feet away. But, in conclusion, I'd say the only ones who can answer this question fully are the cache owners and those first to find the caches. I can only provide my observations and try to make them as unbiased as possible. You're always going to have the inconsiderate people doing stupid stuff. The best we can do is set a proper example.

Actually, that wasn't sarcasm. I didn't know someone had already done that. Thank you for giving me more credit than I deserved. (I don't listen to podcasts, don't read blogs, don't receive Groudspeak's newsletter, don't watch videos, don't read much of the forum except for Wherigo, and am generally out of touch. I just go out and find crap, and that's enough for me. I'd rather play the game than talk, read, listen to, or watch something about it.)

I've done the ET Highway a couple times, Route 66, and other power trails. Here are some answers: Why would you do that? I hope it's with others. Since I'm usually alone, it's a treat being with others. And when you do a thousand or more in a day, you get loopy and everything is funny. The run isn't about the caches anymore. It's about having fun with others--oh, and here's the next cache. But you're also doing it for the numbers. Why numbers matter to someone is a personal reason and changes from cacher to cacher. At first, numbers mattered to me (in 2006) because I wanted to find a lot to demonstrate to others I wouldn't slow them down if they invited me to go caching with them. Later, it became about getting to 10K because it was five digits. Still later, it was about how far I could go. These days, it's about activity level and output. I want to relax and find whatever most of the time during the year, but I still want to average around 5K a year because that's a good level for me. All I need to do to do that is take two or three trips, each a week long, during the year. This forces me to take time off work. Without caching as an excuse, like last year due to the pandemic (and I'd imagine most of this year), I wouldn't take time off work and would instead put in ridiculous amounts of uncompensated overtime. Last year alone, I put in ten weeks of uncompensated overtime. You see? I'll pour a ton of effort into something. If it's caching, I'll get a lot of numbers. If it's work, I'll put in a lot of uncompensated overtime. I'm going to do something because I don't know how to let up and all this time and energy must go somewhere. By the way, I'm the type of person that might not even be able to have fun at Disney. I'd make a list of things to do for an ideal experience. Then, when I'm there, it becomes all about doing that list and some other spontaneous things. When asked if I had a good time, I'd say I accomplished the list, which would have been the whole point. I'll then have to think if I enjoyed myself. I guess I may have, but that was secondary to making sure I did the list. How can you find 1000 caches in a day? That's easy. Line up caches next to a road, make the hides easy, and have the caches be the minimal distance apart. Have two to four people in a car. Start early. When I did the first ET Highway, we started at 4AM and later took a break around 6PM for two and a half hours, then finished just before midnight--but that was the first large power run I was on, so everyone was inexperienced. We could have done better and found more that day. These days, if you're doing a number run, it's normal behavior to stamp logs and swap out the cache with the previous cache. You see that a lot. That behavior should be constrained to caches within the series. I don't like it when people do that for other, non-series caches. If you have two cars, you can leapfrog on a road. The lead car keeps finding the next cache. The trailing car, once it finds a cache, eventually passes the lead car, becoming the lead car, and finds the next caches until it's passed. You keep going like that. I'm okay with doing that because it keeps people together. Some people do what I call "divide and conquer". I was in a car with xxxxxx when yyyyyy called. He was in a neighboring state, said he was doing this other power trail, and asked if they wanted to share finds that day. xxxxxx said sure. The only reason I was fine with that was because I had already found that other series. Other times, a crowd of cachers gather (around twenty) and they split up and find different parts of a series of caches. Since I'm not fine with that, I'm not invited that often for number runs. True story, but I'd better not reveal the names. It's possible to solo a 1000 day, but you'll be exhausted afterward. I did one solo and it destroyed my interest in solo power caching for a few years. I did it because I was in a foul mood that I couldn't find anyone to cache with. I don't consider this an achievement and don't want to talk any more about it because I hated what led up to it and my time doing it. I never want to do that ever again. Am I sure it's possible? Definitely. On one trip, someone in the passenger's seat was bored, so began timing us using a stopwatch. I noticed that and it became a fun game. We'd start the stopwatch the moment the runner was back in the vehicle. The driver would drive to the next cache, the runner would get out and swap caches, then run back to the car. The bad times were around two minutes because the runner and team had trouble noticing the cache. The best times were close to fifty seconds. If you averaged a minute per cache, that's 1,440 in a day. But if the caches were all in obvious spots, the road straight, and you knew what you were doing, you could have some sub-minute times throughout the day. No one finds 1000 caches in a day Yes, they do. Even on my first ET Highway run, we did it. We signed every log with a team name and put each cache back where we found it (no swapping, no stamping). That was not the first and only 1000 day I've had. That said, 1000 days are rare and it takes ideal circumstances to pull off. While it's easier to leapfrog, it's doable with one vehicle. Fox's Number Run Team Role Theory From my observation, the ideal team is four experienced cachers in one vehicle. Here are the different job roles, what they do, and why they matter: Driver: The driver is responsible for navigation to the next cache and targeting the one after while the runner is out of the car. An incompetent driver will not consistently park close to caches, costing the team both time and critical stamina. The driver needs to be good about getting as close to the cache as possible. Also, the driver is responsible for the team's safety. If a runner has to cross to the other side of the car, it should always be around the end of the car not pointing towards the next cache. The driver and runner need to communicate to make sure the runner is safely inside the vehicle. Due to the amount of time required to get back into the vehicle, belt up, and start going forward, the driver should be the last that must get out for a cache. Navigator: The navigator sits in the passenger seat and is responsible for several things. First, the navigator is responsible for being aware of where the team is in the series and how the roads and caches connect on a macro scale. The navigator should prep the driver when a branch is coming up. During the cache run, the navigator is looking out the window, trying to spot the next cache as the vehicle is approaching. If the navigator spots it, that information is relayed to the runner. If the person in reserve is resting, the navigator takes over the role of stamping the logs and making sure the runner has cache. Runner: This is the person who hops out for the cache. Swapping roles should be based upon the runner's stamina, but role swapping should always be done before the runner is fatigued. If the runner cannot find a cache in an agreed-upon time, the reserve cacher or navigator should get out and assist. Once back in the vehicle, the runner communicates to the driver his or her save arrival, then hands the cache to either the reserve cacher or navigator. At times, when we had a van with a door that could stay open, I stood on the threshold and hung on to the roof rack. This gave me a better view of the cache site as we came up. I could also jump off before the vehicle came to a stop, using the vehicle's momentum and saving my stamina. To communicate to the driver I was secure, I stomped my foot when I was ready. Only then did the driver move the vehicle. Safety is a priority. Reserve: The reserve cacher is recovering. During this time, the reserve cacher is responsible for communicating to the runner any pertinent information about the next cache. Either the reserve cacher or the navigator can stamp the cache log, but the reserve cacher should be the one to hand the cache to the runner and take the cache from the runner upon his or her return. The reserve cacher is also responsible for distributing food, water, and equipment to the other team members. If the next cache is on the opposite side of the road, the reserve cacher will be called upon to exit the vehicle and retrieve the cache. For the most part, the reserve cacher's primary purpose is to recover prior to swapping to another role. Make sure everyone takes their turn as a reserve or there's another role that recharges them. During a run, the team should agree how to swap and which roles can be swapped. For example, every half hour or twenty-five caches might be an easy way to keep track of when to swap. Never agree to swap only when a runner is fatigued. The point of swapping is to refresh the team so everyone can cache longer. The swap should happen before anyone in any role is fatigued. If you wait too late, you'll burn through stamina and the team will be more tired than it otherwise would have been. Also, pay attention to who is suited for which role. If someone can't stop very close to caches and constantly needs help, that person should not be put into a driver role. Likewise, if someone has mobility issues, the person would not make for a good runner. I cached with a team whose driver needed a lot of assistance and I personally saw the cost. I was later able to swap to the driver spot and put this theory into action. I saw a massive improvement in energy all around: the navigator got excited, the runner wasn't as tired--it was stark and quite obvious. When it came time for my turn to swap, both the runner and navigator--the original driver was asleep in the reserve spot--both enthusiastically said I should continue driving. I did. Personally, I'm a stellar driver and trip planner, so I need no help when it comes to routing and managing both the macro and micro parts of a route. I'm an above average runner, but I've seen some phenomenal runners. Fox and Numbers I'm excited to reach 100K at some point. I have what I call a bucket list project. Since I've never traveled anywhere except to do geocaching, I've assembled a list of things I've wanted to do but geocaching got in the way of doing. Once I hit 100K, I'll pick two things from this list and do them as celebration. I will, of course, find a dozen or so caches a day during that time, but the entire purpose of those trips will, finally, not be for geocaching. I thought of soliciting ideas from the forum, too. One trip I will take, though, will be to somewhere in Japan to try out some onsens and get some photos of nature. I don't know what I'll do for the other trip yet. All I need to do is have two weeks in Yuma to do 4K or a week and a half in Yuma for 3K and then a week around South Dakota or London, Ontario for 1K or 1500K. But I have to wait for the pandemic to be over, though I'll gladly risk myself if I can find the right person or people to take with me as I seriously don't want to do this alone. The bucket list trips must not be done alone or I might devolve into just caching because it's easier just to go to the next cache and the next one instead of figure out what else there is to do in an area and drag myself over to do it.

They made the choice to talk about their lunch on Facebook. Maybe even limited that online discussion to "friends" (not public). The AGF list is not a choice.

When we talk about ugly babies, I'm thinking of logs that talk about what a stupid place this is for a cache or imply that the CO is incompetent in some way. So "the container leaks and the log was a mess" is fine, but "only an idiot would use a container like this" is more of an ugly baby comment. I think a lot of people don't recognize the difference. If you do, then you can carry on without worrying about me. The point is that there are many factors a finder might not understand, so suggestions should be neutral and explanatory, not dictating and self righteous. Local standards are just a good example of one such unknown standard, but a particularly good one because people that believe they know the one true standard are often snotty about telling other people what to do. I admit, I don't really have any idea which is true, but my impression from posts in the forum is that more often than not, the person complaining wrote a log that wouldn't be easy to view as helpful. I'm glad you presented this hypothetical example because it allows me to ask you what I've said to make you think I'd object to this log. It looks perfectly good to me. Sounds like a lot of logs I've written, actually. The ugly baby version would be, "Hike was too long. Nothing interesting in this area. Terrible trail, and it's outrageous that I had to cross a creek on a fallen tree. Obviously should have been rated T4. The CO tried to kill me by planting thorns around the cache. Stinky container, obviously being ignored." My suspicion is that some people will actually write something more like this, yet believe their log is as polite as your is. And then come here and saying that COs shouldn't out caches (babies) if they can't take feedback ("your baby is ugly").

Well, I did find that Costco has the 64x for $199 which is a great price. Most of the 60csx's are going for $130-150 on ebay, so I may as well spend a little more and get a new one! I did use my new phone and Locus to find a cache today, and it was one I'd looked for twice before, so I was happy to finally find it. The Pixel 4a 5G works well even in the trees. My old phone, a Samsung Galaxy J7 Crown (a cheap straight talk version) did not, and I had been pretty far off before. Thanks again everyone for all the discussion and assistance. My daughter and I are looking forward to doing more caching this year and I think we're already off to a good start. Oh, and one of the goals this year: dispersed camping in the Olympic National Forest. And wouldn't you know, several spots are marked in Locus, I'm guessing by others users. Very cool, and worth the cost of entry by itself!

Wait a minute. It says "that negatively affects society" and not "that made the society change something". A disaster doesn't necessarily have the effect that the society changes something. What do they do after an earthquake? The accident negatively affected society by killing several people. And maybe they haven't changed traffic patterns (as if that would stop a drunken driver), but at least they created that memorial to maybe make some people think before they enter their car with alcohol in their blood. Edited to add: It's not that easy to find photos of these memorials for Europeans (the provided link doesn't work here), but finally I saw them in a video I found. Now that I have seen them, I would also suggest the Citizen Memorial category, because the plaques don't even mention the accident, but instead talk about the killed persons.

I ran into some technical issues when I tried to post this before so this may be a duplicate post. Please ignore and remove this one if it is. Thanks. ================================ Hi there - I'm trying to put out a cache that has a picture but I want the picture to be a surprise so that people only see it when they click on the right link. However when I upload the picture to the actual cache, it shows up in the gallery and is listed at the bottom of the description as well. I don't want it to be visible there (or anywhere else ideally). Is there a "official" solution to hiding the picture somehow? As far as I know you're not allowed to use 3rd party hosting sites any more so I didn't even bother trying. I've also read some forum posts that talk about adding the picture to an archived cache instead and then using a link for it in my new cache but my concern is the picture is still "visible" in that archived cache. People could come across it accidentally there (or maybe on purpose). Is there any other options out there or is there a setting somewhere that hides pictures from the gallery and the cache description listing? I was thinking about maybe loading the picture into my unpublished archived cache because, as far as I know, no one else can see those caches, but I can't edit those archived caches to add any pictures. Plus I'm not sure if the website will allow other people to see those pictures anyways. ie I'd be able to see the picture because I have rights or permissions to my unpublished caches but no one else does. I also considered loading pictures via a Reviewer Note on my new cache and linking to them from there. Those Reviewer Notes get "removed" when the cache is published but do any pictures associated to those logs get deleted too? Or would the links keep working? It's hard to test all these things out obviously so I'm hoping someone knows the more official way of doing this. I don't want to implement something that may suddenly break a few years later either when GS changes a policy, like the 3rd party hosting thing. Any help or suggestions would be greatly appreciated. Thanks in advance.

Amazing. Just as we talk about it in this thread, I've got another finder in the process of working through it! You brought the cache some good luck by starting the thread! Will be interesting to see his log. Stage 4 is pretty easy since the distances really do call for driving, though it can certainly be done easily enough on a bicycle, so there's that to sort out if pedaling, I guess. As for power, it's a secret! Stage one is a particular power hog due to distance between xmitter and posted coordinates, and propagation requirements. The others employ high gain (very directional) antenna systems.

As of Thursday, stats showed that there were 7 more geocaches with the Challenge Cache attribute than mystery caches with "challenge" in the title. That spread has reduced month over month (we track it every month on the Challenge Talk podcast) and this is the closest they've been yet; but it shows that there are either non-challenge caches incorrectly tagged with the attribute, or valid challenge caches without "challenge" in the title.

[Oh, hi! Until I looked at your profile, I didn't recognize you as "the new guy" planting caches just north of me in the San Ramon Valley.] To be honest, 2 months isn't that log for TBs. I mean, I agree TBs should be moved more promptly, but it's not uncommon for someone to take that long yet still move it along eventually. But, unlike NanCycle (although that advise is also good, by the way!), I'm not going to suggest that you just move on and forget about it. Go ahead and talk to the person holding your TB. Maybe they think 2 months is too long, too, and they're already feeling guilty about it. Maybe they think 2 months is normal and will be interested to hear your opinions about that. Listen to what they have to say and find out. You don't need to pay attention to the time factor, just talk to them about your TB. But don't accuse them of abusing it. Too often people approach other geocachers as adversaries instead of as the cohorts we all are. It will be fun to make friends and exchange ideas. Never let geocaching.com or these forums get in the way of getting to know people through personal interaction.

That seems to be more for inappropriate placements, though I don't know what happens after I enter my email address and select Other as the problem - whether it then gives me a text field I can explain the problem. However unlike normal caches where you can see there are a few other DNFs (so it isn't just me suffering cache blindness on the day) you don't know if you are just being stupid or if there is really a problem, unless of course you talk to others in the local community who may have run up against the same problem (as was the case with this one with the missing sign). Side note - in this case the CO has provided the answer in the question temporarily until he can get there next weekend and pick another sign, so it's not a problem here. But as ALs get abandoned by owners who lose interest I can see it could be.