micros are killing me

[Northwoods Tom]

@mongo1965 wrote:

…three have only been found a total of nine times. With almost seven months between the last couple of finds. These three are no park an grabs but also not super easy to get to either. Kinda makes me scared to do anymore hides since it seams like people don’t like these kind of hides.

What kills me is all these park an grabs and than you hear about COs complaining about the TFTC logs.

I have two ammo cans far off the beaten path up-north that have been in place for well over a year. Three finds between them. I still believe micros have their place. I don’t go out of the way to get them but grab them when in the vicinity. “Top Spots” hides are a good example! I personally love them! Every now and then, he will throw in a twist to keep you honest. On one of his hides, he had my wife and I scratching our heads for “way” to long. Don’t stop hiding caches because they don’t get found that often! I’ll get to them eventually and I’m sure I’ll will write a lot more than TFTC.

[Astro_D]

Right now, I’m enjoying the roadside micros. I’ve been dealing with Lyme Disease since summer and do not have the ability to enjoy those long (or even semi-long) hikes in the woods like I used too. And I don’t know when I’ll be up to those long hikes. But I still want to get out and “play” the game.

Would I enjoy long hikes in the woods for a micro when there is room for a bigger container? Not really. But chances are it’s a nice walk, a neat location, and I’ll be spending time with friends and/or family so in the end the contanier size won’t really matter.

Thankfully, cachers come in a variety which leads to a variety of caches for all to seek and hide. Who knows, what caches you may be cursing today, may be what you are only able to look for tomorrow. A lesson I know all too well.

[Todd300]

Micros in the woods are one thing…but when there is a micro inside a cluster of pine trees standing together is another thing…I just walk away from those. A bison tube hanging in one of three or four pine trees standing together is most definitely a needle in a haystack hide…and even worse when the cache page rates it as a D1.5 😐

[MawandPawKettle]

I thought of you guys this weekend while caching. Found GC2B68P the biggest cache we ever found. Guess they really do hate nanos! 😆 Paw and I like ammo cans, but have been known to frequent micro P&G’s also. For us we just like to find ’em big small it don’t matter.
Maw

[BeccaDay]

Ha! What a great name for a cache. 🙂 I think the biggest cache container I’ve ever come across was GC9E5E, also one of the better locations as well.

Not all who wander are lost. -J.R.R. Tolkien

[GrannyGoesAlong]

I agree with AstroD-Team… some of us cachers still want to be part of the game but do not have the ability to do more difficult rated terrains. I mostly have to limit myself to 2.5 because of my rheumatoid arthritis. I keep my hike to 1 mile or less and welcome the park & grab micros.

[Uncle_Fun]

Lets be honest. There are way more guardrail and sign post hides than ever, that don’t bring you to an interesting place and have no real value other than as a lame hide. These appear to be the norm now. So saying to put them on your ignore list doesn’t work anymore. These hides were more tolerable when they were the exception, but less so now that they are the norm. Of the last 50 caches I have found, more than two thirds were of this type. It is just too hard to sift through the junk to find quality caches.

Lets not even mention that many of these require parking on the side of the road, where parking wasn’t anticipated, putting the cacher and anyone in their vehicle at risk of being involved in an incident.

Just my 2 cents.

[Todd300]

All I can say are two things:

1) If you don’t like roadside micros, don’t attempt them. You did say you found about 35 caches of this type in your last 50 finds. That’s quite a bit of roadside micros for a guy who doesn’t like roadside micros 😛

2) Not everyone can do 5 mile hikes for a quality cache. Many cachers appreciate being able to just drive up to a cache. Some may have a disability of some sort so it’s all they can do.

Off the soapbox.

[CodeJunkie]

@Uncle_Fun wrote:

Lets be honest. There are way more guardrail and sign post hides than ever, that don’t bring you to an interesting place and have no real value other than as a lame hide.

Just my 2 cents.

I just looked back through some of my recent finds and many were also guardrail and sign post hides. Not lame in my opinion because most were puzzle finals. In fact milestone #1500 was a guardrail hide with a totally awesome field solve. It wasn’t about the final location, but the “puzzle” that got me there.

I understand what you’re saying, but I just wanted to throw it out there that not all guardrail & signpost hides save the same purpose.

[Mister Greenthumb]

Here’s a perspective from the hider side. We just finished up hiding our series of 100 “old silos”. The caches are mostly sign posts and guardrails with a few hanging in trees but all have an old silo within sight. All but a half dozen are micros. The intention was never to hide a series of this proportion. It started with our nine year old grandson Eric wanting to hide a film can in a sign post. There just happened to be a lone standing silo in the field 200′ away. We hid another the same day just for fun and then started seeing that these silos without barns were everywhere. As we hid a few more the logs came in with much more than a TFTC. We got stories of cachers youth time on farms, cachers who worked on farms or helped build silos, cachers using these hides for milestones. Every one of the 100 has several photos posted and Braid Beard’s Gang found all 100 and took a photo of every one. This type of response is why we kept hiding them. And if you think they are lame I challenge you to find all 100. They cover 9 different counties and the most southernly and northernly are 170 miles apart. Up until the snow came we have been getting over 100 logs a week on them and the majority are winter friendly.

[Northwoods Tom]

What’s that saying? Location, Location, Location.

In My Opinion
Those who want to place a cache in the urban areas have a much larger hurdle to overcome. The great parks, open areas, and generally nice spots get snapped up so fast that the new cache placer often doesn’t have much of a choice left on where to place a cache (I know someone will state a specific exception, but look at the bigger picture.). Because of this, those simple hides become more common! Move into a more rural area where there is a great deal of extra space and the cache fun meter goes up.

I live rural, but when I get to Green Bay, Eau Claire or other cities, I find I can get a great cache fix. When I’m in Northern Wisconsin, they are much farther apart and often enjoyable. My solution for all of you out there; cache those rural areas as often as you can but don’t expect to have a mega find day unless you drive like my wife…

Oh, and place an easy guardrail or sign post cache for me now and then so I can grab them also.

[Northwoods Tom]

@Mister Greenthumb wrote:

And if you think they are lame…

NOT!!!

If it hadn’t been for the post, I would have never found out about this great series! I so look forward to finding a BIG chunk of them and wish they were closer! This is what I would call a “Need to Discover Micro”!

[Chatauqua560]

Like GrannyGoesAlong, I must limit my hikes. I try to have at least one cache each trip that pushes the limit and that one accomplishment is the one that usually makes the day. Not a fan of roadside caches on busy roads but out in the “sticks”, I enjoy the time to stop and look around. I like the cemetery caches for the same reason. Places like Dr.Evermore and Lady Elenor and Matthew’s Hide-A-Way are even more special.

[Team Deejay]

I suspect this thread went off track because there are large differences in different parts of the state. What Uncle Fun is referring to are places where people have placed caches every 0.1 miles or so along a highway frontage road or other similar “uninteresting” feature. Note that this is very different from an occasional guardrail hide, or a series along a bike trail, tourist route, or other linear “park”.

If you would like to see an example, use the geocaching map feature following I-94 through Racine and Kenosha counties. Some of the caches you will see are sort of interesting, but most are just a micro hidden in a sign or guardrail. If you made it your mission, you could easily find 50 or so caches in about 4 hours without much effort.

Now, these caches meet the requirements of the guidelines and, quite frankly, aren’t bothering anyone. No one says you have to look for them. On the other hand, placing a cache for no reason other than the fact that there is room for one will, in the long run, take away from the magic of the game. Think about how you felt when you first found a spot through geocaching that you would never have otherwise found. As a hider, I hope to get my finders to have that feeling more often than not when finding my caches. It seems unlikely that anyone will say “Wow! I never would have found that frontage road guardrail without this cache being here”.

And that, I think, is what people are trying to say. This is not about easy terrain or easy hides. It is about trying to do something interesting when you make the effort to place a geocache. A good example of what I’m talking about is an old GR8 Eyes hide in a Wauwatosa bus stop. Of course, the bus stop was nothing special, but the cache highlighted a nearby church built by Frank Lloyd Wright with a spectacular blue domed roof. Yes, we all hate bus stop hides, but here was one that brought you someplace special. Try to live up to her standard and your finders will thank you.

** I don’t normally do this, but this post is my personal opinion and does not necessarily reflect the opinions of the WGA BOD. **

[gotta run]

@Team Deejay wrote:

…placing a cache for no reason other than the fact that there is room for one will, in the long run, take away from the magic of the game.

Well said.

On the Left Side of the Road...

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