King Pellinore breaks 200!

[King Pellinore]

Finally after many years, King Pellinore breaks the 200 caches found barrier.  He found his first cache in 08/25/2001 and quickly became one of NJ's top cachers.  Petering out at the end of 2006, his long hiatus (until 2019) was broken by a single find in 2013 of https://www.geocaching.com/geocache/GC3A1QK_block-head  He has been getting around a bit, adding states to his geocaching collection.  Who knows, he might even place another cache!

[Keystone]

Welcome back!  As a forum moderator, I came to this topic because I was sure it was an old, old thread that someone had "bumped" with a misplaced post.

 

It is nice to see the return of a geocaching pioneer.  It's very different now!

[King Pellinore]

Thanks Keystone.  What would you say are the differences?

[Keystone]

Ten things about geocaching that have changed since 2006

(In no particular order)

 

1. The rise of smartphones as a substitute or supplement to handheld GPS receivers is a sea change.  As a result, many smartphone app users are unaware/only vaguely aware that there is a website and a community for geocaching.
2. Cache density is way up, and approaches saturation in popular areas.  New Jersey was an early density leader so you may not see as dramatic a difference vs., e.g., France.
3. Logs in the field are almost universally "sign your nickname and the date on the next line" vs. the old days when people wrote stories in true "log books."
4. Online logs tend to be far shorter as well, in part because of logging from the field on a smartphone app.
5. The geocoin craze that peaked in 2005 has died down, and focus on moving trackables from cache to cache has dropped in many areas.
6. The percentage of caches that can hold trackables (i.e., larger than micro) is lower.
7. More and more land managers regulate geocaching through a formal permit process.  In NJ, many old caches were archived because they didn't have the required permit.
8. Community discussion of geocaching has largely migrated to Facebook groups - look at how quiet the Northeast forum is.  I remember when you were an active participant.  These forums are still useful for answering user questions, debating caching philosophy issues, discussing features and bugs, etc.
9. "Power trails" have grown in popularity.  Instead of hiking two miles to find one cache at a scenic viewpoint, you can now find 15 caches along the way in many places.
10. The features and functions for the Geocaching.com website and smartphone apps have improved considerably in comparison to 2006, as has the centralized support for the game provided by Geocaching HQ.

On point eight, you might also be interested in this post that I wrote on the occasion of my 20,000th post as a forum moderator here.

[King Pellinore]

Thanks Keystone.  i noticed the density, the rise of nanos and the park-and-grabs.  I leaned on geocaching back then to find cool and interesting bytheway places.  Now i'm finding parking lots, signposts and streetlights.

[+GeoElmo6000]

On 2/25/2020 at 7:47 PM, King Pellinore said:

Thanks Keystone.  i noticed the density, the rise of nanos and the park-and-grabs.  I leaned on geocaching back then to find cool and interesting bytheway places.  Now i'm finding parking lots, signposts and streetlights.

 

But you wouldn't have found those parking lots, signposts, and streetlights without geocaching!