Enough with the micro caches! Am I right, folks?

[kansas64]

I am not a huge fan of a micro in the woods, but like Rog states if you don’t like those caches don’t do them. I do them because they are there, and I don’t complain about them because I figure if the person who placed the cache took the time and energy to do so it isn’t my place to complain about it.
As an example we did one recently that was an Altoids tin in the woods, when we found it you could have hid an ammo can literally with in 2 feet of the hide. The only thing about the physical cache container I mentioned was that it was showing signs of rust.

[gotta run]

@rogheff wrote:

I got tired of personally providing the world with shiny new geoswag only to get rocks, business cards, bottlecaps and pinecones in return.

Initially, the reason was about money I suppose. Over time it was about the effort required to develop an interesting cache.

Yes, this hits the nail on the head. Despite the advice given in these forums that, essentially, we should expect things to disappear when we place boxes of stuff in public, it’s the frustration at having caches deteriorate or disappear which has caused us to replace our regular runs to Fleet Farm to buy more ammo boxes with online trips to eBay to buy more bison tubes.

The point of placing caches is to give back to the geocommunity by having something interesting/fun to do, not by being the Free Swag Store. You can take people to interesting places and give them creative hides just as well with micro caches, which don’t get muggled as much and are too small to fit dirty golf balls into.

On the Left Side of the Road...

[The Pirate Monkies]

I guess it depends on my mood… Sometimes I’m feeling sinister and I’ll go after urban micros, or micros in muggle prone woods (I own one like that)… Sometimes I’m fed up with urban life and go for ammo cans deep in the woods… That’s what’s it’s all about, having fun… Swag swap??? Sometimes… Usually, it’s TNLNSL TFTC, unless there’s a trackable that I can help along… With all of the mosquitoes about lately, it’s been hard enough to sign the log anyway, much less trade swag…
For me it’s about the experience of getting out and being brought to someplace unique, or solving a mystery or a multi or trying to complete a series, not the contents of the container…

Greg…

p.s.
The last two caches that I placed did have a $1.00 “FTF BUCK” in them… I figure with gas prices what they are, it was the least I could do…

[Team Hemisphere Dancer]

I have been following this thread and found my leaning to the ammo can side most of the time. But out on a recent cache trip I had been thinking about the swag argument and found myself passing by the swag and going straight to the log book, but only when the kids were sitting in the car. I will rummage a bit to see if there is anything that they like. But most times there is nothing that they would want. That being said I still prefer to find a bigger cache at the end of the hunt than a film can. I guess it is the thought that there might be something in it of limited value that make me like them. Urban areas are great for micro’s and rural areas are great for larger caches. But in the end it all comes down to hide what you want and hunt what you want. Which seems to be a common theme among all the different aspects of this activity.

[jenhen1]

The problem with the “don’t look for ’em if you don’t like ’em” argument is that you don’t know if it will be lame before you look for it. It may turn out to be an amazingly unique or creative hide, a fantastic location…….or a lame guardrail/lamppost hide. If I ignored all micros in the woods I never would have stopped for GCP543 a cache by Candy Apple Green. It’s a micro, but it’s a micro because it had to be for CAG to give you the experience he wanted to give you, rock hopping to the edge of a cascading waterfall on a tiny island. No room for a regular, but plenty for a micro. It’s an amazing example of how good a micro can be. Unfortunately, for every cache like this, there are twice as many that are uninteresting hides in uninteresting locations. You just don’t know before you look; you may suspect, but you just don’t know for sure.

It’s not about the swag, and if you’re older than 12 I think we’d all agree. BUT…..sometimes it can be, as a nice surprise, I think. Probably between 1/3 and 1/2 of my caches get visited between 3-5 times per year, sometimes less. They are remote and require long hikes to reach them. Knowing this I will occasionally stock them with some nice items, not so much as an incentive but as an added reward for taking the effort to search for it. The journey and the end locations should be reward enough, but perhaps trading for something nice might make it even more memorable. If it’s not an even trade, I really don’t care, plus, since they are visited so rarely, the containers won’t go bare anytime soon. We’ve found some nice stuff too. We don’t expect it, don’t always trade for it, but when we see it we appreciate the thought someone put in to add to the experience.

There’s a different mentality and different methods due to necessity between urban and rural geocachers, it won’t change and there’s nothing wrong with either. Just a little thought into placing a cache, micro or regular, would go long way towards preserving the quality of the game.

[zuma]

@jenhen1 wrote:

There’s a different mentality and different methods due to necessity between urban and rural geocachers, it won’t change and there’s nothing wrong with either. Just a little thought into placing a cache, micro or regular, would go long way towards preserving the quality of the game.

Could not agree more.

The other issue is that people are afraid to log what they think of a cache, or just cut and paste something not related to the actual cache. If a cache, micro or ammo can, is great, I will say so, often fairly effusively, so folks reading the log will be less likely to skip it.

Generally, I am as afraid as anyone of offending people by saying in the log that the cache was lame. But I have seen enough micros in pine trees in generic parks to last me a lifetime. If I see a pine tree when I approach GZ, I have to groan and at least mention the groan when I log it. And more often than not lately, junk caches like these are getting the 2 minute rule before moving on to something more interesting.

zuma

[gotta run]

Well, here’s a perfect example of our frustration with “regular” caches.

Did a number of regular size caches in Door County today and took the time to CITO…CITO the caches, that is. Ended up with about 100 various moldy business cards, expired coupons, and sports schedules. Also an empty jar of baby food–the jar in one cache and the lid in another. A flip flop.

No, these aren’t all from newbies. Someone who had just marked their 200th cache thought they’d celebrate it by tearing off a big hunk of cardboard off a beer carton and writing on the back of it, then stuffing it into…wait for it…a TB hotel.

Now, let me say we had a great time caching. And having regular sized containers made the search easier. But not one of these caches had anything in it that was worth trading even if we wanted to.

I can only imagine how frustrated we’d be if we had placed these caches.

On the Left Side of the Road...

[GrouseTales]

I “used” to dislike micros. I considered them a cheap way to flood the area with caches for people concerned with numbers.

Over the past few years, I’ve come to appreciate micros. In fact, I have hidden a couple myself.

For me, geocaching is all about location. I dislike parking lot caches, whether it’s a micros, or a pot-o-gold. I want a cache to bring me to a cool location, and a micro can do this just as well as a full size cache.

When my kids were young, they definately liked to find the “treasure” and exchange goodies. Since the kids have grown up, I no longer exchange swag. I’m content signing the log and enjoying the area.

I have seen plenty of traditional sized caches loaded with crap. Bottle caps? I was here cards, and other junk. I would bet the cache started out full of goodies, but degraded by “trading down”.

I’ve also seen some pretty lame micros. I personally feel that a piece of paper put in a plastic baggie is lame. I’ve seen some that seemed very impromptu, and poorly maintained.

I think micros have several advantages:
– Less cost
– Easier to hide
– Not likely to degrade in quality (ie trade downs)
– Less garbage in the woods if it gets lost or abandoned.

Disadvantages:
– Harder to find = more distruption of area by people desperate to find it.

I think that micro’s add variety to the sport, and have their place.

[gotta run]

“I wuz here” cards should be outlawed. There, I’ve said it. Just sign the log book to tell us you were here. Nobody gives a dang about your moldy old cards. People who leave them in caches should be forced to listen to Yanni for eternity.

On the Left Side of the Road...

[zuma]

@gotta run wrote:

“I wuz here” cards should be outlawed. There, I’ve said it. Just sign the log book to tell us you were here. Nobody gives a dang about your moldy old cards. People who leave them in caches should be forced to listen to Yanni for eternity.

Wow, yur mean when provoked. 😉

zuma

[Team Hemisphere Dancer]

@jenhen1 wrote:

The problem with the “don’t look for ’em if you don’t like ’em” argument is that you don’t know if it will be lame before you look for it.

This argument is only valid is somebody doesn’t research the area they are going to cache in. By reading the cache pages and the previous logs you can get a pretty good idea if it is wort going after. Needless to say not all cache listings will tell you this but it is a pretty good barometer. A recent trip to Florida I did plenty of research and found a number of caches in locations that were very pleasing to me. Many of them along the Ocean or other waterfront parks where I was looking specifically to see Manatee or Sea Turtles. After a few DNF’s, Micros, and Ammo Cans I had a great time caching. Not because I filtered out all of a particular size, but because I did my homework and made a list of the ones I wanted to see. I left the “Welcome to __________” caches alone as I knew what town I was in. That is what I meant by “Find the ones you want”

[sandlanders]

Today…Four micros, a nano, a regular, a virtual, and a DNF. We’ll try them all, but like Hemi, we look at the cache pages before going out searching.

The only thing we don’t like is a long and/or difficult hike to find a container that someone has “cleverly” hidden, swag or no swag. If the purpose is to get us to see a particular spot, we don’t need to spoil the pleasure of an area by spending lots of time looking for a micro with a “cute” clue or none at all.

Micros are fun to find, even the ones in the pine trees. Just when we think we know where to look, we find a type of hide new to us. Don’t know what we’ll be like when find a few hundred more or if we go out on big cache runs (which we don’t think we’d like anyway), but right now, we’re still in the learning process and enjoying the game how we play it.

[jenhen1]

This argument is only valid is somebody doesn’t research the area they are going to cache

I think for a truly enjoyable experience you HAVE to research which caches you are going to do. Still, like Hemi said, not all cache pages will tell you if it’s worth looking for or not, so even with alot of research you may overlook some great caches or choose some you wished you had skipped. A cache near home, GCRPMB I had skipped for some time. Too many muggles, lots of DNF’s, sneaking around in bushes near an area where college girls lay on the rocks. Not good for a creepy middle aged man! However…..after finally deciding to do the cache on a rainy afternoon, it turned out to be a very worthwhile experience and a great clever micro cache. You may suspect it will be lame, but you just never know. It may be very clever without much of a hint of it’s cleverness, especially if you’re one of the first to find and don’t have many logs to go by.

I tend to give the benefit of the doubt, especially locally so will hunt ’em all. But, if I’m driving quite a ways I carefully select which caches I want to look for, specifically to hopefully avoid disappointment and to maximize the chances of seeing some great places that I havn’t seen before. Of course by doing this, I’m sure I’ve skipped many great caches and experiences.

Skipping all micros because you don’t like lame micros would be foolish, cuz you’d miss out on some awesome locations and clever hides and containers. You just never know.

[sandlanders]

I didn’t mean to imply that I don’t like clever hides–I love those! I just don’t want to look for them after a long trip to get to GZ. Don’t really want to go looking for a nano at the end of a three-hour uphill hike a second time.

[jenhen1]

🙄 Aye Carumba. My last 2 posts I was merely writing in generalities, not as responses to any single post. My apologies to Hemi and Sandlanders who may have thought differently. 😉

I totally agree about long hikes to a difficult find. The hike was difficult enough! Let me rest up a bit with cache in hand and enjoy the view before heading on down the trail.

“I wuz here” cards should be outlawed. There, I’ve said it. Just sign the log book to tell us you were here. Nobody gives a dang about your moldy old cards. People who leave them in caches should be forced to listen to Yanni for eternity.

That is so funny! 😆 And, I could not agree more! Sorry to those who use sig cards, but…

Now that this thread has completely veered off course, I’m signin’ off. Ciao! 😉

[Author]

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