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@Trekkin and Birdin wrote:
Usually I send the answers ahead of logging any finds. That way I don’t forget later.
A good way to approach the logging…I did two virts this past week and logged them without even thinking that “hey you needed to send emails to the owner.” It was hours later that I remembered they were virts and needed special attention.
Just another trick for aging brains, LOL. Photos are what I may forget until weeks later. I know, not required anymore, but if the location calls for it…usually they do…I like to post one or two.
There is one EC owner with caches in Michigan, I cannot remember which one, but when I was logging finds from a trip up there, I received an email from him not more than two hours post my log….I was logging many from a few days trip…telling me it had been X hours since I’d sent my answers and logged my find and my photos were still not up! That is one vigilant cache owner!
“vigilant”… That’s a polite way of putting it. 🙂
@lostby7 wrote:
@astrod-team wrote:
I just spent the last four days sending emails to owners and resizing pictures for the logs of the 50-60 earthcaches (and virtuals) done in 10 different states over the last two weeks.
Let me take the opportunity to say….”WOW.” I get a bit overwhelmed with 10 virts…organizing the information for 50-60 virts is amazing. I wish I was along for that trip it must have been fantastic!
It was alot of fun and thoroughly enjoyable. I originally had about 200 Earthcaches and virts printed out, and placed in a binder by state. Cause who knows where the road was going to lead us. I hated the paper copies, but it was the only sane way I could keep track of all the answers in all the different states for 2+ weeks. I uploaded the pixs each night to our netbook and tagged the ones that were related to earths/virtuals for easier logging later. It was awesome focusing on just the Earthcaches and virts. I learned more of what makes Arches Natl park so amazing, the badlands of South Dakota so weird, the history of the early settlers in Arizona to Utah to Nevada, and jems that were off the beaten trails in quite a few other states.
We were at the north rim of the Grand Canyon and the wind blew the papers right out of hubby’s hands and nearly dumped them over the edge into the chasm. Fortunately they got tangled in a tree/shrub and some crazy person reached out to grab them. (hello…1000 ft vertical drop). We also lost our Oregon 300 somewhere in Arches National Park too. (Another good reason to have paper copies!).
One Earthcache we did there were six criteria – we got five of the six done – as we completely forgot about the sixth cause we were having to much fun. We logged it as a note and not as a find. It was ok with us.
Yeah, doing all these Earthcaches and virts really made us more aware of what we seeing which seemed to make the trip that much more worthwhile and meaningful. Thank you Earthcache placers out there!
Wow, and here I was all impressed with my 42 EC’s and V’s in our week of vacation. But you’ve definately gotten me beat. It took me 5 days to log and upload photos. Very impressive AstroD-Team!
Not all who wander are lost. -J.R.R. Tolkien
@beccaday wrote:
Wow, and here I was all impressed with my 42 EC’s and V’s in our week of vacation. But you’ve definately gotten me beat. It took me 5 days to log and upload photos. Very impressive AstroD-Team!
42 is a lot for a week!!! You should be proud of your accomplishments! I bet you were in some pretty amazing spots too. (Ones we’re hoping to get to in the next couple of years). 😀 I think this was the first vacation we took where it was about the journey and the caching was just an added bonus.
I had some owners request not to send answers until the day you log as it was easier for verification. I also found that many of them requested a silmiliar format for sending answers:
GC# Cache Name
Number of people in your group
Answers….
Instead of number of people, I listed our caching names and added the date visited as well.I haven’t had any complaints or deletions considering I backdated all the cache finds to correspond with the day we did them (hence the date visited in my email answers). Poor Duck just finished logging all his two days ago – a good week plus after I sent the answers.
Question for Earthcache owners do you prefer each person in the group wanting to claim the find to send the answers or one email with all the names of those in the party? Why? Kind of curious as to what the consensus is around here.
@astrod-team wrote:
Question for Earthcache owners do you prefer each person in the group wanting to claim the find to send the answers or one email with all the names of those in the party? Why? Kind of curious as to what the consensus is around here.
Preference is one email with answers from each team not one email answering for several teams. Many times when one person sends answers for several teams the other teams may take days or even weeks to log the find then it get confusing as to whether of not the answers were ever sent…
So what is a reasonable amount of time to wait for an answer before you delete a log? I’m not real stingy, I tend to let a lot slide because I don’t want to be mean. But I had someone log a “Cool” on an EarthCache, no descriptive log, no photo, no answers sent. Two days ago I wrote them a nice note and said that I noticed that they were new and needed to send the answers and asked if they had any questions about caching. I haven’t heard back yet. I think it’s time to delete the “cool”, right?
Not all who wander are lost. -J.R.R. Tolkien
@beccaday wrote:
So what is a reasonable amount of time to wait for an answer before you delete a log? I’m not real stingy, I tend to let a lot slide because I don’t want to be mean. But I had someone log a “Cool” on an EarthCache, no descriptive log, no photo, no answers sent. Two days ago I wrote them a nice note and said that I noticed that they were new and needed to send the answers and asked if they had any questions about caching. I haven’t heard back yet. I think it’s time to delete the “cool”, right?
I would delete it right away and send them a nice note saying they can re-log it as soon as the meet the requirements. That way you don’t have to worry about remebering to monitor it. I don’t have any earthcaches, but that is what I do with the challenge caches that I have. Most of the time it is from new cachers that do not fully understand the logging requirements. It’s not fair to the other cachers who do meet the requirements to let it slide. Be nice when you e-mail them and explain briefly what they need to do.
A one or two word log on my ECs has me hovering over the delete button as soon as I see the log. You sent them a reminder (which you are under no obligation to do)….as this is their first EC and they are relatively new to the game, I’d give them a few more days then delete it.
I had a retro log on an archived traditional cache of mine. Checked the user and found it was their only cache in Wisconsin. I sent them a note asking if perhaps that logged the wrong cache, or if they did log this one if they could at least tell me something specific about the location or the cache. I told them I’d delete the log in 3 days if they didn’t respond.
Using “Microsoft Outlook” as my email client, I dragged my email to the tasks tab and created a task with a copy of the email (with all the details) and set a reminder for 3 days out. This worked well to remind me to delete the bogus log 3 days later.
Aaarrrggh! Why can’t people just follow the submission requirements? This is ruining creating EarthCaches for me! I don’t like having to be mean to people.
Not all who wander are lost. -J.R.R. Tolkien
Becca, We felt the same way, but in most cases of nonresponsiveness, they’re…non-responsive. We’ve only had one individual get nasty, and really the language used in response to a “if you didn’t get that one item, tell us the rest and we’re good with it” really should have been reported to groundspeak.
The really sincere ones are always nice in return and will usually explain why they couldn’t complete some tasks, or forgot to send answers or whatever.
Oh this is getting so frustrating! I’m estimating here but I bet that 20 out of the last 25 or so EC “found it” logs I have gotten I’ve had to contact the finder to ask for answers. Come on people! Sorry, I just had to rant because this is getting frustrating. It makes me want to quit creating them.
Not all who wander are lost. -J.R.R. Tolkien
@beccaday wrote:
Oh this is getting so frustrating! I’m estimating here but I bet that 20 out of the last 25 or so EC “found it” logs I have gotten I’ve had to contact the finder to ask for answers. Come on people! Sorry, I just had to rant because this is getting frustrating. It makes me want to quit creating them.
I need to do some of your E.C.s.
I’m the other side of the coin. It took me a while to get going on Earthcaches due to the fact that I always thought I would get answers incorrect and have to make multiple trips. I have pleasantly found out that in many of the answer submissions I often get nice responses back if I make an error or have a question. Beyond the cache owner call of duty but boy is it nice.
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