Search the Community

I like how you're sympathetic to the CO's plight. Some seekers act so entitled that I sometimes side with the COs being annoyed even when I agree they could do better at maintaining their caches. I don't replace containers. That's not my job. When I suggested helping the CO, I meant working with the CO. If you are willing to replace containers in the name of improving your local cache quality, talk to the owner first and discuss what would make a good container, whether for a cache you're willing to go back to or a cache you're going to go to for the first time that you know from the logs has issues. Although actually fixing caches is a nice side effect, the real goal here is getting the CO to think more about maintenance and container quality and anything else you don't think he's thinking about enough. In my opinion, in the environment you are talking about, complaining about broken baggies and dampness *is* nitpicking. I wouldn't post NMs about those. Yes, admittedly they are things that suggest a need for maintenance, but they're always going to be problems in a climate like that, so pointing them out in find logs is the way to go, leaving it up to the CO to decide when they need to be dealt with. This is one of those things to push more to the friendly, non-log part of your relation with this CO, in my opinion. I'd wait for a while to get a feel for the culture and the overall quality before deciding which issues to push via NMs. Of course, more obvious cases such as broken containers need to be flagged for maintenance as soon as you discover them. I'm less sympathetic to you in this area. COs have their own lives. Like most of us, they sometimes overpromise. If I were you, I'd focus more on the successful find of a nice cache without judging the CO's performance. This is just another sign that they need council and education. I have no idea what your NMs look like, but even if they're the most polite and helpful missives on the planet, I suggest starting the conversation with something along the lines of, "I'm so sorry you felt like you had to delete my NM. What did I say that made you feel like it you couldn't leave it in the log?" And, of course, sneak in "Oh, by the way, I don't think you know that deleting the NM doesn't clear the NM flag. You should post an OM to explain what you did to correct the maintenance issue, and that will clear the flag for you."

It's good to hear you've started a dialog. Make friends and try to see if you can convince him that it's a *friendly* gesture to flag a problem for the CO with an NM so he can go take care of it. That could lead to the broader question of whether the CO needs to go out a fix problems at all, since that might be the more significant problem you're facing. If you have trouble getting him to see the light -- it might take time -- talk to him about the possibility of you helping out with his maintenance tasks. It seems quite likely that the culture in your new area doesn't really expect problems to be fixed, and, if so, you'll have to work hard to swift the culture in another direction, and getting them in the habit of fixing caches might help even though it's you doing most of the work. I would understand if you got shy about posting NMs, at least for a while, but I'd continue to look for his caches and post the appropriate NMs, perhaps trying to add a light-hearted air to the friendly disagreement the two of you are having over whether NMs should be posted. Good luck!

Do you know any local cachers? Talk to them! (or email them, at any rate) The adoption process is straightforward enough >> https://www.geocaching.com/help/index.php?pg=kb.chapter&id=38&pgid=54 And actually, you only have 3 left that haven't yet been archived. The other 3 have already been archived.

The difference is between people that think regulating the behavior of others is generally a good idea and the only question is how to regulate them, and people that think regulating the behavior of others is generally a bad thing to do, so a clear justification is required before you take that action. In other words, between people that think order is the most important thing and those that think freedom is the most important thing. Unfortunately, US popular opinion has, over the last half century, shifted from the latter to the former. Ironic, since the generation that originally saw itself as anti-establishment has been so instrumental in enlarging and fortifying the establishment now that they're in charge of it. Increasingly here in the geocaching world, people talk as if their standards should be enforced without any regard to whether the things they want to rule out are actually bad things as opposed to merely being things they don't like even though others do. As in our politics, this leads to unending arguments because the rule proposing side does not consider objections worthy of consideration as long as the rules they are proposing have popularity on their side. They don't respond to -- in fact, they don't even consider -- the objections that are repeatedly raised and, instead, repeat their opinions as if people will decide to believe in those opinions if they're repeated often enough. Which, sadly, turns out to be an effective approach.

Bingo! Now go join Tennis Courts, talk to the NW History Buff and see what you can get done there. Serving as an officer there would serve as a good "introductory experience" to category ownership. Keith

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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?

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, 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).