Creating lists

[+pappasky]

Hello.  I am new to this forum but have been caching a while.  I am a no frills kinda cacher.  I find them, I sign the log then I log here at Groundspeak.  That is about it.  Not a big fan of Travel bugs, coins or anything else I have to keep track of.  I just like to find the caches.

 

My young son is wanting to do many more things than I do.  He wants to solve puzzles, do multiple caches and fulfill some challenges.  I am good helping him with a couple of things like solving puzzles, but other things that require him to make lists and keep track of stuff is daunting.

 

His first question is how does he create a list that might fulfill a challenge without having to go through each and every cache and writing down the names?  Is there a simple way?  For instance....he wants to do fulfill a challenge cache that is local to our area that is all about color.  Each cache (there need to be 50 of them) needs to have a color or a reference to a color in the name.  How does he do that?

 

He is young (7) and I do not let him "play" on the computer unless he has some direction on how to complete a task.

 

Can anyone here help us/him?

 

Thanks

[+thebruce0]

Apart from adding individual items to a bookmark list via the "Add to list" link in the corner of the listing, there are numerous more advanced ways of finding qualifying caches.

 

Personally, I think the quickest way for colours in the title would be to do text searches with the Advanced Search page for most common colours, and add them to a list.

 

Alternatively, if you use GSAK, you could download bulk caches for filtering offline and make use of some more advanced capabilities that GSAK offers.  But ultimately, keeeping track of caches is either done via Bookmark Lists on geocaching.com, or in a 3rd party app like GSAK, or Project-GC, or manually like with Notepad or Excel.  For complex record keeping and planning, I tend to use Excel spreadsheets (for road trips, target lists and categories and whatnot). They're easily printable and you can then mark them up with a pen while on the road. Depending on your skill with excel it's also quite a flexible way of organizing caches and their relevant data.

 

For a 7 year old? Paper may be your best bet. /:)

Edited July 25, 2017 by thebruce0

[+noncentric]

If trying to create a list of 'qualifying' caches for a challenge, then I'd suggest looking at other cachers' "Found It" logs on that challenge cache's page.  That will let you see how other cachers have presented their qualification list.

• Some cachers will create a Bookmark List (as mentioned above) - in which case, be sure to add the applicable challenge cache to that list and make that list "public".
• Some cachers will create a text listing of their caches - this is what I often opt to do.
• Some cachers will utilize Project-GC challenge checkers - not all challenges have checkers, not all checkers create a text list of the qualifying caches, not all caches that have checkers will mention those checkers in the cache description.

[+thebruce0]

7 hours ago, noncentric said:

If trying to create a list of 'qualifying' caches for a challenge, then I'd suggest looking at other cachers' "Found It" logs on that challenge cache's page.

That too, especially for local cachers. That will help quickly point out many of the more easily achieved (traveled to) qualifiers. Unless of course they're vacationers or heavy travelers   I did that in my earlier years for some of the more challenging local challenges.

[pictom]

Speaking of creating list, is is possible to create a list of Travel Bugs?
I wish to set up an event that will be the beginning of a TB Race. I wish for my participants to see the race leaderboard at any time during the year's race. I think creating a list would be my best option, but I am not sure I can create a list for TBs, and not for geocaches.

[+hzoi]

On 6/27/2025 at 6:38 AM, pictom said:

is is possible to create a list of Travel Bugs?

 

Not to my knowledge.

 

There is (or at least was) a way to display a thumbnail/widget on one's profile that showed the TB name, image, and miles. If someone with better knowledge posts how, you could host that on your profile, or set up a separate basic membership account to host it, with all the participants.

 

Or, manually watch all the travel bugs, and keep stats via a Google doc or something.

[+LydiaSimmons]

On 6/27/2025 at 7:38 AM, pictom said:

Speaking of creating list, is is possible to create a list of Travel Bugs?
I wish to set up an event that will be the beginning of a TB Race. I wish for my participants to see the race leaderboard at any time during the year's race. I think creating a list would be my best option, but I am not sure I can create a list for TBs, and not for geocaches.

 

If you could have all of the trackables owned by a distinct account for this race, you could use a search result to achieve this functionality. Filter on Owned by Username and sort in descending order by distance.

https://www.geocaching.com/track/search.aspx

[+hzoi]

On 6/30/2025 at 2:31 PM, LydiaSimmons said:

If you could have all of the trackables owned by a distinct account for this race

 

That's a good idea - set up a basic member account that owns all the bugs. Then after the race is over, that account could adopt the bugs back to their original owners.

[+thebruce0]

On 7/7/2025 at 12:40 PM, hzoi said:

That's a good idea - set up a basic member account that owns all the bugs. Then after the race is over, that account could adopt the bugs back to their original owners.

 

Hmm yeah, and on top of that, you don't necessarily need to adopt them all out - you could prepare the race by activating them all under the basic account, then have people "sponsor" them basically they bought them, but they are like proxy-owned), so that after the race they can just be adopted out as desired.

 

I ran a TB race for most of a year for a local block party, the GHAGARACE, and manually tracked all the TBs that were purchased and activated, in order to provide the periodically-manually-updated mileage stats. Two 'teams' of TBs, tracking total mileage per team.

 

If I had API access race stats could be auto-updated. Alas, this was sufficient.  But without a List of TBs, the data was catalogued proprietarily, by hand, one by one  

 

Hadn't thought of that unique separate geocaching account for organization... Perhaps Lists and more stats tracking are ideas for a future upgrade by the hamsters if they ever feel like building on the TB framework.