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In that thread it turns out that many of those COs were not actually maintaining those caches. They had strings of DNFs, NMs, no OMs, reviewer notes and disables. I see that you were rewarded a Virtual. And looking at your stats I'd say well deserved. You have a reasonable amount of hides that you look after without getting a reviewer involved. You even check your caches just to check if they're still in good order. The anti-algorithm talk and 'why don't I get to own a virtual' protests spoke volumes.

BAD NEWS about the Myncaster station. I stopped by there today and was able to talk with a farmer just north of it. What appears on satellite views, in the vicinity of where the station once was, is an old barn & hay shed. The Myncaster station was moved north and west from there some time ago and has since been destroyed. SOB, SOB! Keith

You see, that's why analogy's don't really work all that well as arguments. Money = FP's breaks down because you are spending any money given by an employer (even investing is giving that money to someone else to "hold" for you) which you don't do with FP's. Employee of the Month is handled very differently with each list. So trying to force one thing (FP's) into another model (money) only works just so far. So let's quit arguing about a poor analogy, talk about FP's and goals in "awarding" or "collecting" them.

First off I'm not picking on this person, not going to say what cache it is or who placed it, but I did want to talk about it and see if you had any similar experiences. Was alerted of a geocache recently published near me last night so I went out but was unable to find it. Sent the OP a message asking for a hint, and they directed me pretty far from the coordinates, about 20-30 feet away. I went back this morning with the hint and lo and behold tossed in the bushes pretty far away was just a simple GLAD container with 2 pieces of blank scrap paper, a clothespin, and a rubber eraser. FTF, hooray? I checked out their profile and this person joined only a couple weeks ago with 3 finds and 3 hides. I understand not everyone has money to spend on official geocaching containers and crazy swag, and in a cute way this is basically geocaching at its essence in a little Tupperware container, but would any of you been happy to find this after searching 2 different days for a total of maybe an hour and a half? There's a reason why Geocaching recommends you find something like 20 caches before hiding your own. Honestly when I saw it in the bush I thought it was some random trash someone threw out of their car window as they passed by, I know you've all seen the type of stuff I'm referring to while hunting. The placement was also super strange. I'm going to message the OP and mention that there is a big tree absolutely perfect for hiding this in about 20 feet up the trail, with lots of holes and hiding spots. Tossed in a random bush by the side of the road way off the coordinates is not fun to find for anyone. Anyway, hopefully I can work with this new player to maybe help them and make this cache better, and was wondering if you guys have any similar stories? Have any worse experiences? All things considered it's not THAT bad, so I know you guys must have some horror stories worth sharing.

My first Geocaching experience was in 2008, right when the activity had gained a lot of traction. One of my extended relatives asked me if I had heard of Geocaching. I forget the exact explanation he used, but I was very intrigued. My cousins and I hopped in the car and joined the search with my relative. I didn't find any of the caches (they were all micros), but the people with me did. I signed my name and the rest is history. I think the best way to get muggles into it is to talk about it. I usually bring up the names of trails I walk and mention Geocaching. They either give me a puzzled look or a "Yeah I've heard about it." Also, there is a trend on Tik Tok that I learned of recently, so a lot of younger people are being introduced to it that way. Last week, I found a cache in front of some muggles. They asked what I was doing and I explained Geocaching to them. They responded positively, so I might have helped a "wizard" discover themselves! My favorite is to just ask a muggle if they want to go Geocaching with me. I've done this maybe once and it was a good time.

This makes no sense. FPs are used in so many different ways for so many different reasons that if you're concerned about what they mean for others, it means you probably shouldn't use them at all as there's no way you can use your FP in a manner that means the same for everyone else. You're basically saying that someone who gives a FP for a FTF (it certainly happens) or gives a FP to the cache because they know the CO (this happens as well) should factor into your decision to award a FP the same way someone who gives a FP for an amazing location or a FP for a rewarding caching experience from start to end. How will you ever be able to meet the expectation for every reason a FP is awarded? You earned the FP and it's yours to give as you deem warranted. Why should someone else's thoughts about what they believe a FP means factor into your decision to award your FP to a cache? Cerberus provided the appropriate link to rebut this. Some cachers did (and still do) use it that way but that was never the overriding intent. It was only an addition that allowed cachers to add FPs to caches for whatever reason they felt like awarding one. I've added them for a cool creative container, the amazing location, the total experience from start to finish, for a cache placed in remembrance of a caching friend, for the opportunity to talk to an Amish gentleman in a cemetery and learn the history of the church and the community, and for other reasons. I guarantee that many cachers wouldn't have found the cache where I was talking to the Amish man a "good" cache. It was just a micro container along a fence line in a cemetery. The experience I had was what made that cache FP worthy. If I were ever over in @barefootjeff's neck of the woods, you can bet I'd look at the caches he's given FPs to because we appear to have similar tastes in cache experiences. I do use FPs to help filter caches when going to a new area for a family vacation. Caches that I ordinarily might remove from my list stay on it due to the number of FPs it has accrued. Sometimes the cache turns out to be worth it while other times it is a dud of a cache. They will never guarantee a good/great experience since they're awarded for too many various reasons to be consistent. However, the odds are usually a bit better than just some randomly filtered out caches with far less (or none) FPs.

Let's set up a long term thread that we can all talk about caching in and around San Diego County.

Check the list in my post above from Feb 17. It is from the same source. I watch both to see if any new ones are added. It's all "GPS". Different countries put different names on their own systems, though. (g.e., EU = Galileo, Russia = GLONASS, China = BeiDou, etc). It's a competitive environment. When we're talking about L5, it's strictly a US issue. The U.S. govt is still calling the L5 signals from Block III 'pre-operational' and won't be considered fully operational until 24 of the Block III birds are up and broadcasting. That isn't anticipated for some years. Not sure when Lockheed-Martin will be done getting the last of the IIIC units into orbit. Looks like SVN 74 (PRN 4) is up and running and healthy since mid-January 2020. That said, I fully expect nav companies to use any 'healthy' L5 signals to augment what's already in the air long before all 24 are up. In order to deal with things like Galileo, a receiver has to be looking in the right place. While we've been talking about L1/L2/L5, you have to then look at Galileo as E1, E5/E5a/E5b, and E6. Whether the chip maker covers the whole spread varies between manufacturers and chips within their families. All of them talk about civilian accuracy in the 3m range.

Talk about an EVIL hide! I read in the news about the astronaut who dove down to the deepest accessible area on the ocean floor. Who knows, perhaps our diving technology will improve and sunken shipwrecks will become Wherigos. A really neat Earthcache would be the volcanic vents on the ocean floor. I couldn't imagine placing physical containers in shipwrecks, WAY too dangerous/unethical in some cases.

The OP is clearly asking about the "unofficial GeoTour" meaning of "GeoTrail," so let's talk about that.

I am having the same issues as the ones posted above. I have contacted Groundspeak and have received the same answer back as the others. I have contacted my internet provider and also contacted my carrier AT&T which I spent nearly an hour on the phone with. The one I was talking to even went higher up the food chain to no advail. They said the only way they could really tell why i am not receiving my text notifications would be to follow a text from start to finish but I don’t have a clue how to give them an origin for a text that I am no longer getting. It seems like they need to talk to someone at Groundspeak to follow the transaction from start to finish. If you will furnish me that number I would be glad to contact AT&T and give it to them.

I've got a great idea - Let's put out a new category in peer review on a US holiday weekend so that hardly any US waymarkers can look at it! Nice. It's also another great idea to never have had it discussed in the forums. You aren't really requiring photos - you're saying screengrabs are okay. This is a violation of Groundspeak terms of service if those "screengrabs" happen to belong to someone else on another platform like Facebook, Twitter, etc., where the original photographer and the platform hold a copyright. You have to agree to terms of service for each waymark you post and violating that terms of service can get the waymarker who "screengrabs" the picture of the rooftop garden in trouble with Groundspeak and with the copyright holder. Groundspeak Terms of Service You agree not to: "viii - Upload, post, transmit, or otherwise distribute any content that infringes any patent, trademark, trade secret, copyright or other intellectual property, or proprietary rights of any person, including without limitation under any privacy or publicity rights. xi - Violate any applicable local, state, national, or international law." How are people supposed to visit these, especially if they are private rooftop gardens? There is no mention of this in the writeup? What kind of long description are you requiring? Where does one get the coordinates for the garden, especially for a private one that they cannot physically visit, but can only take a picture from afar? What about trespassing and voyeur laws, especially for these private gardens where you would be taking photo from locations outside the garden? If you are shooting from another location, you could be violating privacy laws, which I know for a fact a very strict in California and are very strict in Europe. With that said, that would be a violation of, again, Terms of Service 11. You also speak of playgrounds - why both? Again, people who own these are going to have SERIOUS issues of people taking long range photos of their kids on a private playground. This category isn't well thought-out; it is not well written-out; and frankly, and it definitely has the possibility of being downright illegal. This is why you should always bring these new category ideas to the Forums first. Talk to me on the above, clear up the concerns. There is a hole where this category might fill, possibly, but how can you document these without violating the owners privacy and, just as importantly, how could someone visit these waymarks? I have published the above as my response in peer review.

I've read a couple threads about Covid-19 and caching, and it got me to thinking: With all of this talk of social distancing and PPE, would there be a legitimate case for cachers to create virtual caches? What are your thoughts?

Week #1 Have a couple of Geocaching pro's come in as guest speakers to talk about the game Week #2 Have your class design a couple of geocaches, talk about environment (rain,snow cold etc), what makes a good/bad container, swag impact geocaching has on the environment etc Week #3 *** Field trip *** Pick a location for both Geocaches (OFF SCHOOL PROPERTY), and hide them, talk about GPS, satellites, how weather trees etc affect signal. Week#4 Create a basic membership call it something like Mrs XXX's Geoclass or something, and discuss what you should put in the descriptions of the cache listings. List the Caches. ** (Ask on the listing if cachers would put where they are from, make this optional) Geography lesson up!! From there on in, every time the cache is found go to the site with your kids and show them, you could even have a competition to see what cache will get found the most.

A false-positive test will do that. It happens. They don't talk about it.

What's dangerous for one child isn't necessarily dangerous for another child. Children learn from parents, peers, teachers, friends about what constitutes safe actions vs what constitutes unsafe actions and they learn those things at different ages. They don't learn it from osmosis, so your point about a child's age not mattering is also not a valid point. Let's use your railroad example. Let's say the child caching with you is 15. By this time, there's a strong likelihood that they realize trains will either severely injure you or kill you if you get too close to them due to their weight, being told by parents and peers, seeing movies/videos, etc... Now let's look at the 3 year old. Their exposure to trains is probably limited to Thomas the Train or The Little Engine That Could. They see familiar faces and trains that talk, are friendly, and are things that have feelings and the ability to do things that people do. They're not things to be cautious about because they haven't learned that yet. They see them as things that they can interact with. The "choo choo" is a friend, not a 300,000 pound engine that can't stop in time to avoid hitting, maiming, crushing, or killing a toddler that doesn't know any better. The same goes for caches near ponds, which was another point brought up. At some point, the dangers of drowning are learned by a child. Until that point is learned though, we do what we can to keep them safe. We have kiddie pools (where drowning can still occur) that are shallow and make sure to watch them. We provide PFDs. We teach them how to swim. There's no specific age for every child where they learn the potential hazards of water. So let's look at the 15 year old at a cache near a pond. They see water and they realize that it's something that has the potential to kill them but have learned how to swim, whether or not the body of water is safe to swim in, whether or not there could be potentially dangerous things in the pond (alligators, red tides, jellyfish) and what to look for to determine that, and various other things that they may have learned in order to keep themselves safe. A 3 year old sees a body of water and associates it with a kiddie pool, even though it may have current, is considerably deeper than the kiddie pool, and may have dangerous animals in or around it. They haven't learned all the coping mechanisms that the 15 year old has learned so they don't understand the inherent danger like the 15 year old does.

A broken plastic container with a log so wet that it's unsignable, by a cache owner that 9 times out of 10 has left the game.. if that's vandalism, then I contend you just replied just to hear yourself talk. But with 10,000 more posts than me I should have expected that.

You're clearly enthusiastic about geocaching and want to talk about it. That's a great thing. However, you're not an expert at this yet. While it's ok to share your opinions, I think some of your posts come across as the only way to do things, and not all of them have been what I would consider the preferred technique. I've been at this for over 13 years now and am closing in on 10,000 finds. I think it's fair to say we have a decent amount of experience at this point. But at the end of the day, I am just one geocacher, and I don't pretend to have all the answers. I try to share my experience, opinions, recommendations, or my personal approach as only that, and not as the "right answer." I don't always remember to do it that way, but that's how I try to approach things: rather than telling someone what to do, I post about what I have done, or what I have seen, or what I think, or what I'd recommend. All in all, this forum is pretty well behaved compared to some other corners of the internet. And if nothing else, we all have at least one thing in common: we are all interested in geocaching. So don't lose heart. But for now, perhaps consider sitting back and doing some more reading, to inform your opinions and experience some more, and asking questions instead of answering them.

Yes, but if this happens with a GPS, you're in the same boat. Whether GPS or Phone, if you plan to go out of cell range, you must plan ahead. And just to reiterate, only the Oregon 700 and GPSMap66 series have live geocaching abilities, and this must be paired with either a wifi connection or your cell phone's data to work. They do not connect to 4g/5g natively. Otherwise, you must plan ahead with a GPS for all geocaching activities. Pocket queries are your friend either way. No GPS connects to the website anymore. The communicator plugins are no longer supported. A newer model will interface with GPX files and geocaches better than the 60 series. Again, you could go back to the Colorado series (not recommended) or even a 62(s) to get this functionality at an inexpensive price point, though current models have removed the limit on the number of geocaches you can load, making them great for larger trips. I'm not trying to talk you out of a new GPS, just give you an accurate portrayal of their limitations along with the functionality of your phone. I'd hate to see you drop $3-400 and be disappointed. That said, when you work within the limitations, the GPS can be more useful than the phone. But both will get the job done.

Hello everyone! I am Son of Cyclops and started collecting geocoins back in 2005. Throughout my caching I collected a lot of coins but due to my interest being elsewhere and life getting in the way of geocoins and geocaching. I am selling off the last of my collection. In total, I have 543 coins on the Google Sheets list which I have attached in 3 different binders and a box. I would prefer to see if I can sell the entire collection to one person or if I can break it up in large portions that would be ok as well. A small portion of the trackable coins are activated and I can transfer these to you. If your interested in specific coins, we can talk about prices. But if I sold the entire collection to someone (to reduce the work on selling them off in smaller portions), I would ask $1800 obo. Not sure what the current market is for geocoins but this prices out to about $3.30 a coin which I feel is reasonable. Again if you are interested in smaller groups of coins or individual ones, we can talk. Some of the coins are more special which I listed below (although they are copied onto the list in the link) The Easter Coin Bunny (Blue and Red) The Easter Coin Bunny (Green and Pink) UF Gator Mystery Pay it Forward Gold GeoBandit Mystery 1markymark1 bronze 07 1markymark1 antique silver 07 Geocoin Club ROT13 Pure Silver Geocoin (Only one in public hands) https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1sdzCtHnX-DwT1qij99ujaOrbxQ_1XGb8xD1PJukOCUE/edit?usp=sharing Thanks for the time and don't hesitate to ask any questions!

Hello, if this is an important place for your children why don't you tell something about it in the listing? Isn't there more to tell as Talk about the place, why is it special to you!? That's some part of the spirit of a geocache and with a good listing (you might even add pictures) you might get better logs than the FTF log.... Without a listing this cache might look as a statistics point ("+1") and I think it is much more than that to you. Tell us! You can still edit the listing. Have fun with your cache! Jochen

In my (limited) experience, younger kids are not excited as much by finding something sneaky as by riffling through "treasure." On the other hand, once the local kids find out about the box of toys in the park, it's doomed. Besides counting, you could use colors. Or multiple choice. "If the bench is green, keep going straight ahead. If it is brown, turn left." You could put a simple jigsaw puzzle in the first or second stage. Put the puzzle together to see the coordinates. Or a photo of the final location. Treasure map? Maybe you could make it spy-themed. Talk about spy gadgets and tell them they are looking for something small that is a disguise, and what it can hold (the logbook).

Where did I say they are ONLY in it for that +1? You're reading things that aren't there. I said it makes it more interesting for people wanting a +1 to go caching in groups. Good for you! My experience comes from reading logs and THIS THREAD (and other threads). Yes, people are probably as friendly as anywhere else but as far as geocaching goes we're keeping to ourselves (a plus in these times ). We avoid events and avoid the new caches placed for events. Standing in line to write in the log is not my idea of fun. The few friends we have in geocaching we know a lot longer, they are radio amateurs that we see during club meetings and "on air" but geocaching is almost never a topic of conversation. No problem to have a talk when (and if) we come across other geocachers but we wouldn't call them "friends".

When I log a find on a cache that involves climbing, be it a tree or on rocks, I'm not claiming to have climbed the thing, all I'm claiming is that I signed the cache's logbook. In fact I'll state quite clearly in my log that I used a ladder instead of picking my way up through the branches, or rope, a grabbing tool, an agile friend or a borrowed child. For the latter, there's a cache near here where the CO says on the cache page, "In order to find this cache you will have to be agile and non-claustrophobic. Or just talk one of the youngin's into doing the dirty work for you." After trying to squeeze into the narrow space and fearing I might become stuck, I instead took the CO's advice and used the services of a youngin.

I snipped out the parts of your post to highlight some of the things I wanted to comment on. I wouldn't object to having some flexibility in creating an even with a higher D rating, as long it didn't create an additional burden for reviewers having to arbitrate all the requests for giving an event a rating higher than D1. It's hard to take your post seriously about justifying a higher D-rating around Christmas (keep in mind that not everyone celebrates Christmas). There's always going to be some reason why attending a specific event would be difficult (for example, I wish I could have attended a WWFM event several years ago in Ethiopia but I was enroute on an airplane at the time) but that is no reason to increase the difficulty. I am curious why geocachers in your area talk about "dead of events". The point of an event is to bring together geocachers to socialize, meet new geocachers and old, and talk about geocaching. I fail to see how the difficulty should make any difference. Filling up a D/T grid is just a side game and I, personally don't want to see guideline changes just to cater to some challenge cache or other side game. The only reason that I could envision an event with a rating higher than D1 would be if it was in a location that was from some reason difficult to find (e.g. behind an unmarked door in Manhattan), which, to me kind of defeats the whole point around events. Creating an event with a rating higher than D1 just so attendees can fill in a square on a D/T grid is not, to me, a legitimate reason.