This topic contains 13 replies, has 10 voices, and was last updated by 
kbraband 18 years, 1 month ago.
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We were on our way home from up north, our 17 year old dragged “against his will” along for the trip. We wanted to hunt this one on the way home, having stopped for several while taking a different route up on Friday, much to the aforementioned 17 year old’s chagrin.
Not so with this one. GC132CR He saw that old cemetery in the middle of nowhere and said “I’m coming along for this!” He helped us search. He learned how to program the GPSr we’d bought for his use. He went almost to the final (which you want to be wearing long pants to find).
He finally understood why we enjoy this. In fact, I just got a phone call from him. He wanted to know the url for the gc.com site, so he and his friends could create a profile and go searching.
Aside from being the geocache that helped him see the fun in this, it is a great one. We drive those roads all the time. Now we know what’s just off of them. Wear long pants, though!
Hi TE,
I agree that this is a fantastic cache, an exceptionally well done multi with 2 interesting points. I just feel bad that you have to drive that road frequently. That has got to be one of the longest stretchs of boring road in the entire state, and the Dum Tacet cache by the Bandits is really the only thing along there for miles.
Sometimes I wonder why really great caches like this get visited so rarely (there have been 5 finds since May), when really generic plain jane caches get hit sometimes 5 times a day.
zuma
I, too, am constantly surprised to find Park and Ride / Guardrail / Lamppost caches getting 10-100 times more visits than the many excellent caches in the state. I think this is a result of the focus people put on find statistics. I have come to the conclusion that a majority of geocachers actually prefer spending time in parking lots to spending time in the woods, prairies and marshes around the state. That’s OK, though. It just leaves more space in the woods for us!
Well, we’ll do them all, but ones like this or hikes to interesting locations—-up the side of a bluff, a canoe cache on the river, something requiring a bit of a physical challenge—along with interesting historical sites, are far up on our “cache-o-meter” preference scale. Trekkin’ is just dying to go someplace with tons of lampposts and guardrails to bump up numbers, though. I told him he can go by himself, I can’t think of too many things I’d rather not do!
As for that stretch of highway—yup. It’s a yawner. However, there’s a guy who’s always looking for help for a Christmas Bird Count out there, and it hasn’t worked out for me, but I’m hoping it does this year. He always sees the coolest stuff in there. Wolves, bears, cool birds. Trekkin’s first teaching job was at an elementary school in the Tomah district that covered that area, too. Lots of open country!
@Team Deejay wrote:
I, too, am constantly surprised to find Park and Ride / Guardrail / Lamppost caches getting 10-100 times more visits than the many excellent caches in the state. I think this is a result of the focus people put on find statistics. I have come to the conclusion that a majority of geocachers actually prefer spending time in parking lots to spending time in the woods, prairies and marshes around the state. That’s OK, though. It just leaves more space in the woods for us!
Exactly!!
I also agree that this seems to be a great cache in an underutilized area. I found waypoint #1 after the cache hiding for the Geo-Picnic last weekend… it was getting too dark to go for the final, but I will definitely get it the next time I am in central WI.
Note there is over 150 square miles 😯 of public land in the Sandhill-Meadow Valley Work Unit, and I believe this is the only cache on that huge expanse of land.
http://www.dnr.wi.gov/org/land/wildlife/reclands/sandhill/wcwafacts.htm
@Trekkin’ and Birdin’ wrote:
As for that stretch of highway—yup. It’s a yawner.
I’ve always kind of liked 173. In my youth it was a good place to try to set “land speed records”… I’ve had several vehicles into the triple digits on it. And I’ve never seen a cop or heard of anyone getting a speeding ticket on it, at least on the section north of Mather to the junction with 80.
@Team Deejay wrote:
I, too, am constantly surprised to find Park and Ride / Guardrail / Lamppost caches getting 10-100 times more visits than the many excellent caches in the state. I think this is a result of the focus people put on find statistics. I have come to the conclusion that a majority of geocachers actually prefer spending time in parking lots to spending time in the woods, prairies and marshes around the state. That’s OK, though. It just leaves more space in the woods for us!
As the oldest oldtimer geocacher in the WGA, I thought I was one of the few who held this “outdated” perception of what geocaching is all about. Thanks for posting this viewpoint.
@kbraband wrote:
@Team Deejay wrote:
I, too, am constantly surprised to find Park and Ride / Guardrail / Lamppost caches getting 10-100 times more visits than the many excellent caches in the state. I think this is a result of the focus people put on find statistics. I have come to the conclusion that a majority of geocachers actually prefer spending time in parking lots to spending time in the woods, prairies and marshes around the state. That’s OK, though. It just leaves more space in the woods for us!
As the oldest oldtimer geocacher in the WGA, I thought I was one of the few who held this “outdated” perception of what geocaching is all about. Thanks for posting this viewpoint.
I dont think that wanting a geocache to take you to a place that is special is outdated at all. Personally, that is what I look for in a cache–did it take me to a cool place, either scenic, historic, architectural, or had something interesting about it. In short, was the place “cache worthy?”
But, I also cache em all. Big, tall or small, I try (operative word there is try) to find em all. I just prefer the cacheworthy ones over the generic parking lot hides. But obviously, many people prefer the parking lot drive ups. Take a look at GC152N8 , 23 finds in 20 days, and the cache name it lets you know what it is, yet right now it is one of the most popular caches in the state. So it is obvious that a lot of folks like the simple driveups on the end of a generic urban dead end road. (Just to be clear, I am not picking on this cache, because I am sure the cache owner would agree, and in fact I was happy to log it as a find myself. I am just using it as an example of something that is getting to be quite common.)
zuma
I too would prefer to do the long hikes to a great location. That is why I started geocaching. one of my favorites so far is Devils Lake Revisited. Which has since been archived. A long hike with plenty of great views along the way. However due to physical limitations of one our team members we cannot always go on these hikes. So I must adjust my game so the whole family can go caching. Which basically means a lot of grab and go’s. So maybe getting more numbers in a day has compensated for being able to hike a long ways to get a cache. Don’t always judge how a person caches purely by how easy of hikes that they take.
I’ve stated it before, I am a numbers guy, no doubt. However, I do like to take some of the longer hikes in the woods, specially on nice cool fall days or early spring before it gets really muddy.
Some of my favorite caches have been up in Northern WI in the forest preserves where its you and thats it. Walk into a uninhabited lake and listen to nothing. Awesome!
Of course I prefer the caches that are somehow memorable. But they often require setting aside a certain amount of time to go do it. I do it when I can, but it’s not all that often.
However, if I see a park-and-grab pop up on my GPSr as I’m rolling along somewhere, I will stop for it spontaneously. I’m sure a lot of other people do too.
And if I’m traveling and want to make sure I pick up the DeLorme pages I’m passing through, well it’s often going to be a quick cache because my time is usually limited when I’m on the road.
Plus, I usually have my kids along I have to figure in the whine potential for any cache and decide if it is worth it.
@kbraband wrote:
@Team Deejay wrote:
I, too, am constantly surprised to find Park and Ride / Guardrail / Lamppost caches getting 10-100 times more visits than the many excellent caches in the state. I think this is a result of the focus people put on find statistics. I have come to the conclusion that a majority of geocachers actually prefer spending time in parking lots to spending time in the woods, prairies and marshes around the state. That’s OK, though. It just leaves more space in the woods for us!
As the oldest oldtimer geocacher in the WGA, I thought I was one of the few who held this “outdated” perception of what geocaching is all about. Thanks for posting this viewpoint.
This must make it much more difficult to be a reviewer than if you enjoyed park and grabs and other similar caches. I know I would have a hard time approving a wal-mart parking lot cache myself, but I guess you don’t really have much choice in the matter right now.
@Team B Squared wrote:
@kbraband wrote:
@Team Deejay wrote:
I, too, am constantly surprised to find Park and Ride / Guardrail / Lamppost caches getting 10-100 times more visits than the many excellent caches in the state. I think this is a result of the focus people put on find statistics. I have come to the conclusion that a majority of geocachers actually prefer spending time in parking lots to spending time in the woods, prairies and marshes around the state. That’s OK, though. It just leaves more space in the woods for us!
As the oldest oldtimer geocacher in the WGA, I thought I was one of the few who held this “outdated” perception of what geocaching is all about. Thanks for posting this viewpoint.
This must make it much more difficult to be a reviewer than if you enjoyed park and grabs and other similar caches. I know I would have a hard time approving a wal-mart parking lot cache myself, but I guess you don’t really have much choice in the matter right now.
Hehe, its not difficult at all. I’ve probably approved 3 parking lot/guardrail micros for every “quality” hide. I’ve even found a couple guardrail micros that were notable. At least here the ratio is only 3:1. If you head south to Kentucky or Tennessee, you will find the ratio to be more like 20:1.
But, like Zuma, we try to find everything in our path, and find the guardrails along with the great caches. Monday is a great example. We were caching in Racine, trying to recover from a day of KM hiking. We did a three short fun hikes, a very nice cemetery cache, and DNFed a cache in a remediated chemical dump (my poor ankle wasn’t up to the terrain). But we also found a cache in a playground, which I would never have actively sought out, nor would I recommend it, except that it was “in our way”. Its just what we do. I’m just amazed when I open the log on a park and grab and find 200 sigs, where when I open the log on an Ice Age Trail cache active for the same period, I find 20 sigs. Just doesn’t make sense to me.
@Team B Squared wrote:
@kbraband wrote:
@Team Deejay wrote:
I, too, am constantly surprised to find Park and Ride / Guardrail / Lamppost caches getting 10-100 times more visits than the many excellent caches in the state. I think this is a result of the focus people put on find statistics. I have come to the conclusion that a majority of geocachers actually prefer spending time in parking lots to spending time in the woods, prairies and marshes around the state. That’s OK, though. It just leaves more space in the woods for us!
As the oldest oldtimer geocacher in the WGA, I thought I was one of the few who held this “outdated” perception of what geocaching is all about. Thanks for posting this viewpoint.
This must make it much more difficult to be a reviewer than if you enjoyed park and grabs and other similar caches. I know I would have a hard time approving a wal-mart parking lot cache myself, but I guess you don’t really have much choice in the matter right now.
You’re right. Sometimes when I review a lampost cache (as I did just a few minutes ago), I hold my nose and click on “publish.” As to Team DeeJay comment that a cache was “in our way” so they had to find it — I never think like that. If I don’t like a cache type or location, I don’t look for it and it doesn’t bother me. Period.
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