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There is a lot of seemingly well-intended chit-chat here, but 90% of this thread is off topic. Please try to offer something helpful to the OP and not just chastise them. That generation of GPS required a driver provided by Garmin to work. I think it's this guy: https://www8.garmin.com/support/download_details.jsp?id=591 This driver is required for any software, whether Basecamp, EasyGPS, or GPSBabel to work with that hardware on Windows. Please confirm it's installed. The suggestion to try GPSBabel has merit because I think every error condition it (that isn't a crash...of which we have none reported for years) has an error message associated with it. That said, we either get packets or we don't and we can either talk to the driver above or we can't so we can really only recommend kind of hand-wavy things like rotating USB ports, different cables, cleaning the gunk out of the USB connector etc. Good luck

Wow! Lots of new caches. Yet you and your friends are complaining? That seems odd, particularly since there's every reason to think the established COs that are on the ball enough to put out caches when the trail is available are odds on favorites to have better caches and do better maintenance than your friends who only just recently got the bug and could well lose it as easily as they got it. Anyway, teach your friends that they can reach out to the owners and talk about them making some room on the trail. Just emphasize that if the CO makes room for them, that it would be really embarrassing to you, as their mentors, if the cache they hide on the trail don't compare favorably to the caches the CO pulled for them.

For me, there are a few bad cacher types, on various degrees of bad. They have one thing in common: No regard for others. - Cache saboteurs. In the worst case, they damage the cache, intentionally or not. They break locks, pry boxes open, disassemble what should not be taken apart. Others leave it in a bad state that ruins the experience for others, not putting things back properly. - Throwdowns. Didn't solve the puzzle? Just put in a fake log! Didn't find the cache? Or couldn't reach it? Hang a petling at face hight and pretend it is the cache. - Copy-pasters. Looong boring logs about nothing (just to fake that author badge) and not a single word about the cache, on a special, unique cache with much work in it. Yes it is legal. Legal to be impolite. I don't mind a TFTC much, but getting piles and piles of these boring copy-paste logs on something I have worked hard on... it makes me considering quitting the hobby. Really. - People who can't communicate. People who misunderstand everything, takes offense when you try to help them, or don't respond. Can be both COs and finders. But now I'd better think about the good cachers. Cachers who have fun and let me know it. Cachers that are careful. Cachers that you can talk to.

I'm a Boy Scout GC Merit Badge Counselor as well. It was alluded to above, but one of the biggest headaches with teaching kids about caching EVEN if they all get it (watch out for the uninterested kid in the back) and buy into all the etiquette, respect for the CO's effort, time and money and the collegiate nature of the hobby (NOT "US (cachers) vs. THEM (hiders)", but rather a collaboration) is that they now know about something REALLY KOOL and they HAVE TO tell everyone about it! So, they talk about it and "C'mon; I'll show you!" And, it's gone; a nifty ammo can left at the mercy of uninterested, uninitiated kids with no perspective on the game. MAYBE, your Scout is left standing there shouting, "Hey, wait! You can't take that with you!" What a spot to put them in. What I've done, especially with younger Scouts is start with and keep pushing the concept that GeoCaching is like a club; a club that's an honor to be a part of, and you're being trusted with secrets that CANNOT be shared. As sacred as the Cub Scout Oath! Would you tell any of your friends where your family keeps the secret Hide-a-Key outside your house? This is the SAME THING! Play it up for all it's worth; you'll be exposing the time, money and effort of a lot of local people to the whims of little kids. ALSO, if you take them hunting, consider reaching out to a few local CO's and asking them if they mind if you take Cub Scouts to their hides. If the local Cub Pack went after mine, I might not be all that enthused.

Really good point. I will make sure to emphasize this when we talk with the scouts.

When I have taught kids that age geocaching, I've spent about half an hour explaining the basics of geocaching to them, with lots of hands on props. For example, I pass around containers of various sizes, I pass around examples of trackables, and I pass around examples of trade items. Then I take them out to practice geocaching. For a one-hour class, I will have set up a couple dozen hides in a small outdoor area near my classroom, and then I have the kids stay behind a line and raise their hands when they've spotted a hidden container. If I have more time for an actual geocaching hike, then I take them to a park or open space some distance away from home so we can find actual caches there. (The half-hour talk can happen at the trailhead right before the hike, or it can happen beforehand with a brief reminder of the rules before the hike.) I specifically DO NOT take them to find urban/suburban caches in the neighborhood. Even if I trust all my kids completely, I don't necessarily trust their friends and classmates who hear about hidden treasure in the neighborhood.

Yes, I used the basic stuff to glue the paper down and do the initial seal over the top, then sealed it with spray-on acrylic outdoor furniture sealer. I think I ended up with two coats of Mod Podge and three coats of sealer. The sealer I used is Dulux Duramax which is supposed to be pretty good for wooden outdoor stuff. Assuming it doesn't get scratched on a sharp edge somewhere, breaking the seal and letting the water in. I've heard people suggesting nail varnish as being relatively robust, or mixing up some epoxy resin / UV resin but I don't have either available.. Totally agree. My preference is to make TB proxies in etched aluminium though my current method isn't working as well as I'd like (correction - the results are pretty good, it's the hours of prep and lead up work that I'm trying to streamline). I also tried simple letter and number steel punch on aluminium which is great for making a quick and easy proxy (about six minutes for this one) but I need to slow down and use some guides or something to help keep the lettering even. I'd also really like to make things by melting and recycling HDPE plastic but that's better for swag than TB's (mass produce the same thing over and over again once the mold is made). Due to my wife having lung issues I'm reluctant to do anything that will generate a lot of chemical fumes. Which also takes resin casting off the table. I'd prefer to, as you suggest, use water resistant / proof labels, but my main consideration is keeping costs down. If I can buy a standard TB for AUD$9 (average price to get one shipped here in northern Australia) and it's going to cost me $10 or more to make the proxy, then I may as well just send out the original TB. I have scrap aluminium and the punch set, so that method is almost free for me. I had some leftover sheet wood, sealer and paint from another project, so I wanted to use those up on something - hence this idea. The most expensive part of these was the mod podge, which I can use on other projects as well. On my math, these cost me just shy of $2 each to produce (plus the cost of the TB's, but I keep those at home and only send proxies out). It would have been less, but I had the first couple of attempts that didn't work out. Unless I factor in my time, then they would be horribly expensive and it would be cheaper to just go to a laser engraving place and get them to make some professional ones with their industrial laser. That would be pretty cool! But with this method, I still have a lot of material left over, so if I wanted to make another dozen it would almost be free (other than time and buying TB codes) and the cost of printing the designs onto paper. Plus I also take pleasure in making things and trying out new methods. Agreed, which is why I started my first post with an apology. It's my old sales training rearing it's ugly head - make the headline attention-grabbing, anger-inducing or have an error and people will talk about it. Very rude of me. Also agreed, but the average life expectancy of a TB around here is 3 - three months or three caches - then they disappear. If these are travelling long enough to start deteriorating from age or the elements then I'll be delightfully surprised. At which point I can either create a new one to re-release or post a replacement out to whoever has the old one. Overall I'm mostly happy with how these turned out and I'll be releasing them soon. I did make a deliberate mistake in that they don't have a hole to add a hitch hiker, because I figured if I left a hole through the wood with a ball chain, it would rub and cut open the seal - leading to water, swelling and destruction. I don't think I'll be making any more in this style anytime soon (maybe next year?) but I am looking for other options on how to make low-cost, durable proxies that can travel around. I got hold of some nice scrap 3mm (1/8in) aluminium which could make some nice GeoCoins, but I don't have the tooling to work with this size material yet.

Nun, bis auf die Möglichkeit, mit dem Händi auch mal OHNE Vorbereitung loszuziehen und ein paar Tradis am Wege abzugreifen - gerne auch mal anlässlich eines Muggelausflugs, wo man sich erst im Auto klar wird, wo es überhaupt hingeht (Elsass, Schwarzwald, Kraichgau, Pfalz...) - mach ich das heute noch so. Auch mit demselben Gerät. Und ehrlich gesagt - ich finde die Behauptung, anders wäre einfacher, Ergebnis einer Art Hirnwäsche. Jede "Abkürzung" oder jedes "bequemer gehen" bedeutet erstmal mehr Aufwand in Form von Equipement, Proggies, Einarbeiten. In zum Teil völlig abstruse Gedankenwelten, die an Umständlichkeit oder der Problematik, dass genau DAS am umständlichsten ist, was am greifbarsten als Grundfunktion benötigt wird, nicht geizen. Dem, dem das quasi körperliche Schmerzen bereitet, der wird das so weit es geht meiden wollen Das alles mag ab "stufe 7" einen Sinn geben - aber die Stufe 7 ist die Ebene, in der man anfängt, alles zu nutzen, was als Ergebnis von ganz viel vorheriger Umständlichkeit erzeugt wurde. Die Ernte eines vorherigen Aufwands. Neolithische Revolution, sozusagen. Dem User, der als Ergebnis auf Stufe 3 stehenbleibt, ist das alles ein grosser, unnötiger Rucksack. Und die Diskussionen um deren Genzen für BMs - ich bin von der GC-Vergrämungstaktik nicht begeistert, aber eine Beschränkung für ne App ist doch keine Beschränkung, solange die andere komfortablere Möglichkeit noch funktioniert. Mittlerweile hat man den Eindruck, es existiert nichts, wo es keine App dafür gibt. Aber selbst die ist auch unterhalb einer gewissen Nutzungshäufigkeit resp. - frequenz - völlig unnötig. Unnötig, aufwendig, umständlich, umweltfeindlich Was ist einfacher, als auf der Karte gucken, was da iiegt, wo man hinwill und dann per "send to GPS" bzw. leider nur noch per "gpx downloaden" die Koords aufs Gerät zu schieben, ne kleine Übersichtskatre auszudrucken, ein paar Hints drauf zu notieren und dann loszuziehen? 1 Cachetag, 6 Stunden unterwegs, Rüstzeit 15 Minuten - und zwar zuhause, aufm grossen Bildschirm, mit Talk Talk im Ohr und nem Glas Primitivo. Geht schlechter. Gruss in den wilden Süden Zappo

Nope, but I know of several geocaching vloggers who are trading swag for money found in caches and donating the money they collect to St. Jude's Children's hospital as part of the Geocache Talk podcast's "Podcast of Hope" (St. Jude's fundraiser) this year. They're calling their effort "Coins for Kids".

Oh, and the lack of pagination is a fairly hilarious UI failure by the way. Talk about Unintended Consequences.

Any news on this matter? Talk to us!

I was trying to use the new search on my phone to look up my recently found caches. I gave it an honest try. I went in to do a couple simple searches. WOW it feels like 3 steps backwards from the old search! First and most importantly: Having only one parameter viewable at a time is extremely inefficient and results in a significant loss in functionality. Let's say I want to find the terrain rating of several caches I found a couple weeks ago. First I click on my link to All Geocache Finds. Now I scroll down (scroll, scroll, scroll) to find the cache from a couple weeks ago. But it's only showing the found date so now I have to click terrain. Click the 3 dots. Click terrain. Now I'm back up at the top again! Scroll, scroll, scroll back down. Finally found it! Now how about the difficulty? Sigh... Click the 3 dots. Click difficulty. Back at the top. Scroll, scroll, scroll. Now when did I find that cache again? Double sigh... A simple task that used to take me seconds now is a huge chore. Here's a sample screenshot that shows JUST terrain on my phone: Also, where's the GC code? How come the GC code is missing on the mobile version, but not on the desktop version? I do, however, like that in the mobile version it does not say "Traditional", "Mystery", etc next to the cache icon. Next, I was surprised that while some caches take up only 2 lines (for both the title and the cache owner), some caches take up a whopping 5 lines! There's also an additional line added to tell me the cache is PREMIUM (6 lines of text are wasted in the screenshot below to tell me the various caches are premium). Talk about inefficient! It doesn't look very good at all, either! On the old search page, the columns were long enough such that the title and cache owner would ALWAYS fit on 2 lines. Next, I think there's a bug: my found date just disappears after some point? And finally, something a little strange, but when I'm at the top of the page, some caches show as 3 lines. But when I scroll down and the title rows freeze to the top, suddenly some of the caches switch to being 4 lines. It almost makes me sad to see how inefficient and buggy this new system is compared to the old search. As a tool with the intended use to be searches of recently found and owned caches, I just don't think the functionality is there.

This is a place where EVERYBODY can talk about the Hoosier state. Feel free to talk about TBs, Geocaches, GeoArts, etc., but keep it within Indiana. Thanks!

Well, first of all, to answer your question, of course you log the find. Why wouldn't you? As to the outraged property owner, what did you do to make him mad and why couldn't you resolve it? Did you talk to him or just ignore him? It seems as if you were in the perfect position to resolve his problem, but that requires you immediately accept his position as valid and apologizing profusely on behalf of the geocaching community and trying to understand his position about where his property was and whether the cache is on it. It could just be on his property, or it could be you accessed it through his property even though there was another way to GZ. For all I know, you tried to do all that, and he was just irrationally belligerent, so I'm not accusing you of doing anything wrong, but I think it's important to recognize that even irrationally belligerent is a valid response if the cache was -- or just you were -- really were on his property. As others have mentioned, naturally you'd post an NA in addition to your find unless you work out with the property owner that there really isn't a problem with the cache itself, and even in that case it sounds like the lease you need to post is an NM explaining what needs to be done so that this person's property rights are violated.

The old search is still there. They just have to change back the links, talk about an easy fix. Of course that would mean admitting they were wrong.

Sent my info to Laval K-9: 2.27.21Name received from Laval K-9: 3.6.21Sent my gift: 3.10.21My gift arrived at destination: 3.15.21I received a gift: 4.19.21 I had the surprise of a mission in my mailbox tonight! Thank you Semmels123! The Triceratops coin is impressive and the light up tag is cool! I totally noticed yours when I was doing the Geocache Talk "live coverage" of the Texas Counties Finishers Event. Thanks for all the Kansas and sweet treats too.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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