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One of my least enjoyable days was the day I decided to find 100 caches in a day on a power trail. 80ish of the finds on the trail plus a few others in the area and I did it solo. Talk about miserable, I was so exhausted getting in and out of the car. Yes I parked next to the cache but after 100 times it adds up. Even putting on the seat belt was a an effort. No plans of ever doing that again.

Hi, A fact is that some useful features were working and have just disapeared. I may have missed it, but I did not read any answer about the filter of the Personal Notes... For example with this link I was able to search all mysteries having "not modified" coordinates and that does not have a PN : https://www.geocaching.com/play/results?sw=1&ct=8&hf=1&ho=1&cc=0&nfb=smashcfr This has just been deactivated... Why, as it worked ? And why this does not have been repaired, as this should be very easy if you use GIT... As I already said, it's great to try to produce new things, this can be very positive... But not when each time useful functionnalities disapear (I wrote here about PN, but I'd be able to talk about many more...). So please, any news about those PN ? This should be very easy to put it back...

1) I had read about geocaching way back when it started. I have always loved maps and compass, and I knew about GPS. Years later, my wife worked food service as a kitchen manager. One day, she brought home a catalog from a local food service company, and told me I have 100,000+ points that I could spend on anything I wanted. They had a Garmin eTrex, the original eTrex for 98,000 points, so I ordered it. Loaded the coords for a local cache, and went and found it. Then, it sat for over a year, before I found another cache. 2) I did it for a number of reasons. First and foremost in my mind, it was a cool use of the technology. A bit of adventure, getting out and about. Something I could do with the kids, then the grandkids. 3) I haven't gone geocaching in a couple of years. Basically, all the remaining local caches are (IMO) lame. I don't have as much time to do this, and I do other GPS based activities. I will get back into it when I retire. (I'm right on the brink of starting to count down the months, instead of the years. Got 33 months left.) Other have mentioned that Geocaching is a hobby, not a game. To me, it is a bit of both. Games need to have rules, so I make up my own rules. Challenges actually. I did a Jasmer challenge. I want to find a cache in each degree (0-359) using my home as a base. I want to find cache in each 5 mile band away from my house out to 350 miles. I will do GeoTours. These are the games/challenges I set for myself. You talk about the Gamification of the Outdoors. I'm assuming that this is about games played in real world locations, and how technology is allowing a more diverse set of location based games. Pre-GPS, this would include things like Orienteering and Letterboxing. With GPS, we got Geocaching. With Smartphones, our options expanded to include 'games' such as Pokemon GO, Ingress, Pikmin Bloom, and others. If you change the title to Gamification of Location, you could include some console based games, games that required multiple people to be in the same location (indoors or outdoors) in order to do certain things. (Anyone remember the cables required to link handheld consoles together, before wireless.)

Thank you for the reply. I have asked that question to the head office and got no reply yet. I wanted to install the app on my phone but didn't know if there was a cost to do so. All the feed back talk is about how it cost so much to use your phone with the app. I'm not real Tec'y ,so I need help with it all. Thank You Again

It would be nice if someone from geocaching HQ would read this post and say something. Even, "no thank you, we're happy with the way this is" though I'd prefer "thanks for the feedback, that's an interesting idea and we'll talk about it". I think it's a great idea as a software engineer, and helpful to integrate labs into the mainline game. Anyone from HQ listening? Hello?

For anyone interested, here is the episode of Challenge Talk where we discuss the idea of fully theming challenge caches. Seems like there is a general consensus that theming the challenge final cache itself in some way is much more enjoyable than just a run of the mill cache that signing is more like a smiley technicality.

Perhaps it's because the cache is a gift from the CO to the community, and the way we have of repaying that gift is to share our experiences through our logs whether that experience results in a precious smiley or not. Besides, if we didn't log our epic DNFs, what would there be to talk about at events? Points well taken - the only way we have to see activity on our hides is by the logs, and perhaps by communications at events or via the message center. Seeing unlogged activity (as defined by the OP) is problematic on many levels and is not likely to ever happen: How do you know they are searching for the cache? I use the app, at times, to check to see if I am too close when I am looking at a potential hiding spot by choosing a cache nearby and hitting Navigate. I also hit the Navigate to check distances to several that may be in the area - to help plan our spontaneous walk in the park, what's nearby? cache outings. That will not mean anything to the CO. And giving folks access to the detailed distance and time factors, I agree with Max and 99, that borders on creepy! More accurate logs are what will give the CO the best idea of activity on his/her hide whether that is a Found It, Write Note, or DNF. Detailed logs are even better!! And those logs you get from folks who use the official app, other apps, and plain old GPS units to search for and find caches - a much more accurate picture of what's happening with your cache.

Perhaps it's because the cache is a gift from the CO to the community, and the way we have of repaying that gift is to share our experiences through our logs whether that experience results in a precious smiley or not. Besides, if we didn't log our epic DNFs, what would there be to talk about at events?

Not allowed to talk about it but I use an app that lets me see archived caches easily. I'm not surprised about the error though - having trouble today getting the mapping function to work AT ALL for lists. (Off to find where to post about that...)

My approach would be to try to use leading zeros. If it's doing an alphabetic sort instead of a numeric one (not unreasonable, though you'refree to ask which of these steps is sorting them at all) "02 ... 09 10 11 12 ... 19 20 " will do what I think you're asking for. An alphabetic sort of that same sequence without tthe leading zeros would put 10 11 12 before 2. You may have too much software involved. Can you just copy the GPX file straight to the device and land it in whatever device directory it expects to find such things? I can't recall if 2597 mounts like a disk drive and reads GPX or if it was of the generation that wanted to be a camera and only talk through a protocol that didn't respect folders/directories. Goopd luck.

That's crazy talk!

The short answer is "no", and I don't want you to get your hopes up. But to some degree, it works as you hoped. *If* you get the AL loaded *and keep it loaded*, you can visit each stage and the AL with remember that you were there even though it can't get on-line to confirm your answer. You can even tell if your answer is right because if it isn't right, it says so, but if it is right, it puts up a spinny wheel so you know it's accepted your answer and is trying to register that fact with the wide world. The problem I've had is that even if I load the AL in advance, the app tends to time out if I don't actively talk to it. Then when I wake it back up, it has to reload the AL, so if I'm out of touch, I'm screwed. In addition, sometimes when it tries to register my answer on-line but fails, it will hang altogether so I have to shutdown the app myself, leaving me the reload problem again. If you won't have any connectivity, then forget it 'cuz you'll never get started. But if you can go into the nearest cafe to get on a wifi from time to time, you might be able to pull it off.

I've been checking and couldn't find a thread for this type of WM. How many times can we see a satellite and we have not had time to talk with a partner, or even two partners saw a satellite, but someone who also saw it (and is within the distance of being able to share WM) is left without being able to register it? Well, here we can write down what we saw or did (especially those that were not published)

Keystone is exactly the correct person to talk to. You can get all the opinions you want here, but ultimately he is the one who you will need to get approval from.

In the words of Adrian Monk, here's what happened: I'm browsing waymarks, and see a new Wienermobile waymark in Oklahoma, where I was JUST was, at a Homeland, where I was just at. Drats. I missed it by that much! So I look up the Wienermobile tour, and what????? It's in Yukon today! I yell to Max, "Do you have time for a trip to Yukon". Yes! I grab my coat and we're out the door. As soon as I leave the driveway, I text Snowdog to let him know of this opportunity. Turns out he was there hours earlier, and about to submit the waymark. He was kind enough to wait until I was ready, then we both submitted our waymarks. I remember this thread very well, and knew that we could both waymark the Wienermobile, which is why we didn't turn around, just continued driving to Yukon. It was so much fun to visit. I got a Wiener Whistle, took lots of pics, and even posed with the Wienermobile. I asked questions, and had a nice talk with the driver. Sure wish I could have stepped inside the Wienermobile! So cool. They're always hiring.

Your reviewer seems to be @Keystone based on your previous posts and I'd talk to him about it. I'd tell him what your idea for this series is and ask if there are any potential issues he can help you head off. Talking to my reviewer is always my first step in hiding a cache.

This is horrible. All the talk of "hide as a noun" brought to mind that line "Tan me hide when I'm dead, Fred" and now Rolf Harris's rendition of "Tie Me Kangaroo Down, Sport" is stuck in my head.

Our reviewer does not talk to people. You ask any questions and you get some type of computer generated response.

Wow! Talk about learning something new! All these years I never knew that those Cache Names were clickable and would give a list of all caches included. (Except GPS Adventures Exhibit)

Assuming it was logged into the cache, then obviously retrieve is the right log. You did remember to drop it in the cache, right? But maybe something else happened, or maybe he just used grab by mistake. The only one that knows is the person that has it. That gave you a good reason to contact the geocacher right away to ask, so you can certainly contact him now to ask about that and about his plans for it now. But I think what you really want to know is how quickly you can ask about a TB someone's holding. The basic answer is "it depends", but the more general answer is, you can talk to someone holding your TB whenever you want as long as you're polite. Demanding he place it in another cache is not polite. Asking what his plans are for it starts a conversation and has the happy side effect of reminding him he took it in case he forgot. To improve the side effect, mention the cache and where it was to help jog his memory, if he needs it. After talking it over you might, depending on what you learn, decide to request he move it along now. Or you might decide it's in good hands and you just need to be more patient. As I say, it depends. So that's my advice, and it applies to all cachers, newbies or not. But having said that, newbies are, by definition, not the best cachers. It's OK to imagine that because of a newbie fail, things are not good for your TB and you may not even be able to learn its fate. But try to avoid injecting those thoughts into the conversation. After all, if he made a mistake, you want him to learn from it. We *all* want him to learn from it. That's less likely to happen if he feels like he's being berated for his mistake instead of being given advice about how to geocache better.

There was a ~110 stage multi in my area which I co-ftf'd with a few friends. Non-stop for two nights, and lots of talk with the CO as numerous stages had issues. The cache didn't last long. Being sequential (each stage had coordinates to the next), any problem with one stage and the cache is not findable. Nightmare to maintain. So maybe there needs to be a distinction - longest linear waypoint multi vs non-linear waypoint multi?

You were given a clue more than a year ago. How much progress did you make? I get that it can be daunting when starting from zero, but did you even try? If not, someone offered to create a service for doing it in the last thread: did you talk with them, tell them it's something that would really help you out?

Good day fellow Geocachers, ill get right to the point, i always had a iPhone but these have become very expensive devices. I subsequently bought a Huawei P40 5G lite, but was not told that it does not work with any google apps. so all the maps on the Geo apps don't work thus i cant geocache anymore! it has an Android version 10, EMUI Version 10.1.1 operating system. has anyone been able to fix this or have a work around? i have a "fake" google maps that works on the phone but obviously the Geo Apps don't talk to it?

The approach I've used for locations that haven't already had official geocaching policies has been to ask who I should talk to about getting permission. I don't ask "random employees" for permission. But I do my best to find someone who might know, and then ask that person who I should talk to.

Come watch Geocache Talk on Sunday night - this podcast show's topic is desirable attributes, which may include talk related to identifying gadget caches At this point though, the Field Puzzle attribute is most relevant to identifying potential gadget caches.