Scavenger Hunts - What to do?

[+Max and 99]

Years ago I quit doing scavenger hunts because no one at GS would respond to a glitch. I worked very hard on a 100 visit hunt, and the system would not mark it as completed (every visit was made, and the hunt itself said 100/100 visits were made, and you could see a photo on every square). I completed that big hunt and got no credit for it. Well, last year I decided to give them another try, and set up hunts in places I wanted to visit.

Tonight I was making notes for a 100 visit hunt, and wanted to check out details on a cemetery marker. I didn't see a cemetery at the location, so I did some searching, and found out that the EXACT same marker was in the EXACT same cemetery mentioned (in a city I had never heard of), and was actually 67 miles away.   I HAVE to visit this specific item or start the hunt over (VERY fortunately for me, even though I created this hunt almost a year ago, I hadn't actually visited anything yet). So yes, I CAN just start over after A TON of notes I made and see what comes up similarly.   I don't want to, but I may have to. But what if I had already visited a bunch of these places, and was not able to visit something whose correct coords were 67 miles away?  START ALL OVER!! 

[+Max and 99]

I'm thinking that maybe I'm the only one doing scavenger hunts. Haha. That's OK. I created a replacement hunt that is almost the same but better than the first.  This one has all waymarks within 10 miles as requested, and none 70 miles away. Plus it requires fewer wildcards!

Edited February 22, 2018 by Max and 99

[+Benchmark Blasterz]

1 hour ago, Max and 99 said:

I'm thinking that maybe I'm the only one doing scavenger hunts. Haha. That's OK. I created a replacement hunt that is almost the same but better than the first.  This one has all waymarks within 10 miles as requested, and none 70 miles away. Plus it requires fewer wildcards!

I have never figured out how to do a scavenger hunt so .... maybe you ARE the ONLY ONE! ! LOL 

Tomorrow I will take a look at them. My curiosity is piqued now.

[+Manville Possum]

1 hour ago, Max and 99 said:

I'm thinking that maybe I'm the only one doing scavenger hunts. Haha. 

Jokes aside, you very well may be. 

[+MountainWoods]

Ditto.

I looked at them several times, but it never turned out to be something that I'd want to do.  I had other ideas in mind for something called a Scavenger Hunt, but what Groundspeak decided on wasn't the same as any of my ideas.

[vulture1957]

2 hours ago, MountainWoods said:

Ditto.

I looked at them several times, but it never turned out to be something that I'd want to do.  I had other ideas in mind for something called a Scavenger Hunt, but what Groundspeak decided on wasn't the same as any of my ideas.

when I saw Scavenger Hunt, I was thinking more like a Lucky 7 but with a larger footprint. Get maybe 3 categories from each department within 25 miles.You would have to find new waymarks in that area.

Scavenger Hunt as it is now seems more like a Waymark Tour.

Edited February 22, 2018 by vulture1957

[+elyob]

I had a plan to use the Scavenger Hunt to bring in my very competitive sister to Waymarking.  Could I complete a Scavenger Hunt before she did?  My plan did not work.

[+jiggs11]

23 hours ago, Manville Possum said:

Jokes aside, you very well may be. 

Nope, I enjoy chipping away at them whenever I'm near one

[+Max and 99]

One thing I really like about the Scavenger Hunts is the easy format and how it shows your progress.

[vulture1957]

I have a question about Scavenger Hunts. I just made one centered on my home. It includes my ISS Sighting waymark. How would someone "visit" this? Just wait for another visible ISS pass and see it? And another had me with Sticker and Pin Seeker. How would I complete this?

Edited February 26, 2018 by vulture1957

[+elyob]

The only way to visit an ISS  waymark is if you watched the ISS go over on the same pass described in the waymark.  It is too bad that the Scavenger Hunt included that particular waymark.  However, you yourself could take credit for a visit to that waymark of yours.

[+Max and 99]

1 hour ago, elyob said:

The only way to visit an ISS  waymark is if you watched the ISS go over on the same pass described in the waymark.  It is too bad that the Scavenger Hunt included that particular waymark.  However, you yourself could take credit for a visit to that waymark of yours.

If you visit it after the scavenger hunt was created.

[vulture1957]

15 minutes ago, Max and 99 said:

If you visit it after the scavenger hunt was created.

so no  one else could ever finish that scavenger hunt, except me. And if you made a scavener hunt that included Bethany, it could include that waymark and then you couldn't finish your own scavenger hunt. What a crock.

[+Max and 99]

This is soooooooooooooo bad.  I quit scavenger hunts years ago because the 100 waymark hunt I completed would not "complete" in the system. Everything was visited.

Today, another glitch, and I may just give this up for good because I'm so stinkin' mad.  I THINK I know what happened, but in a nutshell: I ran some hunts early last year, and am just now trying to finish them so I can create new ones. I visited a LOT of waymarks on the hunts today, and sat down at the computer to log them. I go to log a visit on one, and it's archived (I think I know the story behind that). BUT, BUT, BUT, BUT (did you hear me sobbing)  I CANNOT log a visit on an ARCHIVED waymark. It won't let me.

IT IS there, I visited it. But I can't log it.

Wayfrog: Can you pleeeeeeeeeeeeease unarchive the cache (Smithsonian category) so I can log a visit. If you don't, all my hours and hours and hours of work were for nothing since I can never finish this 5/100 hunt and will have to start all over, with possibly very different things to visit. Pleeeeeeeeeeeeeease.

Edited March 2, 2018 by Max and 99
Update

[+Max and 99]

Nevermind, wayfrog. Hamquilter and I figured out how to beat the system. Haha. She unarchived it, I got to log the waymark, she archived it again, and now I can continue with all the visits I took pictures for today. Woot! So glad that ended well.  I'll be back on this forum thread if the 100 hunt doesn't "complete". It better!

 

 

Edited March 2, 2018 by Max and 99
update

[+Max and 99]

I have done my share of Scavenger Hunt wildcards. Quite a few. Contrary to what the FAQ states, I always assign the wildcard AS I create the new waymark (not go back later to do so). This past week I encountered something new regarding Wildcards.

I created a hunt for an area I wanted to visit. I was assigned 5 wildcards.  I was finalizing the details of my visits when I clicked on a nearby waymark and got the message shown below. . Either this is new (highly unlikely) or I have just never encountered it in all the scavenger hunts I've run.   I found 5 nearby waymarks that all gave me the option of adding them to my hunt. Here's my question: if these nearby waymarks were eligible to be added to my hunt, why was I assigned Wildcards in the first place?   Why were they not included?  The newly added waymarks were all ones that would have fit the original hunt criteria.  I was all set to find some new things to waymark to fulfill the Wildcard requirement.

Say you live in the high desert, and ask the website to generate a large list of waymarks within a very short range. This may be a tall order unless there happens to be a remote outpost of avid waymarkers living nearby. In this case the website will supply you with any number of wildcards to make up the difference. For wildcards you are asked to find a new waymark and post it for review in any of the available categories. After it is approved for listing on the site you can assign it to your scavenger hunt and proceed as normal from there (you'll have to visit it). However, there is one catch: The wildcard waymark you submit must be in the high desert where you originally created the hunt for it to count! 

 

Edited March 8, 2018 by Max and 99
Quoting Scavenger Hunt FAQs

[vulture1957]

are wildcards the answer to visiting the ISS waymark? Instead of the ISS, I could select a wildcard in it's place?

[+Manville Possum]

52 minutes ago, vulture1957 said:

are wildcards the answer to visiting the ISS waymark? Instead of the ISS, I could select a wildcard in it's place?

 

Sounds like a really cheap way to cheat to fill a grid to me if I'm understanding this correctly. That ISS WM is difficult to obtain and took me three years of trying.

[+Max and 99]

1 hour ago, vulture1957 said:

are wildcards the answer to visiting the ISS waymark? Instead of the ISS, I could select a wildcard in it's place?

First of all, only if it let's you. Second, you are required to physically visit the waymark after the hunt was created, making it impossible to do.