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Duh.. Here it is


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I am wondering what the geocaching community thinks about a 2 or 3 stage cache which would be something like this:

 

"Go to the coordinates and look for an orange blaze (or some object). There you will find stage 2 which will give you instructions to find the cache. The cache is not near the coordinates".

 

My reasoning for this is that it eliminates the use of Google Earth or GeocacheNavigator to see an arial view of the exact cache location, which seems to me about as much fun as having the cache owner take me there and point to it. Goolge Earth can be very detailed and can sometimes show the precise clump of bushes or pile of rocks where a cache is hidden (if the owners coordinates are accurate). Not much different than having the person placing the cache post a picture of the location on the cache page. We all know this is a great money maker for the wireless networks, software publishers and others who are agressivley promoting it, but isn't it eliminating the elements of challenge and skill in the sport...

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... eliminates the use of Google Earth or GeocacheNavigator to see an arial view of the exact cache location, which seems to me about as much fun as having the cache owner take me there and point to it. ...

 

I live in an area with a lot of canals and waterways. Last Saturday I stood 100 feet from a cache location on the other side of a too deep to wade lake. A mile of shore line later I reached the cache. Aerial views in Geocache Navigator are very helpful for choosing a path when "as the crow flies" won't get you there. I don't consider that cheating, or any less fun.

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My reasoning for this is that it eliminates the use of Google Earth or GeocacheNavigator to see an arial view of the exact cache location, which seems to me about as much fun as having the cache owner take me there and point to it. Goolge Earth can be very detailed and can sometimes show the precise clump of bushes or pile of rocks where a cache is hidden

My suggestion to you would be to come up with better camouflage or be less obvious in where you hide your cache, then. If Google Earth is too detailed, then actually being there in person is really going to be a "Duh... there it is" moment.

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Even if Google Earth was that precise (which it isn't) and could zoom in that much in my area (which it can't) I don't see why these makes a difference. If it's in the woods (my favorite type) tree cover prevents giving anything away. Even if it's in a parking lot, once you pull up you usually know that it's in that set of bushes. Knowing where a cache is or should be is a lot different than finding them.

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Even if Google Earth was that precise (which it isn't) and could zoom in that much in my area (which it can't) I don't see why these makes a difference. If it's in the woods (my favorite type) tree cover prevents giving anything away. Even if it's in a parking lot, once you pull up you usually know that it's in that set of bushes. Knowing where a cache is or should be is a lot different than finding them.

 

As I wrote in another thread, there are many areas for which the satellite view in google earth is very low resolution. Once you start looking outside that U.S. and Europe you'll find a patchwork of images at varying resolutions. In many cases, you couldn't even identify a building let alone a group of bushes, a single tree, or a lightpole. There is a also a very large area in the north part of Costa Rica (and I assume many other parts of the world where much of the terrain is obscured by clouds. Even with a clear view and very high resolution there are certainly lots of ways of hiding a cache where satellite photos are of no use whatsover....for example, the nano in a pile of rocks and heavy brush that I looked for this afternoon.

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I am wondering what the geocaching community thinks about a 2 or 3 stage cache which would be something like this:

 

"Go to the coordinates and look for an orange blaze (or some object). There you will find stage 2 which will give you instructions to find the cache. The cache is not near the coordinates".

 

My reasoning for this is that it eliminates the use of Google Earth or GeocacheNavigator to see an arial view of the exact cache location, which seems to me about as much fun as having the cache owner take me there and point to it. Goolge Earth can be very detailed and can sometimes show the precise clump of bushes or pile of rocks where a cache is hidden (if the owners coordinates are accurate). Not much different than having the person placing the cache post a picture of the location on the cache page. We all know this is a great money maker for the wireless networks, software publishers and others who are agressivley promoting it, but isn't it eliminating the elements of challenge and skill in the sport...

 

An aerial view can be highly misleading. Here's a virtual cache I did today: Cable Able

 

So, it's a virtual cache smack in midtown Omaha. You'd think it would be easy. However, it's bound by the highway to the north, a stream that most wouldn't think of crossing to the west, train tracks, another stream, and a large fenced in business to the south, and a loooong walk to the east. Aerial view shows what seems to be paths, but if those paths were there at one time, they're not there anymore. I tried approaching from the north a few days ago, but the brush became waist high. Today, I approached from the south, crawled across a 5 foot wide pipe to cross the first stream, made my way around the fenced in area, and trailblazed the last 300 meters. At no time did I feel the aerial view was handholding, especially since, if I had blindly followed the satellite photos, I wouldn't have realized that those train tracks were actually a bridge that you could go under.

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Our large natuaral city park (nose hill) has tons of game trails (now most of the 'game' is dogs being walked by owners). When night caching, you can litteraly use google maps mobile and follow the trails without a flashlight. The maps are that good. But without it, you would be bushwalking all over the place, reking the natuaral vegitation.

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