Report: An interesting day of caching

[+Dread_Pirate_Bruce]

My wife and I spent a long weekend in Palm Springs, California. I wanted to do some caching and my map showed a series of caches along one particular road. I gave those a go. It deserves a report.

 

From the map, I thought the series might be a power trail. It wasn't. A few caches were quick grabs, but most required some walking and some hunting. In the available time, I found 25 caches

 

The interesting thing is that very few of the hides were particularly inspired. Some were in bushes. Others in piles of rocks. However, the cache containers were novel and made the hunt a lot of fun. There was one that was a plastic cat in a bush. Once was a large concrete turtle among the rocks. One was a toy mailbox in a tree. One was a concrete rabbit with a bison tube hanging around its neck.

 

It was a lot more fun than just pill bottles in piles of rock and surely took more thought and effort.

[+CanadianRockies]

From the map, I thought the series might be a power trail. It wasn't. A few caches were quick grabs, but most required some walking and some hunting. In the available time, I found 25 caches

How much this resembles a power trail depends on your "available time." Did you find those 25 caches in one hour? In 5 hours?

[+L0ne.R]

My wife and I spent a long weekend in Palm Springs, California. I wanted to do some caching and my map showed a series of caches along one particular road. I gave those a go. It deserves a report.

 

From the map, I thought the series might be a power trail. It wasn't. A few caches were quick grabs, but most required some walking and some hunting. In the available time, I found 25 caches

 

The interesting thing is that very few of the hides were particularly inspired. Some were in bushes. Others in piles of rocks. However, the cache containers were novel and made the hunt a lot of fun. There was one that was a plastic cat in a bush. Once was a large concrete turtle among the rocks. One was a toy mailbox in a tree. One was a concrete rabbit with a bison tube hanging around its neck.

 

It was a lot more fun than just pill bottles in piles of rock and surely took more thought and effort.

 

That's a decent series. I don't mind saturated trails where the caches are different and creative. A variety of owners is also a nice touch, so that more people can enjoy cache ownership. It impresses me when cache owners invest time and money to surprise and put a smile on the face of cachers (not just a smiley on their find count). Thanks for some good examples.

[+narcissa]

My wife and I spent a long weekend in Palm Springs, California. I wanted to do some caching and my map showed a series of caches along one particular road. I gave those a go. It deserves a report.

 

From the map, I thought the series might be a power trail. It wasn't. A few caches were quick grabs, but most required some walking and some hunting. In the available time, I found 25 caches

 

The interesting thing is that very few of the hides were particularly inspired. Some were in bushes. Others in piles of rocks. However, the cache containers were novel and made the hunt a lot of fun. There was one that was a plastic cat in a bush. Once was a large concrete turtle among the rocks. One was a toy mailbox in a tree. One was a concrete rabbit with a bison tube hanging around its neck.

 

It was a lot more fun than just pill bottles in piles of rock and surely took more thought and effort.

 

That's a decent series. I don't mind saturated trails where the caches are different and creative. A variety of owners is also a nice touch, so that more people can enjoy cache ownership. It impresses me when cache owners invest time and money to surprise and put a smile on the face of cachers (not just a smiley on their find count). Thanks for some good examples.

 

One thing I miss, now that power trails are so widespread, is that it's harder to find nice trails or roads where a variety caches have popped up over time. These days, as soon as there's a new trail in the area, someone has to put a "series" on it and take up the whole thing all at once.

[+L0ne.R]

My wife and I spent a long weekend in Palm Springs, California. I wanted to do some caching and my map showed a series of caches along one particular road. I gave those a go. It deserves a report.

 

From the map, I thought the series might be a power trail. It wasn't. A few caches were quick grabs, but most required some walking and some hunting. In the available time, I found 25 caches

 

The interesting thing is that very few of the hides were particularly inspired. Some were in bushes. Others in piles of rocks. However, the cache containers were novel and made the hunt a lot of fun. There was one that was a plastic cat in a bush. Once was a large concrete turtle among the rocks. One was a toy mailbox in a tree. One was a concrete rabbit with a bison tube hanging around its neck.

 

It was a lot more fun than just pill bottles in piles of rock and surely took more thought and effort.

 

That's a decent series. I don't mind saturated trails where the caches are different and creative. A variety of owners is also a nice touch, so that more people can enjoy cache ownership. It impresses me when cache owners invest time and money to surprise and put a smile on the face of cachers (not just a smiley on their find count). Thanks for some good examples.

 

One thing I miss, now that power trails are so widespread, is that it's harder to find nice trails or roads where a variety caches have popped up over time. These days, as soon as there's a new trail in the area, someone has to put a "series" on it and take up the whole thing all at once.

 

Yes, I soooo agree. I really prefer full trails that have grown organically but that just can't happen anymore. Trails get snapped up by power cachers right away.

 

I did manage to mess up the possibility of a PT going in to a new forest trail by placing one about 100m from the trailhead (an authentic Lock & Lock hanging in a tree) and another one about 350m from it (something creative and fun). If you take up the first part of a new trail it's rare that someone plants a PT. Almost didn't get the spots because someone had already reserved the new trail, but they weren't ready to hide caches so I got it.

[+dprovan]

One thing I miss, now that power trails are so widespread, is that it's harder to find nice trails or roads where a variety caches have popped up over time. These days, as soon as there's a new trail in the area, someone has to put a "series" on it and take up the whole thing all at once.

I agree that organically grown caching trails are much more interesting, but I don't think that change has anything to do with power trails. It's just that caching is much more popular, and people are much more interested in hiding caches, so when an area opens up, someone with a pent up desire for caches pounces on it. And even when it isn't one person planting a series, it's typical for a new trail to get fairly well covered pretty quick by caches from several COs.

 

That's all to be expected when the frequency of cache publication in an area goes from 1 per month to 30 per month which seems like approximately the rate change in my area over the 5 years I've been geocaching.

[TahoeJoe]

My wife and I spent a long weekend in Palm Springs, California. I wanted to do some caching and my map showed a series of caches along one particular road. I gave those a go. It deserves a report.

 

From the map, I thought the series might be a power trail. It wasn't. A few caches were quick grabs, but most required some walking and some hunting. In the available time, I found 25 caches

 

The interesting thing is that very few of the hides were particularly inspired. Some were in bushes. Others in piles of rocks. However, the cache containers were novel and made the hunt a lot of fun. There was one that was a plastic cat in a bush. Once was a large concrete turtle among the rocks. One was a toy mailbox in a tree. One was a concrete rabbit with a bison tube hanging around its neck.

 

It was a lot more fun than just pill bottles in piles of rock and surely took more thought and effort.

I cached in Palm Springs about 10 years ago, I'm sure there are many more caches by now. It's nice to hear about people being creative with their caches with limited interesting places to hide.

[+narcissa]

One thing I miss, now that power trails are so widespread, is that it's harder to find nice trails or roads where a variety caches have popped up over time. These days, as soon as there's a new trail in the area, someone has to put a "series" on it and take up the whole thing all at once.

I agree that organically grown caching trails are much more interesting, but I don't think that change has anything to do with power trails. It's just that caching is much more popular, and people are much more interested in hiding caches, so when an area opens up, someone with a pent up desire for caches pounces on it. And even when it isn't one person planting a series, it's typical for a new trail to get fairly well covered pretty quick by caches from several COs.

 

That's all to be expected when the frequency of cache publication in an area goes from 1 per month to 30 per month which seems like approximately the rate change in my area over the 5 years I've been geocaching.

 

Yeah, around here there's pretty much no chance that it would be used by several COs quickly. It's one CO placing a "series" and using the whole thing up immediately. Part of it is demand, part of it is the emphasis on numbers over quality. Why place one thoughtful cache when there's space for 15 pill bottles in a line?

[+niraD]

Yeah, around here there's pretty much no chance that it would be used by several COs quickly. It's one CO placing a "series" and using the whole thing up immediately. Part of it is demand, part of it is the emphasis on numbers over quality. Why place one thoughtful cache when there's space for 15 pill bottles in a line?

That's one thing that has changed. When I started, geo-etiquette called for cache owners to leave room for other caches in a park, and not to block the whole thing with your own cache(s). And I've heard that before that, geo-etiquette called for only one cache per park, but that was before my time. Now, as soon as a new park opens up, there will probably be a series published that blocks the entire park (especially in parks that require caches to be placed within a certain distance of the trail).

[+Ambrosia]

Yeah, around here there's pretty much no chance that it would be used by several COs quickly. It's one CO placing a "series" and using the whole thing up immediately. Part of it is demand, part of it is the emphasis on numbers over quality. Why place one thoughtful cache when there's space for 15 pill bottles in a line?

That's one thing that has changed. When I started, geo-etiquette called for cache owners to leave room for other caches in a park, and not to block the whole thing with your own cache(s). And I've heard that before that, geo-etiquette called for only one cache per park, but that was before my time. Now, as soon as a new park opens up, there will probably be a series published that blocks the entire park (especially in parks that require caches to be placed within a certain distance of the trail).

I'm not sure about "etiquette" either, but I do know that in the beginning nobody wanted to put another cache in a park that already had one (unless it's a really big park). The point was to bring people to a spot, so why would there need to be more than one cache? That was the thought process, anyway.

[TahoeJoe]

I'm not sure about "etiquette" either, but I do know that in the beginning nobody wanted to put another cache in a park that already had one (unless it's a really big park). The point was to bring people to a spot, so why would there need to be more than one cache? That was the thought process, anyway.

I remember those days and still try to find those caches that lead me to new places, but they are getting more difficult to find. I live in a pretty rural area and I imagine it's next to impossible in a urban setting. That's the growing pain of becoming mainstreamed. At some future point in time I see caches like power trails needing to be addressed as fewer locations become available to hide creative caches.