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Since my response is to the moderators of the site and Groundspeak et al., I will post this here weeks after the main discussion has passed. Like all of my logs, this is mostly just a rant. I... support the decision! The sport/game/hobby of geocaching has existed for so long, its long term survival outweighs what some users think about the more antiquated elements of it. I would argue benchmarking is not a priority for many users, only partially because Groundspeak has relegated it to obscurity on the website for years. Beginners, who are important customers to expand the product, don't seem to be flocking toward benchmarks. My area has been dominated by loop-holers focused more on statistics than unique hunts and only seem to log benchmarks when they can get a challenge cache out of it. The 0.13% statistic that was paraded around is probably an understatement, but I do not see the logic of paying to support something so little of the general population cares about. A majority of my gripes are not with Groundspeak's decision but the rotten system of global capitalism and the myth of unlimited business growth. Low interest, sadly, equals low profitability and thus elimination. The archivist aspect is the main element that is tragic in all this, for me. But this is a symptom of the internet at large- huge portions of the web are just being lost to the wind and almost no one seems to care. Geocaching has now outlasted web 1.0, 2.0 and if the impending demise of twitter is any indication, 3.0 as well. One of its most valuable elements then are the logs from a pre-cell phone age. There are inactive users who commented on benchmarks and their logs will be lost forever. That sucks. While scraping page by page through The Internet Archive is a great idea, it's not practical. I'll try anyway. It's not a defense of the decision, but reality. Burying the lede here, but Benchmarking is/was one my favorite elements of Geocaching. I think it is profoundly interesting from a historical aspect, and many of my most memorable experiences with caching overall have been hunting remote benchmarks. I was annoyed with how old the datasheet was and just how many of the marks were actually destroyed. Especially living in an urban area, where mindless sprawl and that myth of unlimited growth have destroyed many of these disks. But the ones I did find were fun, even if it was impossible to combine that experience into any sort of phone application. Of the 84 I found so far, 56 (66%) have been radio/water towers, cupolas, domes, flagpoles, or just tall buildings. These are a majority of the benchmarks I've noticed other users have logged. Which is logical- they are the most easily accessible. But I would also argue, not entirely worth it. For those above me who complain about lamp post hides, these categories of benchmarking are very much in the same vein. I do not want to gatekeep against either as that would be hypocritical. I strive to give my logs as much depth and information as possible, but it's pretty obvious that a State Capitol dome is "in good shape". Which leaves the other 32 (34%) of my finds- bench mark discs themselves. This is what I'll- and others here- will truly miss. I think that the amount of marks logged as missing or never logged at all are vast. That sort of eliminates the ease of accessibility. Of those 32 disks, a third of them have been found less than five times. I am the most recent finder on all of those for the past eighteen months. I was happy to recognize one of those other finders in these comments, and empathize with their disappointment, but this doesn't eliminate benchmarking. It just pushes it to a much less popular website. This is by no means the end of my benchmarking. It's just the end of me keeping track of my benchmarking online- my disapointments with Waymarking are a separate rant entirely. Talk all you want about how the best things in life are worth the challenge, but from a business model perspective it's not marketable. Which goes back to my hatred of the "game" (capitalism) not the "player" (Groundspeak) trying to promote and protect Geocaching. So in summary, while I love benchmarking, I can understand why Groundspeak would phase it out. Because it's a niche, mostly unrelated element to geocaching at large.

Three months is the bare minimum. I've had caches that were hidden for less, but it was not because I planned it - it was because they weren't viable for some reason and didn't work out. I have moved every couple years since starting, so each time I got to a new area, I knew roughly when the expiration date of my caches would be. I had a few in Oklahoma that I put out intending for them to be there for a year, and then we ended up moving six months early, so they were only there for five months. Other than that, looking through our hides, the shortest we planned to have some out was for about nine months. I'd say get 'em up now. If you end up moving next summer, take the ideas that worked and hide them in your new locale. I have returned to some hide styles (and some puzzles) over the years because they work, and because the locals don't necessarily know how to solve them in the new area. The important thing is to plan for your move. Don't wait until the last minute to try to adopt them out. Either talk to someone ahead of time about potentially adopting the listings from you, or plan to pick them up and archive them. Don't just leave them behind without a plan. All caches need maintaining, and moving without a plan just dumps the problem on the local cachers (and reviewers) you're leaving behind.

If you don't need the vicar in the zone after the player talks to him, you could move the vicar to the next zone as the first command when you talk to him. If you still need him around in the current zone, you should be able to disable the command, at which point the player app is supposed to be smart enough to recognize there isn't an object in that zone anymore that has that command. If that's not the case--it really depends on how the player app handles things--disabling the command and then toggling the zone's enabled state should do the trick. So: - On Talk() - - Disable Talk command - - Set zone.Enabled = false - - Set zone.Enabled = true - - Do things for Talk

Thanks both for the responses. I guess what I was trying to get at is not so much the theme of the cache as the physical nature of it. As a kind of anti-example, we don't really have LPCs in Australia but I found one that I understand was very typical when I visited California a few years ago. It was under the skirt of a lamp-post on it's concrete pillar about 3 feet off the ground, in the middle of a carpark. I can imagine that caches like that are convenient for people with limited mobility because you can get right up close to it whether you do that in a car, a chair or on foot. I can also imagine that, even if they all had great reasons to bring you to carparks, the same thing over and over would be boring. So my curiosity is more about how you might make the hide itself both accessible and interesting (perhaps uniquely so) to someone who, for example, is in a wheelchair or has low vision. And yes, I'm well aware that every person's disability is different. I used to do education talks with someone who uses a wheelchair. She can walk a decent distance but it can be slow and tiring so she largely keeps to the chair. However, she quite enjoyed wheeling into a classroom and doing the talk, then finding an appropriate excuse to stand up and surprise the kids. We weren't there to educate on disability and inclusion but I think she taught a lot of kids a good lesson doing that.

I purchased a number of such apps. Every one of them self-destructed. As a dev myself, though, I'm somewhat sympathetic to their problem. There are a few problems that inherently makes the geocaching app market work poorly. I think it's gotten better for low-volume apps, but the OS provider (Apple, Google) gets a third of that right off the top. Now that's a fixed COGS and was hopefully built into the price model, but the dev now gets $6.50. The twist is that geocaching apps are something a user may stare at intently two days a week instead of, say, a joke-telling app that's used a few times and discarded or even something as specialized as a map converter that you only need a few times a year. Geocaching apps are just not typical App store apps: Geocaching apps are a small market. A successful app may have hundreds of installs and a really successful one may break into the thousands. So maybe that app maker made $10K. Maybe. (Download count is not the same as purchased user account...) It's a demanding market. Look at the endless raging controversy over 3 vs. 4 digits after the decimal point on some Garmin firmware. If your app works differently than the user expects, you're going to get an earful. Maybe you built - and sold as such - a bare-bones "follow the arrow" navigation app. You're going to get one star reviews because the app doesn't have native puzzle-solving abilities, such as decoding caesar ciphers on the device. That actually has nothing to do with geocaching, but there's an expectation that it's there. Maybe your app doesn't think it should be involved in travel bugs (and you made no promises about travel bugs in the app listing) but someone will say their life is ruined if your app can't automatically dip travel bugs with a log that auto increments, includes the timestamp, and reports "3/14 for the day", for each log. Oh, and it needs to handle the day ending when they went to bed, not at midnight because they were caching after dark. It's a moving target. Groundspeak was disrespectful of developer investment in their API and at least twice has restructured the way applications had to communicate with the server in an incompatible way. Not a minor, annoying, "let's change the spelling" way, but a major "rewrite the bottom half of the app" way. Multiple times. Cache types and log types and maximum API calls per hour and other things change (or at least did - I've quit following it) regularly. It's a localized target. Geocachers are worldwide. You'll need SI and Imperial. You'll need to know that altitude may be in feet, but ground distance may be in meters. You'll need at least most of the Romance languages supported. Individually these are trivial, but it's a lot of _stuff_ to keep track of and to exercise all the combinations. It's a changing target. Even within a given API level, Cache and log types come and go. Security rules around logins change. OSes change version and deprecate some service that you were using. There are new event types to handle. You'll need to build and test on phone and tablet, probably on real hardware and not the emulator because geocaching is a physical thing and it's hard to simulate the experience in the field. You'll need to handle all the new devices coming on as well as all the old devices that ever worked because someone will have a phone identical to yours, but is on a carrier that's withholding the OS upgrade so your "identical" phones offer two different sets of features to develop, test, and support. It's a demanding target. You don't control the schedule when any of this happens. OS updates get pushed and you're either on the train or your app quits working. Groundspeak changes the login process - again - and all your users are locked out. The solution space is small. You're never going to get VC funding to get an iOS dev, an android dev, a support person, a testing person, some equipment, etc. This is always doomed to be a one person operation (Every open-source attempt into this space I've seen has usually been a single-person show, perhaps after a brief flurry of introductory activity) and it's not like it's even going to be big enough money to be a full time job with insurance, etc. It's big enough to be painful (to do it well) but not big enough to actually hang a business around. Even Garmin made a run into the "geocaching" app space and eventually quietly withdrew. Not unique to geocaching is the split of the market. While there are frameworks that help you move your app between iOS and Android, they don't really cover things like the compass and the GPS and battery issues that are all crucial in a geocaching app, but less so in others. If you're a serious dev out to capture serious market share, you can then count on basically building,, testing, and marketing your app twice: Once in Swift and once in Kotlin. (And ten years ago, neither of those languages existed, so you've probably replaced the original Java and Objective C++ versions....) So now you're fighting for relevance in two markets, on two different fronts. I just looked at the android app store at the top paid apps from indy devs: #1 $5 - Sync for Reddit actually shares some of these problems. However, there are 430 million monthly Reddit users. The market is actually large enough to bring non-trivial income. Yay for them. Only they also just added monthly subscription fees ON TOP OF the base app price. This didn't go over well. #2 $3 calendar app. 1M users. (Hint: you're never going to get 1M geocaching app users) The target market is people that need a calendar. Not sure it competes on ongoing maintenance, though. #3 $1.39 watch faces. A watch face app is probably a weekend project. Build it once and you're done. 10K users. #4 $4. An application to talk to ghosts. Seems unlikely to have much tech support demand or changes from ghosts going on strike. So all of these are apps with a WAY larger potential user base and either less ongoing required dev/maintenance/support costs, or an additional monthly subscription fee to cover that. Yet, if you build an app for $10 (the same app for $2 would drive you insane with looky-loos demanding support) users basically expect the app to keep working forever, but without an economy around it that supports this. Build a $2 fart app where the market is anyone that was ever eight years old and people will forget about the app in a week and you never hear from them again. A watch face app may get a cease and desist from Rolex about using their artwork (and that could be detrimental if executed, but you're out a weekend of development) but you'll notice that other app types in the industry don't have this whole large ecosystem that they have to live in, but can't control. Mobile apps blew out the pricing of software. People now associate app prices with that $2 fart app, a $4 flashlight app, or the $1.39 watch face (honestly, I think the market for that kind of junkware has kind of blown over, but it still cratered consumer expectation of paying for software) and if you ask them to pay $50 for a specialized mapping program or some other market-specific tool, it's like you're a baby-killer. Yes, I was there for the wailing every time Clyde rolled out a paid upgrade to GSAK...and watched him put up with users going to great lengths to avoid paying for those upgrades, but still taking up his time. This isn't the article I was looking for, but it cites a lot of related articles that touch on these topics. See https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0167811619300473 So, yeah. A failed $10 geocaching app is just par for this course. Sorry. If I need credentials, I've been developing geocaching-related tools off and on since 2001. I've built at least two Android apps and one cross-platform GSAK-like app for cross-platform to prototype stage. I have geocaching-specific code in GSAK and in Google Earth (drag and drop a PQ into Google Earth Pro. Thats me.). I've studied this market and I've thought about it a LOT. Concluding advice: develop geocaching apps to scratch your own itch or do it for fun, but there's no money in it.

I'd like to propose new category based on my personal interest in the topic. Comments and suggestions appreciated. Description: The goal of this category is to waymark works of Space Art that are on permanent public display around the world. Expanded Description: Space Art is the genre of modern artistic expression emerging from knowledge and ideas associated with outer space, both as a source of inspiration and as a means for visualizing and promoting space travel. Like other genres of artistic creation, Space Art has many facets and encompasses realism, impressionism, hardware, sculpture, abstract imagery, even zoological art. In general, works of Space Art strive to visualize the wonders of the Universe. Though artists have been making art with astronomical elements for a long time, the genre of Space Art itself is still in its infancy, having begun only when humanity gained the ability to look off our world and artistically depicted what we see out there. Whatever the stylistic path, the artist is generally attempting to communicate ideas somehow related to space, often including an appreciation of the infinite variety, wonder, and vastness of the Universe which surrounds us. There are several sub-genres of Space Art, each with their own unique characteristics: - Descriptive Realism (“Rocks and Balls”) - it is an aspect of Space Art whose primary emphasis is to show a viewer a scientifically accurate visual depiction of alien places in the Cosmos. - Cosmic Impressionism (“Swirly Art”) - like works done in the impressionist era, Space Art works in the Cosmic Impressionism style use color and form to give a viewer the artist’s impression of the image subject matter without trying to be technically accurate, highly detailed, or adhering to known scientific principles; despite being more loose, the subject matter is still clearly inspired by space. - Hardware Art (“Nuts and Bolts”) - it is usually similar to Descriptive Realism but focuses on the detailed depiction of the hardware of spaceships, probes, and equipment being used in a space setting. - Cosmic Zoology - Though the question of other life in the universe has yet to be answered, artists can speculate about it and imagine the possibilities; Cosmic Zoology is the depiction of extraterrestrial life in extraterrestrial settings. - Astronomical Photography - it is a form of extra-terrestrial photography, usually via space probes, where a photo is deliberately framed to place esthetic value over scientific value. - Space Sculpture - Works of Space Sculpture are more difficult to recognize as such as they are usually more symbolic or abstract in nature, like a rocket shape, stained glass windows representing stellar objects, or a sculptured work designed specifically for zero gravity display. However, the prime inspiration for three dimensional works of Space Art is the same as other sub-genres, space itself. The premier organization and only guild in the world dedicated to the creation of Space Art is the International Association of Astronomical Artists (IAAA). Sources: iaaa.org; wikipedia.ord Instructions for Posting a Space Art Waymark: We are interested in works of Space Art that are on permanent public display. Please post at least two original photographs of Space Art. In the Long Description section provide at least one paragraph of text about the Space Art that you are Waymarking. Name your Space Art waymark as: Space Art Name - City, State, Country Bilingual and multilingual Space Art waymarks are accepted and encouraged, but one of the languages must be English.

Please read my comment again. I'm not saying anything about PQs going away. I'm explicitly saying to migrate the PQ preview from the old buggy seek/nearest platform to the modern next.js search results. Knowing the mess that is the old seek/nearest code-base, I doubt it's that simple. I responded to similar claims here before: Yes it was working before when two ancient ca 2005 code bases were working together. Some of these issues are side-effects of trying to get a 2005 and a vastly different and advanced 2022 version to talk to each other. The best course of action would be to get two modern systems that are much more compatible to work together. That is the next step. For the present issue, while I understand your frustration, I offered you a clear workaround. If instead of continuing to have a productive conversation like we did up until this point , you'd rather point fingers and speak poorly about the people who are trying to help you, let me know and we can be done here. And to those who say "don't take it personal" - thanks, I'll stand up for my developers and QA engineers any day because I know how hard they work every day within the constraints of our systems.

Here is the message I received, I'm not available, so I thought I put it out there. Please reply if you contact Michelle, so she doesn't get hammered. ______________________________ Does your brother know of an avid geocacher that would like to give a brief 10 minute talk about geocaching and travel bugs…possibly including a few personal stories? If so, do you mind passing their info to me and I’ll forward to Doug, please? The time commitment would be on 4/12 from 4pm for 10 minutes and they could stay until 6pm when the event is over or only stay for 10-15 minutes. Thanks so much!! J Michelle Michelle Watson College of Technology and Innovation 6049 S. Backus Mall, Sutton Rm 301L Mesa, AZ 85212 (480) 727-1881 phone

Please can you advise how to shut off the talk to command for each zone. I am doing a Church Wherigo and I want the vicar to pop up at each question point. As such he is in zone 1, has a talk to command, asks a question, gives commands to move on or retry if answer wrong or right. I am stuck at the next bit, as in how do I turn off the talk to, or attribute it to one zone only so I can do a further talk to at zone 2...

In the last few months I haven't been keeping up on the latest changes. I see that now deleting a bug log does result in sending the logger an email. What else am I missing? What else do the TB forum support people want to talk about? (without having it pinned)

I got a taste of what when I had a temporary mobility problem. I broke my right ankle while looking for a cache. Finally after almost 3 months I could try to cache again but I had to be careful. So I picked T1 caches. It was a lesson in frustration. I ended up driving sometimes for hours to find a cache I could do wearing an ankle brace and using a cane. I'd walk a kilometre on a nice crushed stone level rail trail and when I was 50m from the cache I'd stare down a steep rocky slope with a little 3 foot wide creek at the bottom that needed to be jumped over. Or I'd get to a cemetery but the cache would be a 50m trek at the back of the cemetery into the woods through thick brush and fallen trees. It happened far too often. I complained here in the forums but got little sympathy. Mostly the talk was about the minutiae of what T1 means. And how handicapped people need to bring someone with them to do the retrieving. Unfortunately few people can empathize with the problem. Why post a cache as a T1 if it isn't actually a flat accessible surface all the way to the cache? At least post a T1.5. Why not err on the side of a terrain rating that is a little higher (a T2+) than too low. It's probably a statistics thing. T1 is probably covetted for grid fillers and challenge enthusiasts. I agree, it is cruel.

Yes, after my recent run-in with this that saw months of cache preparation go down the gurgler, I'll give it as many up-votes as I can. This is supposed to be the Year of the Hide and there's been much talk about the contribution COs make to the game, but this is something that would actually be really helpful to cache owners. The Help Centre says "Solve nearby geocaches, including Mystery and Multi-Caches, to discover hidden stages" but that's of no help once you've found those solved mysteries and multis because all you see on any of the site's maps is a smiley face at the posted coordinates.

Hej! I am swedish and would like to know more words and phrases!

We've all had good times caching. A memorable day, a record setting PT run, or finding the perfect spot for a perfect cache by accident. What about the other side of the coin? Lets share our failure days/puzzles/hides.... whatever. I'm really hoping this thread doesn't turn into any sort of negative attack thread, please lets just keep it to our own (or our groups) failure days, and lets keep it fun. Over the last several days, I've been planning a trip for today. Trying to figure out where to go, find somebody to go with me, figure out which caches, etc... I decided on Bodega Bay, CA. 15-20 caches planned, two of which are some of the oldest in California. My son and I were going to spend a special day at the ocean, caching, and just relaxing. That was before I was up all night with stuff flying out of both ends of me like I was Linda Blair. Very, very uncool. Your turn....

Just like GC didn't update the database with new info from NGS, NGS does not have all the recovery info and pictures that have been posted here. Can't compare the two, sadly. Please note, if anyone submits information, to keep it professional, and only update it if it hasn't been in a year or more, OR, if something major has changed. No names, no funny stories. Those are used by professionals, and whatever you put in there is never deleted, never removed, and will be publicly available forever. I'll be removing the links to the GC site from my Android app and GE plugin then. They were useful before, with additional pictures and all, but if they're all gonna be wiped, there's absolutely no reason to link to GC anymore. Whatever this new project is, I won't even be interested. Frankly, if GC shows it 1/10th the love that it showed benchmarks in the last 22 years, the 'new project' will be gone in 5 years, and I don't have the time to set up a new API and program in new info trading for something that's not gonna last. Sadly, same here. I was a premium member for one time, and when BM code updates stopped happening, it wasn't worth it. I don't geocache, it bores me. (And the one time I DID? Someone stole the geocoin.) While the BM Forum has died down to a quiet whisper, I still checked it regularly, and enjoyed the talk and banter. Disappointed, but not surprised that it was going to happen, just am that it happening this soon. [Edited by Moderator to remove potty language.]

This is just another thing that GC is taking away from me, all of those places and logs and pictures that are just going to be deleted forever. My dead husband and I spent many hours, miles and love of a sport that is now going to be gone. I could come here and at least relive those times he and I had together. So, this is truly goodbye GC. On November 1, without our benchmarking logs and without being able to go to Off Topic to talk to friends that I had made there, there will be no reason for me to return. You have caused me many tears and heartache this year. There is nothing else you could do, as we had archived all our caches before John died in 2019. So this year you killed off, Off Topic and now Benchmark Hunting plus deleting all mention of any of the logs and the Benchmark forum as well. I have a very bad case of heartache right now, thanks to a place that we used to love coming to and where I could come to be with people who remembered John. There, I have had my say, and I know it won't mean a whit to anyone. But, it had to be said. Sincerely, Shirley Bloomfield

Wow, that's impressive. I sometimes wish TB's could talk, and let us know the story of their journey between the logs. Was it someone that simply stopped caching and found the TB's after a while and sent them out again? Someone that passed away and their partner / relative / friend set the TB's free? Did someone buy them at a garage sale not knowing what they were? A TB hoarder who was visited by the ghosts of caches past?

Ironic that you include Wherigos on there. Talk about something you all have let stagnate forever that had so much potential that just became quizzes and reverse solvable before you go junk. Benchmarks are a part of history. No move of a level playing field, actually. It's there or it's not. Just like a cache. OMG what a concept. And even when it's not people still log it as a cache. Cool - so other parts of the world don't have benchmarks. SO? Kinda like a HQ or Maze or Giga icon. Sure, maybe they get around, but to the masses? Rationale for this is weak. Nobody: Nobody: Cachers: Benchmarkers: Newbies: Literally nobody ever in any way shape or form: Groundspeak: Yeah, let's go ahead and stop doing something that takes us literally no effort and that, while only a small group of people love it they really do love it, and just up and cancel it for no reason whatsoever with nominal notice and call it 'progress'.

So I'm getting ready to hide a few new caches and decided to use a .30 cal ammo can and a decon container for two of them. There is a small military surplus dealer in town so I stopped by to pick some up. I hadn't been there for three years but the last time I was there .30 cal ammo cans were $6.99 and decon containers were about three or four bucks. So I went in and asked for a decon container and they guy asked me weather I wanted the regular one or the geocache version. I ask what the difference is and he says the geocache version just has a note pad and a pencil in it. I ask about price and he says $10 for a regular and $30 for a geocache!!! I think my jaw hit the counter top. I didn't even bother to ask about ammo can prices but I did notice a couple of .30 cal cans sitting on the floor with price tags of $24.99! Don't think I'll be going back there again.

I'm certain I'm not alone in becoming increasingly frustrated about the lack of feedback and information from Groundspeak about the overwhelming dissatisfaction of what looks to be the majority of Geocaching.com's users. As a Premium Member who gave money in good faith to use your service, when that service is seriously downgraded (in my opinion--here in the UK we have no satellite/hybrid maps, and MapQuest is not as accurate as it should be), you have an obligation to address our concerns with more than a "I hope you get used to the new maps." Tell us in plain words what you are doing to restore your service to its previous level, or say straight out that we're going to have to like it or leave it. The vague comments and subtle snipes I've seen from Groundspeak forum moderators are creating even more bad feelings and frustration amongst those who are unhappy about the changes, so instead of allowing them to continue to communicate in this manner, please, I'd like a member of Groundspeak who has the authority to speak on the company's behalf to address the Geocaching.com community. To fellow Premium Members: I for one will not be giving any more money to Groundspeak unless the maps are sorted. I would like to let Groundspeak see how many others feel the same way. Please speak up on this thread to let them know if you will or will not be re-subscribing.

I should clarify: the OP is more than welcome to learn how to tree/rock/whatever-climb. I'm not trying to gatekeep this sport. But because it's being presented as "I want to find a couple caches that are high up in trees, where can I buy rope?", I am anxious for the OPs safety. It is not the right mindset here. The question they really should have asked is "where can I learn how to climb trees/rocks/whatever safety." OP: Learn how to climb rocks/trees/whatever in a rock/tree/whatever-climbing class. Use the gear provided by instructors. Make sure you are comfortable. Talk to the instructors. They will be more than happy to help you find rope, harnesses, etc. They are the experts, not random strangers on a Geocaching forum.

A hearty ARRRG! to my fellow cachers, Travel bugs, love them. I absolutely love this idea - it is one of the aspects of caching that drew me to the game. When we first started I was more eager, I think, to get bugs out into the world than actually looking for caches. But, being a good little rule follower, we waited - learning the tricks of the trade, scoping out the possibilities, and earning our time in the trenches. Finally we felt it was time to put out our first bug, a pirate coin - with a mission to wander the world hitting all the pirate hot spots. It was picked up from its starter cache, but not moved along - after a few months I contacted the cacher, and, after two or three e-mails, she finally got back to me. She said how sorry she was, and that she would move it along the next time she was out. She still has it. Our second bug was in honor of a dear pet who had recently passed away. After a good run of a few weeks in our area he was taken to Hawaii and then to Washington state - where he was picked up (I'm pretty sure by a new cacher, if my detective work is worth its salt) but not moved along. I e-mailed the cacher - no response. Do I try again? At what point does it become obsessive? Our third bug is in honor of a TV program that I have loved since I was a kid. After a good run of several weeks in our area it was picked up, and so far not moved along...although, after contacting the cacher, he has promised to place it back into play as soon as he can (I'm giving it until the end of March - it was picked up in November, if I recall - before I give up on it). What do I do? I'm kind of burnt out on losing bugs. Is it better to cut my losses and just enjoy the hunting, or should I get back on that horse and not let the sticky-fingered cachers get me down? Is there a help group for lost bugs? If not, perhaps one should be organized - we can't be the only ones that have loved and lost. Thanks. Daddy Pirate (of weepirates3)

This puzzle cache was a 5 difficulty and went unfound for a couple of years. It was eventually found, and has since been archived. I have what I believe are the right coords. Any one know what the GC number was, and anyone know anyone who found it, who I can bounce my coords off of, and talk about how they solved it? I have picture of the puzzle, it was a short story, with the coords buried in 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.