[GetMeOutdoors]

You want lame? Check out Yellowstone National Park – A geological gold mine right? You won’t see some of that stuff anywhere else in the WORLD and there are some of the lamest earthcaches there. There’s like 3 or 4 that deal with the same item- Old Faithful – and they all require you to answer basically the same questions and some of the questions don’t even really relate to Old Faithful.

There are also way too many artisan well earth caches in Wisconsin and they all have you do the same thing… measure the output in gal/sec. yeah right. How am I supposed to do that? Carry a gallon jug and a stopwatch with me all over the place? Not very interesting if you ask me. But I guess you get to drink alot of water.

So, my input: An earth cache should feature a somewhat unique geological item. There should certainly not be repetitions items in the same general area (say… 30 mile radius). And instead of answering a question unrelated to the feature, it should prove that the cacher actually learned something while there or had a real hands on experience. Maybe this could come off an informational sign but ideally would have to do with the item itself. On the other side of that coin, the question should not be so technically difficult that it stumps Bill Nye (as are some that I’ve seen). Alternatively, being able to prove visit by having the cachers photo taken at a certain spot is always a winner… and people like to see photos. For those without cameras… answer the geo-question.

The bottom line is that it has to be interesting to those who visit.. seeing the item, learning about the item, and even some shallow research of the item should not bore the cacher.

[GetMeOutdoors]

Thanks, guys. I wish geocaching could have been the primary reason for traveling, I can see how someone could rack them up fast out here! But time doesn’t permit too much getting outdoors 😉 It’s been a great trip. First time out west. And don’t worry, Mathman. I probably wouldn’t have had a chance with Cat’s new one. I stink at puzzles. 😕 But I’m going to try to hit it hard when I get home on Monday. (Unless I don’t wake up til Tuesday.)

[GetMeOutdoors]

Ohhh…. I see. Wow. I’m lucky to have enough time to throw camo tape on a peanut butter jar. This sounds like the rocket science of geocaching. Wish I could have seen it. Though, I probably would have gotten mad and logged the DNF, whether it was there or not! Hopefully I’ll get down to Kenoshaland one of these days and get in some of your extreme caching.

We’re there any other bolts in the cannon missing? Maybe it’s the work a rougue antique bolt collector. Or maybe somebody needed a square head bolt for a geocache they wanted to hide and couldn’t find one in the store 😉 Won’t they be surprised!

[GetMeOutdoors]

Kinda stupid question… If it was threaded and sealed, how could anyone remove it in the first place let alone steal it?

[GetMeOutdoors]

I’m in. also glad for the new version. Firefox is great. I wonder how long it will take microsoft to release IE8 that will no doubt include some of the features we can already have in firefox. Except the excellent security features… they won’t include those.

[GetMeOutdoors]

@tyedyeskyguy wrote:

Very impressive. We’d be happy to get two days in a row. With an active 9 year old, there’s just never the time. 😥

I think you answered your own question there. Active 9 year old LOVE walking in the woods looking for stuff! 🙂

[GetMeOutdoors]

I am the first to pick it up. The “clone” TB says it was placed in the cache I picked this one up from. I contacted the owner months ago originally and about a week ago recently. In fact, the TB that I can find is this one… http://www.geocaching.com/track/details.aspx?id=972374 It looks just like the one I have in my hand and I picked it up from Bokie’s Cache. But the ID on the TB attached is not activated.

The owner is CarolMK. Does anyone out there know her?

[GetMeOutdoors]

I’m not really to up to date on techno-gps-stuff but I do know that caching with the blackberry as the GPS is kinda clumsy. However, the blackberry is perfect to go paperless with. See cacheberry (http://www.cacheberry.com/) . It’s kinda like having GSAK on the trail with you. You can even write your logs right there. This costs the $15 but saves you a ton in service charges from not having to go onlline all the time (assuming you have a decent signal in the woods!) Hope that helps 🙂

[GetMeOutdoors]

Up in the Wausau area, they have hung traps out in many places to help curb the population. At first I thought kid got his kite stuck in a tree then I saw 3 or 4 more of them in other parts of town… kite losing epidemic or gypsy moth traps… must be the latter. They are purple and about the size of a 5 gallon pail. Maybe geocachers could get their hands on a handful of these traps from their respective cities or something and hang them out as they cache.

[GetMeOutdoors]

Going to be joining the 1k clup soon huh Rick! Nice job! I was hoping to see a photo in the log though… 😀

[GetMeOutdoors]

Bikes, Kayaks, Canoes, Cars, Jeeps, ATV, Camel, Donkey; all are suitable forms of transportation when hunting the next find. That’s another cool part of the game 😉

[GetMeOutdoors]

Yeah, INATN is where I originally started looking too, but I wasn’t happy with the results. Most of them are archived after all. You get alot of virtuals too that way. Most caches have a high find rate in their infancy but then trail off. Older caches have more finds, like que232 said. I guess one good indicator is the most sustainable hit rate. But how do you measure that? We need a stats guy! 😉

What I was looking for was twofold 1) find a place to stash trackables that are headed somewhere specific so cachers passing through could pick them up easily and 2) to learn from other successful caches when designing my own.

It’s too bad there’s not a PQ feature that would measure some of this stuff.

Keep crunchin those numbers I guess.
🙂

[GetMeOutdoors]

Well, I admit that I haven’t read ALL the posts in this forum but some of the ones that stood out.

I am definately a supporter of logging each cache found. And though there seems to be a huge controversy around this idea, I do not understand why this would not be commonly accepted. They are separate caches with separate coordinates and each temp cache stand out in it’s own right as a cache, except for the fact that it is temporary. The temporary nature of each cache seem to strengthen the case for individual logging. It’s like a limited time sale at Menards or something… you get extra credit for being in the right place at the right time.

That having been said, I have not heard an objective argument as to why an event with many individual temporary caches should be logged only once. Certainly the permanent caches may be logged individually, why not the temps as well. It seems like a no-brainer to me.

So some view their stats differently, some seriously, some not so much, regardless, why should a cacher finding 1 temporary cache get the same credit as the cacher who found them all (20?). I forget who said it, but the event itself should come up with some creative incentive for finding temporary caches if that incentive cannot be stats.

Now, after all that, the WGA event is the WGA’s event and can certainly do with it what it wishes. It sounds like it might turn some people off, but not enough to make the event a dud. Every cache owner / event owner, etc has the right to make those kinds of decisions, so I guess I can’t really argue about it, all I can do is whine. And any other “group” sponsoring an event still has the freedom to run their event the way they wish to, which may be allowing the multiple finds. So it’s really not that big of a deal I guess.

[GetMeOutdoors]

Yeah, that was definitely a cool one for #300. I love stuff like that 🙂 I will never forget that one!

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