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Geocaching: What's Changed?


KatnissRue

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Even while searching out what were coined "Goober Caches" **(a term first floated by Arse and Hemi, to indicate a meaningless cache)** we on the N.W. Calif. coast followed their suggestion that we look around at the surrounding beauty rather than the "Goober Cache"

 

As an HSU grad, I know how easy it is to find many spots of beauty up in redwood country...but what if you are a geocacher in South Central Los Angeles? Fewer spots of beauty, and many are already "occupied" by other caches.

 

I guess, what it boils down to is the very subjective nature of an individual cacher. A cache hidden near a bridge in the middle of downtown LA may have no interest from a cacher used to finds in the redwoods. Wheras, a civil engineer from Germany might be thrilled to see a bridge that was built in the thirties...

 

Indeed, got to say I love the style of the 4th. Street bridge over the L.A. River

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Even as there is no winner, there are very strange lengths people go to for a higher find count.
Yeah, I remember a numbers run team being ripped to shreds in the forums because they wrote a team name on the outside of containers, rather than opening the containers, writing the team name on the log, and replacing the log in the container.

 

Now, fungible caches are placed specifically for numbers runs, and the caches themselves aren't even replaced in their original locations.

 

Ah, good times...good times.

 

5cfd6b84-b7d5-4a80-a710-171428a7f7a3.jpg

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Certainly not true for me in my area except for a few exceptions. Long hiking multi caches get hardly hidden any more.

 

Which is why I said one can CHOOSE...you can choose to only do those caches that are long hikers (even though there are few) or choose not to. :rolleyes:

 

That's of course true and also is the reason why so many of the oldtimers in my area left geocaching at all.

What stays a fact is that one of the greatest changes is that geocaching in my area is not any longer really suitable to select interesting hiking/walking tours (my real interest - I'm not playing a game) and the reason is not that destinations are lacking or that the cache density is too high (that would apply to some urban regions, like the city centry of Vienna), but it's the changed focus of the majority of the cachers around (most of them indeed play a game).

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One of the biggest changed is that caching and cachers have become much more social. Many players made this a solitary game and many wouldn't approach a cache if they saw someone else near GZ.

 

I also remember when there was no 520ft rule, and while most caches would find another park for their cache if there was already a cache there, there were a few cases were caches by the same hider were placed apart. I remember a really fun series of three caches that were all 250-300 ft apart, but to get to each one you either had to make a stream crossing or walk 1/4 to a bridge.

 

I believe Paperless caching changed a the way we play a lot. I used to have a binder of cache print outs in the car and would look up caches when I was in an area. (I felt like a complete techie geek when I downloaded all of those caches to my Palm Pilot)

 

 

As far as the first point regarding not approaching GZ if you saw someone there, that could be because people were less inclined to spoil the hunt for the person they saw? Maybe or maybe not, just throwing it out there.

 

Ah yes, some of the real hardcore techie people went paperless with a Palm OS device!! Except there weren't really techie people, because even then the Palm OS was on the decline, and you could pick up old units on ebay for like $10. :P But yeah, using Cachemate, or another program whose name escapes me, you could go paperless with a Palm device.

 

Now, for at least 2 or 3 years, even the two cheapest current models on the market, the Garmin etrex10, and the Magellan Explorist 110, have full paperless capability. Yes, if you shop around you can find older units new on the shelf that are not paperless (like the Garmin GPS60 series), but any current model is paperless. Not that any new people are using GPS units anymore. :ph34r:

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Several years ago, a friend emailed me about a new cache that was described - in total - as being placed because there were no other containers in the area. It appeared to be a lamp post in a parking lot. My friend commented that the game was changing. He was right.

 

This is the primary thing that's slowly caused me to lose interest in geocaching.

 

I remember when I first started geocaching I'd plan hikes to take in a few caches. Over the course of hiking 8-10 miles I might be able to go past 4 caches, maybe 5 or 6 if they were close together. But each one was placed at a specific point of interest. I remember hunting for one in a patch of woodland for well over an hour before finding it, and had I left without finding it I would have still enjoyed visiting the woodland.

 

Now caches are often placed just because there isn't a cache nearby and for no other reason. A breathtaking vista or unusual area is a reason I might be interested in visiting an area. A random street junction near where your girlfriend once lived isn't, unless there's some other reason I might find it interesting. If a trail leads to a vista then put a cache at the end of it rather than a cache every 528 feet along the entirety of the trail.

 

When I first began, many of us thought about where we would like to take somebody before we placed a cache. Caches brought me to areas I never would have discovered if not for this game. Now I try to find those areas elsewhere, and if there is a cache nearby I might decide to look for it.

 

I think this sums it up really well. Caching took me to all sorts of places I never knew about, some very close to home. Now increasingly they just take me to random posts and signs - there's so much chaff it's almost impossible to filter out the ones I might find interesting.

 

When I first started, virtuals and locationless were an important part of the game. They extended and enriched the game. Locationless are gone and virtuals are now disappearing - although the remaining ones still interest me. Earthcaches keep part of that aspect of the game alive for me.

 

I too found virtuals and locationless interesting. Locationless caches were surprisingly challenging at times, not least because of trying to find an example of the target that hadn't already been logged. I remember being genuinely thrilled to realise that the bridge right outside my office qualified for one of them, and hadn't been logged despite being in one of the busiest cities in the world.

 

Every once in a while, there is something that reminds me of why I began to play, and why I continue. But it's hard to be an ammo-can-in -the woods kind of cacher when the woods are getting filled up with micros or old glue sticks with a paper stuck in them.

 

In some ways, I have changed as much as the game.

 

In some ways I think the issue is the whole "too much of a good thing" situation. I remember being fascinated by the first micro I ever found. It was a film pot, according to the clue it was "attached to something big and red". Being in central London I expected it to be a telephone box but it turned out to be rather bigger - it was attached to Blackfriars Bridge. Finding something so small was intriguing, the way the owner had attached a magnet to it and put a small piece of pencil in it so I could sign the log. Now where I live it's rare to find anything bigger than a film pot and you have to take your own pencil.

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1415449106[/url]' post='5446129']

Now where I live it's rare to find anything bigger than a film pot and you have to take your own pencil.

 

That's something else that's changed. In the first about 5 years of geocaching it was expected that there would be a pencil/pen in the cache even if it were a film canister. Cachers would mention in the online log if the cache needed a new pencil. I still always include a pencil in our cache hides and will leave cut down pencils in small and film canister caches where the CO says "BYOP, the cache is too small for a pencil" to show that the cache isn't too small for a pencil.

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Somebody posted something a year or two ago that I loved--wish I could give proper credit: When geocaching started, caches were few and far between--you had to do some research, you had to seek them out, you had to drive aways to find them. Now the best caches are few and far between--you have to do some research, you have to seek them out, you have to drive aways to find them. Sounds like not much has changed! Micros and power trails and the like are so, so, so easy to just totally ignore. Search by cache size, use favorite points, find a favorite CO--then go find the kind of caches you like, just like in the old days.

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Despite what many will say, I believe cache quality has gotten better over the last few years. There were always rusty cookie tins or Chinese take out containers in the woods, they just didn't last as long as film canisters under lamp post skirts. However, the creative aspect of well designed creative cache containers, field puzzles and "puzzle box" style containers has never been better, then it is now.

 

If you define cache quality in this manner, then I agree (and have written something similar on my first post in this thread). What makes a cache enjoyable for me is however not the involved creativity, container type etc. What counts for me are the locations, the hikes, the nature etc. Involved container constructions typically decrease my personal enjoyment. ...

 

That's a good point cezanne. Back in the days when we had to hike up hill to and from the cache. You were pretty much guaranteed that you can open the container ... unless the cookie tin was rusted shut, or the leaky container was frozen rock solid. :laughing:

 

In state parks with lots of land, multiple cachers would hide caches. The first cache would always be a good distance from the parking. Every new cache would be closer and closer to the parking.

 

I also think people were more likely to hide multi-caches, but that might have been unique to my general caching area.

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One of the biggest changed is that caching and cachers have become much more social. Many players made this a solitary game and many wouldn't approach a cache if they saw someone else near GZ.

That's very true. I can remember going out to find a cache and seeing another person at ground zero. My reaction was to put my GPSr in my pocket, walk on by and come back later when the area was free. Cachers did seem to like it solo. Events are certainly more well attended now. While some of that can be attributed to the overall growth, it does seem like more people cache together in groups now.

 

I'm not sure what the correlation is, but it also seems that the "careers" of cachers lasted longer too. Prior to 2007/2008, Many cachers were active a couple of years, or until they hit 1000 finds. Ai (After iPhone), cachers seemed to hang around longer. Even today, most cachers that are active have been going for 4 - 5 -6 years.

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Even as there is no winner, there are very strange lengths people go to for a higher find count.
Yeah, I remember a numbers run team being ripped to shreds in the forums because they wrote a team name on the outside of containers, rather than opening the containers, writing the team name on the log, and replacing the log in the container.

 

Now, fungible caches are placed specifically for numbers runs, and the caches themselves aren't even replaced in their original locations.

 

Ah, good times...good times.

 

5cfd6b84-b7d5-4a80-a710-171428a7f7a3.jpg

 

Yes, finding 312 caches in 24 hours with a sharpie was the newest world record in 2006.

 

The thread starts out enthusiastic enough and then goes downhill from there.

 

http://forums.Groundspeak.com/GC/index.php?showtopic=133233

 

Congratulations.

 

I'm puzzled. Why are we congratulating people on behavior that continues to encourage the explosion of lame urban caches?

 

I'm just puzzled. That's all.

 

I see the group who set the record as exploiting an existing situation, not encouraging it. I really don't think people are going to see this and start setting out hundreds of lame micros in hopes someone will come over from Germany to set the new record in their town.

 

:rolleyes:

Edited by 4wheelin_fool
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I have benefited from the labors of those who line trails with caches "just because there is an opening" ...

 

Such caches have served to keep me on the correct track when headed to a specific target when I am caching in unfamiliar locales.

 

The plight of we transient cachers transitioning through strange areas is that we do not know where access points and trailheads are ... very beneficial to have a breadcrumb trail.

 

Very much aided in a hike for an oldie in the hills off Skyline Blvd. on the San Francisco Peninsula this past May. >> urban growth since the 2001 placement had closed former access points so having a goober or two to lead the way was good. *******(score one for the goober caches)******

Edited by humboldt flier
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I had hoped we could have a positive, nostalgic thread to help the OP, who seems like a very nice newer geocacher.

 

Armchair logging has been around since the early days. It was one of many reasons why new virtual caches were discontinued in 2005.

 

And armchairing on locationless caches -- who else remembers "the hand?" There was a geocacher in Canada who photoshopped a picture of his hand holding an eTrex into a picture that fit a locationless cache category. Then a geocacher in Indiana created a "locationless cache generator" that allowed anyone to superimpose "the hand" onto any image. It was super funny. That was in 2002 or 2003.

 

At the time, pretty much the whole geocaching world knew about this, either by following these forums or by word of mouth from those who did. In the days before Facebook, the Groundspeak Forums was THE place to be to learn geo-news.

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I'm afraid I don't remember "the hand". :laughing: But despite my join date, I didn't really look at these forums for almost 2 years. I might have browsed them, but I'm pretty sure my first post was 2005. And I think I got in a fight with sbell111 by like my 3rd post. :ph34r: There was indeed cheating for numbers even in the early days.

 

On topic, how's this? Anyone remember when it was cool to use WheresGeorge dollars as trade items in caches? That was once very popular. A pretty much dead practice now.

Edited by Mr.Yuck
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I had hoped we could have a positive, nostalgic thread to help the OP, who seems like a very nice newer geocacher.

 

I hope that we alltogether came up with a significant number of those nostalgic aspects, too. I also made quite an effort to mention in my first post in the thread some things which have improved and not only things that got worse.

 

At the time, pretty much the whole geocaching world knew about this, either by following these forums or by word of mouth from those who did.

 

Actually, I did not (I learnt about the hand today from your post). I came to the English part of the forum once in a while early onwards, but I never really cared about locationless and virtuals far from my area.

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I've noticed that you can almost split up the responses by join date of the responder. Those who started in 2000-2002 remember a time when there were few caches and few rules. From 2003-2005, people discovered a game that was becoming established with more guidelines for placement of caches and many area saw a rapid growth in the number of caches. But there was a spirit of adventure at being part of something that was still new and still discovering the direction it was taking. From 2005-2008, people began to notice more and more 'numbers' caching. Some old timers liked that you didn't have to go as far to find caches, but others saw the new caches as inferior to the more adventuresome hides that had 'survived' from earlier times. The guidelines were more established and any little change (powertrails, ALRs, challenge caches, etc.) was bound to cause controversy. In 2009 the iPhone came along, over the next few years the game changed to a smartphone based game instead of one that required investment in a special standalone GPS. Some saw that as democratizing the sport (as well as making it easier to find caches when you were away from home), while others wanted to blame intro app users for destroying every thing they liked about caching.

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My goal is to take this information and make a cache that is as good as how things used to be.

While it certainly sounds like a fun idea to hide a cache that celebrates the good old days, personally I think modern geocaching is much better. Geocaching started as a novelty that a handful of people at the intersection of outdoorsy and nerdy used to play mainly by themselves on weekends. Today, it's a game anyone can enjoy anytime. When I hear people being nostalgic about a time when there were two orders of magnitude fewer caches and cachers, I'm not very impressed with what they say was great about it.

 

But if you want your cache to reflect that experience, find a place where there are very few caches. Better if it's a place where there are none. This will probably take you a few miles away from any road, which is completely appropriate. And hide an ammo can full of interesting trade items. I think many people would enjoy such a cache, even newbies like me that have only been caching a few years.

 

(Personally, I recommend you modernize the trade items and package them in a way that they don't end up being rusty junk within a couple years, although this would be contrary to what happened in those early caches. If you want truly authentic swag reminiscent of those early days, be sure to put a couple batteries in the cache so they can corrode and ruin everything else in the box.)

 

Oh, by the way, a lone cache way back in the woods will result in a cache that also has another characteristics that the old caches had: it will be visited very infrequently. If you put it far enough back there, you might even get the 2 or 3 times a year visit rates that all caches had back in the day.

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I've noticed that you can almost split up the responses by join date of the responder. Those who started in 2000-2002 remember a time when there were few caches and few rules. From 2003-2005, people discovered a game that was becoming established with more guidelines for placement of caches and many area saw a rapid growth in the number of caches.

 

Depending on the area someone comes from you would need to adapt that a bit, but apart from I agree with you.

I remember that I hid a cache together with a friend from Germany in April 2003 which was Austria's first night cache and happened by chance to be cache number 100 among the caches active at that time (a few had been archived) in all over Austria. The first ever cache in my province (Styria) has been hidden in July 2002. Its hider (Gert) continued to write an e-mail to every finder of his caches during the first year and listed all the finders in his profile. The number of cachers has been really small, and started to grow more rapidly in late 2003 and early 2004.

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Geocaching started as a novelty that a handful of people at the intersection of outdoorsy and nerdy used to play mainly by themselves on weekends. Today, it's a game anyone can enjoy anytime. When I hear people being nostalgic about a time when there were two orders of magnitude fewer caches and cachers, I'm not very impressed with what they say was great about it.

 

I can well believe that for you the modern geocaching world provides a better setting than the situation ten years ago would have provided you with, but that's due to your personal preferences and what is important for you.

 

The question was has changed comprises so much more than the number of available caches and their quality.

 

Even though my caches get still logs of above average length (because they are targeted to a special audience and since many cachers I know how much I value logs), there is no chance not to get nostalgic when I look at logs like

the one the first finder wrote for this cache of mine

http://www.geocaching.com/seek/log.aspx?LUID=b281f7a7-a87d-403e-a378-d0ce5cd5fb11

(you all can read it as back then almost everyone logged in English, a habit I still kept).

 

You seem to focus mainly on the finding aspect. Some of the really dramatic changes however concern cache owners.

 

Even though for me personally the online logs always have been much more important than the logs in the log books, I can fully understand the pain people like Lone.R feel about how the logging practice changed. Can you imagine that some cache owners took real pride in the log books of their caches (at least as much as many letterboxers).

 

As someone who would not object against being counted as outdorsy and nerdy (to use your terms) I wonder why you think that for someone like me the modern geocaching world should have more to offer. Superb cache constructions that take me 30 minutes to open are certainly nice to have for those who enjoy such containers, but believe me that I often miss the times when once at the cache the rest was trivial and I did not need to worry to ruin a construction due to clumsyness.

Edited by cezanne
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I started 1/1/2010 and I have seen a shift during that time towards numbers and a decline in the idea of "get out in the woods".

 

The attrition rate on ammo cans due to loss and difficultly in finding new ones is a real shame too (in about 5 years their price seems to have gone from $5-10 to $15-20).

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I started 1/1/2010 and I have seen a shift during that time towards numbers and a decline in the idea of "get out in the woods".

 

The attrition rate on ammo cans due to loss and difficultly in finding new ones is a real shame too (in about 5 years their price seems to have gone from $5-10 to $15-20).

 

That could indeed be a factor. Back when I started, you could get 5 .30 cal's from Cheaperthandirt.com, or Cabellas.com for $20. And I believe 4 .50 cal's for the same price. These days I'm seeing a few plastic ammo cans from Harbor Freight Tools (I assume they're everywhere in the U.S.). I bought one for a door prize for an event, and I believe they are $8 or $9. Almost exactly the size of a .30 cal. But kinda cheaply made.

 

EDIT: Now a SINGLE .30 cal ammo can is $17.72 at Cheaperthandirt.com. Rat bastages. :lol:

Edited by Mr.Yuck
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I started 1/1/2010 and I have seen a shift during that time towards numbers and a decline in the idea of "get out in the woods".
On the flip side, I know people who used to be geocachers that would go on hikes to find caches, and who are now hikers that occasionally find a geocache while on a hike. Edited by niraD
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I started 1/1/2010 and I have seen a shift during that time towards numbers and a decline in the idea of "get out in the woods".

 

The attrition rate on ammo cans due to loss and difficultly in finding new ones is a real shame too (in about 5 years their price seems to have gone from $5-10 to $15-20).

 

That could indeed be a factor. Back when I started, you could get 5 .30 cal's from Cheaperthandirt.com, or Cabellas.com for $20. And I believe 4 .50 cal's for the same price. These days I'm seeing a few plastic ammo cans from Harbor Freight Tools (I assume they're everywhere in the U.S.). I bought one for a door prize for an event, and I believe they are $8 or $9. Almost exactly the size of a .30 cal. But kinda cheaply made.

 

EDIT: Now a SINGLE .30 cal ammo can is $17.72 at Cheaperthandirt.com. Rat bastages. :lol:

 

Ten bucks here.

http://www.armysurplusworld.com/display.asp?subDepartmentID=118

 

They are great for storing leftovers.

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I started 1/1/2010 and I have seen a shift during that time towards numbers and a decline in the idea of "get out in the woods".
On the flip side, I know people who used to be geocachers that would go on hikes to find caches, and who are now hikers that occasionally find a geocache while on a hike.

That made me think of cezanne's complaint that there are no long hiking cache getting placed in Austria. So I did a little research and found that hiking in Bavaria or Austria has definitely changed.

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My goal is to take this information and make a cache that is as good as how things used to be.

While it certainly sounds like a fun idea to hide a cache that celebrates the good old days, personally I think modern geocaching is much better. Geocaching started as a novelty that a handful of people at the intersection of outdoorsy and nerdy used to play mainly by themselves on weekends. Today, it's a game anyone can enjoy anytime. When I hear people being nostalgic about a time when there were two orders of magnitude fewer caches and cachers, I'm not very impressed with what they say was great about it.

 

But if you want your cache to reflect that experience, find a place where there are very few caches. Better if it's a place where there are none. This will probably take you a few miles away from any road, which is completely appropriate. And hide an ammo can full of interesting trade items. I think many people would enjoy such a cache, even newbies like me that have only been caching a few years.

 

(Personally, I recommend you modernize the trade items and package them in a way that they don't end up being rusty junk within a couple years, although this would be contrary to what happened in those early caches. If you want truly authentic swag reminiscent of those early days, be sure to put a couple batteries in the cache so they can corrode and ruin everything else in the box.)

 

Oh, by the way, a lone cache way back in the woods will result in a cache that also has another characteristics that the old caches had: it will be visited very infrequently. If you put it far enough back there, you might even get the 2 or 3 times a year visit rates that all caches had back in the day.

I was thinking of using a large redwood box that has a shelf and drawers inside to be the main Geocache. I was going to hide it in a library of a town near here that has only two Geocaches (It's actually pretty big for a town around her, 3000 people). The library has a really cool history and is one of the nicest I've ever been to. It was designed to reminisce a castle in some regards and the staff have been introduced to Geocaching via a woman who works there as she's the daughter of one of my friends.

 

The logbook is going to be a large composition notebook where notes on experiences and what was liked about the cache are encouraged.

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I started 1/1/2010 and I have seen a shift during that time towards numbers and a decline in the idea of "get out in the woods".
On the flip side, I know people who used to be geocachers that would go on hikes to find caches, and who are now hikers that occasionally find a geocache while on a hike.

That made me think of cezanne's complaint that there are no long hiking cache getting placed in Austria. So I did a little research and found that hiking in Bavaria or Austria has definitely changed.

 

HEYYYYYYYYYYYYYYY,

 

Reminded me of a time backpacking near Cathedral Peaks in Yosemite when I broke out in that song ... my crew threatened to disown me.

 

Ahhhhhhhhhhhh, the energy of youth.

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As for everyone else, I'd love to reply to each and every one of you, but multi quoting has never worked for me. I've loved reading your responses and have learned a lot. Thanks so much :)

 

Thank you, KarRue. I enjoy sharing my experiences about the old days, without being labeled as an elitist. Anyone who would argue that Geocaching hasn't changed should like be tied up in a straightjacket or something. :P

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I was thinking of using a large redwood box that has a shelf and drawers inside to be the main Geocache. I was going to hide it in a library of a town near here that has only two Geocaches (It's actually pretty big for a town around her, 3000 people). The library has a really cool history and is one of the nicest I've ever been to. It was designed to reminisce a castle in some regards and the staff have been introduced to Geocaching via a woman who works there as she's the daughter of one of my friends.

 

The logbook is going to be a large composition notebook where notes on experiences and what was liked about the cache are encouraged.

That all sounds wonderful.

 

Allow me to help you, though, by discussing some specifics of your cache design relative to how such a cache might have been set up ten or twelve years ago.

 

Back then, you could require finders to write their logs in a certain way. But today, that would not be allowed - it's an "Additional Logging Requirement" or ALR. Those were prohibited a few years back. So, be sure to use words in your cache description like "encouraged" (as you posted above) and "optional."

 

Back then, you could hide a creative cache inside a library, museum, etc., and call it a "Traditional." Today, you'd need to list your cache as a multicache or mystery cache. You will need an outdoors stage that can be found using GPS coordinates. In the outdoors stage would be a clue telling the geocacher how to find the cache inside the library. That could be as simple as the name of the library and a Dewey Decimal Reference Number, or letterboxing-style clues leading the finder right to the cache location.

 

The reason why this can't be a traditional cache is the "GPS usage" requirement. Absent a skylight or courtyard, using a GPS inside a building won't be precise enough to locate a geocache, and providing coordinates for the front door isn't sufficient. But in 2002, Groundspeak and the community weren't focused on such details because there were far fewer caches, and creativity was king.

 

In any event, making your cache a multicache would be very old school. The downside is, fewer people will hunt for it because it takes more time than a "quick park and grab" traditional cache.

Edited by The Leprechauns
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And yet the numbers are the same in many ways! There are some damned creative and wonderful hides out there! They might be few and far between but they are there--just like in the old days when there were hardly any caches at all. And with so few caches and so few cachers--the hides weren't found often, just like a special one might not get found much today. The numbers cachers haven't really ruined anything--they take up the readily accessible places where the old-timers might not even want to put a cache leaving the 10-mile hikes as open as they ever were. Modern caching is great--there's creative stuff, and there are LPCs for when I need a quick break on a long trip, or when I want to cache at 6 am when I'm in a strange city and nothing is open yet. We have so much more variety now, that seems like a good thing. Plenty of changes are for the better--more people can play however they want, and those of us who like different kinds of caches at different times can always find what we want.

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And yet the numbers are the same in many ways! There are some damned creative and wonderful hides out there! They might be few and far between but they are there--just like in the old days when there were hardly any caches at all. And with so few caches and so few cachers--the hides weren't found often, just like a special one might not get found much today. The numbers cachers haven't really ruined anything--they take up the readily accessible places where the old-timers might not even want to put a cache leaving the 10-mile hikes as open as they ever were. Modern caching is great--there's creative stuff, and there are LPCs for when I need a quick break on a long trip, or when I want to cache at 6 am when I'm in a strange city and nothing is open yet. We have so much more variety now, that seems like a good thing. Plenty of changes are for the better--more people can play however they want, and those of us who like different kinds of caches at different times can always find what we want.

 

This post is a breath of fresh air. I'm tired of negativity about the state of caching today. There are more options than ever for a person to cache in whatever style and with whatever goals you wish. Long live geocaching!

B)

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I see more and more people with smartphone apps than actual GPS's. Even if they are accurate I'd like to see these flimsy phones get soaked and dropped and still work properly.

 

I probably sound like an old man. :anibad:

No, you don't sound old at all. But you do sound like you haven't seen the combo of a Samsung S5 combined with a Lifeproof brand case (you use the phone while in the case).

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I can well believe that for you the modern geocaching world provides a better setting than the situation ten years ago would have provided you with, but that's due to your personal preferences and what is important for you.

Certainly I admit to having an opinion and personal preferences, but my broader claim is, in fact, that the vast majority of people caching today consider it better.

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I can well believe that for you the modern geocaching world provides a better setting than the situation ten years ago would have provided you with, but that's due to your personal preferences and what is important for you.

Certainly I admit to having an opinion and personal preferences, but my broader claim is, in fact, that the vast majority of people caching today consider it better.

 

I'd say that the majority of those who cache for many years and are still there (many of the them left) would argue that some things are better and some are worse. The things that are often considered to be changes to the worse are painful for many of those who have experienced the time before the change. Those who never encountered real log books/longer online logs and for whom this never has been a value and an important part of geocaching, will certainly not really miss what they never learnt to know.

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There are some damned creative and wonderful hides out there!

 

If you had read what I wrote above you would realized that I stated that in my area the number of creative hides has definitely increased since the early days. My back luck is just that this is not the sort of caches I'm attracted to.

 

there's creative stuff, and there are LPCs for when I need a quick break on a long trip, or when I want to cache at 6 am when I'm in a strange city and nothing is open yet. We have so much more variety now, that seems like a good thing. Plenty of changes are for the better--more people can play however they want, and those of us who like different kinds of caches at different times can always find what we want.

 

I agree also with the above. Still for myself it has become much more difficult and sometimes impossible to select caches that are well suitable for me and not ending up with visiting almost no caches at all. While there is certainly much more variety in my area now than has been ten years ago, the number of hiking multi caches and also of traditionals that involve a decent hike and where the focus is on the hike and not on specially constructed containers where more effort goes into opening them than into the hike has gone down considerably.

 

What is a change to the better for some (many), is a better change to the worse for others. That's not an issue of some people being more positive than others. It's matter of personal preferences and of the reason why someone is into geocaching. Someone who prefers the same type of caches all the time will not assign an equally high value on a large variety than someone like you will do. Those who can always find what they want, will end up much happier than those who rarely succeed to find what they want.

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And yet the numbers are the same in many ways! There are some damned creative and wonderful hides out there! They might be few and far between but they are there--just like in the old days when there were hardly any caches at all. And with so few caches and so few cachers--the hides weren't found often, just like a special one might not get found much today. The numbers cachers haven't really ruined anything--they take up the readily accessible places where the old-timers might not even want to put a cache leaving the 10-mile hikes as open as they ever were. Modern caching is great--there's creative stuff, and there are LPCs for when I need a quick break on a long trip, or when I want to cache at 6 am when I'm in a strange city and nothing is open yet. We have so much more variety now, that seems like a good thing. Plenty of changes are for the better--more people can play however they want, and those of us who like different kinds of caches at different times can always find what we want.

 

This post is a breath of fresh air. I'm tired of negativity about the state of caching today. There are more options than ever for a person to cache in whatever style and with whatever goals you wish. Long live geocaching!

B)

 

Here here!! :D

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I see more and more people with smartphone apps than actual GPS's. Even if they are accurate I'd like to see these flimsy phones get soaked and dropped and still work properly.

 

I probably sound like an old man. :anibad:

No, you don't sound old at all. But you do sound like you haven't seen the combo of a Samsung S5 combined with a Lifeproof brand case (you use the phone while in the case).

The only smartphone I ever handled was my friend's droid. I could not press the tiny buttons and I was like uhh you may have it back. Haha its probably for the best, if I had a smartphone I would be playing on the internet constantly. So I suppose its mostly by choice I don't have one.

 

I'm not anti-smartphone, I just prefer other devices.

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There is another type of change which has not yet been mentioned and which is implied by the fact that most cachers do not use more modern equipment than back then and by the fact that Groundspeak's site has changed.

 

For example, when I started no additional waypoints and no attributes were available. When parking coordinates, trail heads etc were given at all, one needed to type them into one's GPS-r. Nowadays cachers expect that all waypoints are available for download and complain if this is not the case. They have never experienced the times when waypoints were not available at all. For most newer caches the availability of waypoints, attributes etc is far more important than a log book the size of which deserves that name while this is the other way round for several of those old timers who still cache in the same way as they did many years ago.

 

When I started most cachers were decrypting the hints manually at the cache location and only very few had access to the cache description on site. So hints like "see spoiler picture" hardly existed back then while they are now very popular as the majority of cachers is either equipped with the spoiler photos or can get access to them by mobile internet.

 

I realized that those who adapted their style of caching and their equipment, are on average less unhappy about some of the changes as they are not really affected by them. Those who try to still cache in the same way than many years ago, have it way more difficult.

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And yet the numbers are the same in many ways! There are some damned creative and wonderful hides out there! They might be few and far between but they are there--just like in the old days when there were hardly any caches at all. And with so few caches and so few cachers--the hides weren't found often, just like a special one might not get found much today. The numbers cachers haven't really ruined anything--they take up the readily accessible places where the old-timers might not even want to put a cache leaving the 10-mile hikes as open as they ever were. Modern caching is great--there's creative stuff, and there are LPCs for when I need a quick break on a long trip, or when I want to cache at 6 am when I'm in a strange city and nothing is open yet. We have so much more variety now, that seems like a good thing. Plenty of changes are for the better--more people can play however they want, and those of us who like different kinds of caches at different times can always find what we want.

 

This post is a breath of fresh air. I'm tired of negativity about the state of caching today. There are more options than ever for a person to cache in whatever style and with whatever goals you wish. Long live geocaching!

B)

 

No it's not. :lol: This thread is supposed to about old timers telling a new person, who asked, I might add, what caching used to be like. I'm not saying Dame Deco, and her apparent fanboy can't post in it or anything though. :) The "everyone plays how they want" post was long overdue though.

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And with so few caches and so few cachers--the hides weren't found often, just like a special one might not get found much today. The numbers cachers haven't really ruined anything--they take up the readily accessible places where the old-timers might not even want to put a cache leaving the 10-mile hikes as open as they ever were

 

Allow me to disagree.

I'm the owner of caches that used to get found and now don't.

The vast increase in cache numbers overwhelms the increase in cache seekers. And now, as not before, there's an expectation, a sort of calculus of find count per unit of effort/time/gas ...

I own caches that used to be found a couple of times a year that now haven't been found in 4 years. Many hides going on 2 and 3. This never used to happen.

 

I know that I can places caches that will be found once, and not again. One and done. It was NEVER like this before.

 

The numbers cachers block many useful cache sites. I'll mention that I see this in my reviewer role, where #89 guardrail hide blocks the novice cache in the park down the block. this happens over and over and over....

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I'm the owner of caches that used to get found and now don't.

The vast increase in cache numbers overwhelms the increase in cache seekers. And now, as not before, there's an expectation, a sort of calculus of find count per unit of effort/time/gas ...

I own caches that used to be found a couple of times a year that now haven't been found in 4 years. Many hides going on 2 and 3. This never used to happen.

 

I have made similar observations in my area. The number of visits to longer multi caches

such as this one

http://www.geocaching.com/geocache/GC2673K_180-ofen?guid=390769a2-8acb-4831-acea-a211393a7c54

(and many others)

went down while with the huge increase of the overall number of caches it rather should increase.

If along the same route 30 caches were hidden, 100 cachers would have come in the last 2 years and not 3 (!).

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This thread is supposed to about old timers telling a new person, who asked, I might add, what caching used to be like. I'm not saying Dame Deco, and her apparent fanboy can't post in it or anything though. :) The "everyone plays how they want" post was long overdue though.

 

You are absolutely right, of course! Leaving you to your fun! :laughing:

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This thread is supposed to about old timers telling a new person, who asked, I might add, what caching used to be like. I'm not saying Dame Deco, and her apparent fanboy can't post in it or anything though. :) The "everyone plays how they want" post was long overdue though.

 

You are absolutely right, of course! Leaving you to your fun! :laughing:

 

I hope you didn't think that was rude. I did have a couple smileys in it. :blink: Seriously, I was grinning while typing it.

 

HOWEVER, still not being rude, you could let "us" have our own thread. :)

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If a guardrail cache blocks a cache in a park, that's a darn small park...

 

I have seen where the first cache ever placed in a park was a keyholder on the trailhead sign of it's nature trail (long since archived), blocking someone from placing a cache in the woods. True, this nature trail, which makes a loop, probably couldn't support more than 2 caches. It currently has only one ammo box a few hundred feet in.

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If a guardrail cache blocks a cache in a park, that's a darn small park...

 

I have seen where the first cache ever placed in a park was a keyholder on the trailhead sign of it's nature trail (long since archived), blocking someone from placing a cache in the woods. True, this nature trail, which makes a loop, probably couldn't support more than 2 caches. It currently has only one ammo box a few hundred feet in.

We see that in small Township fitness trails in this area.

Often the cache is at parking, when one on the far end of the "fitness" trail may have fit better into it's reason for being there. :)

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