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@ThatGuy wrote:
Is this in line with good etiquette?
Sounds like you did the right thing. You could have also made a “Needs Maintenance” log in addition to logging it as a find, which would be a stronger alert to the owner that they need to check on their cache. But I’m sure Brian will get this one fixed up ASAP. 🙂
Some people carry a “geocache first aid kit” with them so they can make repairs to caches they find that are in need of it. You may want to carry a couple notebooks, ziploc bags, pens/pencils (especially pencils in the winter), paper towels for drying a cache, the handyman’s secret weapon (duct tape)… and maybe even spare containers like a 35mm film canister and small tupperware containers.
@Timberline Echoes wrote:
Could you do a flow chart for Poison Oak. We pretty much have the Ivy identified but found out that we will be going by some poison oak near a cache we are planning on doing this week and would like to be able to steer clear of that too.
I think the flowchart will work for poison oak as well, since one of the things you are not supposed to do is look at the shape of the leaves on the suspect plant. PO also has leaflets with 3 leaves, no thorns, and a longer stem on the middle leaf. I’m not sure if the leaflets come off the main stem in pairs like PI, but I’d guess so… I could not find any reference material that says this is true though.
Big difference between the two is that the poison oak leaves kind of look like oak leaves (rounded lobes/tips) when they are mature, and that poison oak is deciduous (loses its leaves in winter, and they grow back in spring). I’m not sure if these plants can actually survive the winter here as the only stuff I’ve seen is short/small plants that look like PI with different leaves… in the southeast it grows as a bush that lives for many years, and on the West coast they really don’t have PI but have PO that can grow as a short plant, woody bush, or climbing vine.
Poison sumac is a different animal entirely (grows as a small tree with leaflets that don’t match the “leaves of 3” rule), but you shouldn’t encounter it unless you are slogging around in a swamp in southern Wisconsin.
Poison Sumac Info
Thanks for the thanks guys. I finally got around to logging my 1000th cache find this morning to make it official.
So far, I’m sure I hold the WI record (if not the world record) for longest time to 1000 finds at 5 years, 4 months, and 5 days (1945 days). 🙂 This gives me a pathetic find rate of .514 caches/day. But if Ken ever makes it to 1000, he will steal the WI record from me.
@Timberline Echoes wrote:
We echo the congrats and were happy to see a few of our caches help you meet your milestone. If we would have known you were coming our way we would have met up with you. You can see our house from Klondike Cache.
I knew we were going to be passing through the TE’s hometown, but unfortunately we were on a “mission” to grab like 20+ different counties in northern Wisconsin over the weekend. There are definitely a lot of great caches left in the northwoods and I will certainly return soon (how about a multiday North Central Wisconsin geo-event?… even better would be one in the dead of winter!).
@Buy_The_Tie wrote:
1. All caches that have been disabled more than 3 Months would get a friendly note posted to the cache page by a geocaching.com administrator.
In addition to this or as an alternative, you should probably contact owners through their geocaching.com profile page… especially since we know some people no longer read all the logs made for their caches. 😉
@OuttaHand wrote:
Do we know if doing one of those MI cleanups actually adds a “Found It” to the cacher’s find count at GC.com ?
I’m pretty sure there is no tie in with geocaching.com here (so no finds for rescuing a cache). I’d think that allowing people to log finds for caches that are not really there or for picking up the pieces of a destroyed cache would elicit a negative response from the cache logging nazis (the same people who hate multiple Attended logs for events).
Since one of the top requested features by the beta testers of the new site was a Cache Rescue system, I will work with Brian (Tie) to come up with something. If a couple other members feel strongly about this and want to be involved in defining this feature, let me know. In addition to posting and recording rescue “missions” like the MiGO site, we could also have functionality that would help the approvers identify caches that have been disabled too long and let members report neglected caches that aren’t yet disabled.
Ditto on seeing an example…
But I’m going to go out on a limb and assume you are seeing the “waypoint code” for a cache, like GCB0EB? The “waypoint code” is often the name of the waypoint for a cache when you download it into your GPS. You can think of it as a short, unique name for a cache assigned by geocaching.com when a cache is submitted.
You can also quickly look up a cache on geocaching.com if you know the waypoint code. From the geocaching.com home page:
– Click on Hide & Seek A Cache in the upper right
– Scroll down and enter the waypoint code (i.e. GCB0EB) into the box next to “By waypoint:”
– Click Find
– Assuming you are logged into geocaching.com, you should see the cache page, including the coordinates for the cacheI am also very big on writing more than just the TNLN/TFTC type logs. Sometimes this means spending significant extra time when logging caches, and sometimes this is difficult when you find a “park and grab” type cache, but I feel I owe this to the owner… as a sort of tip to the owner as OuttaHand said.
From a historical perspective, you used to be able to read every log for every Wisconsin geocache… now we’ve got owners who cannot read all the logs for their own caches! 🙂 In fact, the real reason that Alan put together the original Recent Logs website feature is to make it easier for him (and others) to read all the logs. There used to be a limit on the number of caches that you could watch on gc.com, so once the number of caches exploded past 100 :), this was necessary.
Since it is no longer possible to read every log by everyone, I have considered implementing a WGA website feature (working name: “Saw Logs”) where cache owners (or others) could “mark” a log as being especially important, humorous, well done, etc. The website would display a list of these saw logs for up to 2 weeks after the log was made, making it easy for others to browse some of the more interesting recent logs. We could also have a “hall of fame” to keep track of some of the best logs ever.
A side benefit of the “Saw Logs” feature may be to encourage geocachers to write interesting logs. If they know their log may be seen by dozens or hundreds of people instead of just the owner and those watching the cache, they may be more willing to spend the time writing a “better” log entry.
@Team B Squared wrote:
Jeremy, do you mind if I share this with the people in the Michigan Geocaching Organization Forums?
Nope, share away. Hopefully no one gets PI after using the logic though, since it has my name and email address on it (I can imagine some nasty emails if someone does get a rash). 🙂
@lonesumdove wrote:
So you are saying that the V-creeper does not have any allergic oils and is okay? I see tons of it and am always trying to step over it, etc… if it is not a toxic plant I am sure going to be happy and have more fun caching!
According to this source, Virginia Creeper (aka woodbine) is poisonous/toxic. The berries and stems contain oxalic acid.
But it does NOT have the urushiol oil that causes the rash with poison ivy, oak, and sumac… so as long as you don’t eat it (keep your mouth closed when you dive face first into it ;)), you should be OK!
@jthorson wrote:
Color me impressed.
25 minutes from request to response with a positive ID.
Jeff, this is really just a result of not having enough stuff to keep me occupied at work. 🙂
Speaking of not having enough stuff to keep me busy, I also put together a little flowchart to help people identify poison ivy. Basically it outlines what I look for when I try to positively identify a plant as poison ivy (you can tell I like to think logically :)).
I could find nothing like this on the internet or elsewhere… most sites, posters, identification cards, etc. just have pictures of poison ivy. It is kind of a pain to compare a plant in the field to these pictures. Plus poison ivy leaves can vary from plant to plant and it can grow in a number of configurations, so the pictures given in a guidebook may not exactly match real poison ivy. But if you kind of sort of know what poison ivy looks like, you can simply look for a couple key characteristics on a suspect plant (shown on the flowchart) to either rule it out as poison ivy or positively identify it as poison ivy.
Poison Ivy Identification Flowchart 1.0 (PDF)
Poison Ivy Identification Flowchart 1.0 (JPG)At some point, I plan to add some small, hand drawn pictures to help people with the flow chart decision points. Also, I am not a botanist or anything, so if people have suggestions on decision points to be added or ways to clarify the terminology being used, let me know.
Did it look like this:
According to the great Poison Ivy Information Center website, this is probably Virginia Creeper. Some of the short/new stems start out with 3 leaves, then get 5 when they mature… so you can see plants that have a mix of 3 and 5 leaves. I see these 5 leaved plants quite frequently, as well as some other kind of vine with leaves that look even more like poison ivy (sometimes even purple/red) but they have 3 to 7 leaves per stem.
In addition to having the two extra leaves, the leaves on the Virginia Creeper are oval instead of heart shaped, and lack the longer stem on the middle leaf that poison ivy has.
Bottom line… I think your face will be OK! 🙂
I’m also on the side that thinks that allowing COTM votes to be cast for a cache series isn’t a good idea. Just like we did with event caches, it may be time to stop accepting votes for series.
A cache series and a single cache are really different animals… you can’t make an apples to apples comparison when casting your COTM vote. A cache series may consist of many “pretty good” (in your mind/opinion) caches… does this mean it is better or worse than a single “pretty good” or even “excellent” cache? This is where the “whole is greater than the sum of its parts” type reasoning that onesearching2find mentioned comes into play…
Even with this restriction on voting for a cache series, if you really like a series you could always either select what you think is the best cache in the series or the final/mother cache of the series.
Everybody who said they are coming in this topic should now officially let us know they are coming by registering for the event. See this topic:
Geo-Picnic Event Registration Open
Personally, I have a conflict with my 10 year high school reunion. I’m still debating whether I should just skip the stupid reunion, but if I don’t show that means like 3% or 4% of my graduating class will be absent. (With such a small class, my absence would be noticed, and I’d probably catch some flak from classmates for ditching them.)
What I’m really hoping will happen is that the Board will decide to have an early pancake breakfast before the caching at the Picnic begins. Then I could officially attend the event to keep my Geo-Picnic attendance streak going and make it to the reunion by noon.
If you think having a pancake breakfast is a good idea, and would be willing to come early and get something to eat, post in this topic:
@Cheesehead Dave wrote:
Is it possible to add Washington DC to the list of states? (Or is it somewhere that I’m not seeing?)
Dave, I know you asked for this before, I just ignored it hoping it would go away… 🙂
Maybe we should have another category called “other territories” that would include D.C., Puerto Rico, the Virgin Islands, Canadian providences (maybe? or yet another category?), international waters, Guantanamo Bay ;), etc. Call me a stickler, but I’m hesitant to list D.C. as a state… because it is not a state, it does not appear on the US maps we have on the site, and stuff would start reading funny (like “x of 51 states completed”).
@Cachew wrote:
This has been discussed before – but I can’t seem to find it: How do you determine which Wisconsin counties you have found in?
Check out this topic.
John, you’ve got a couple options, all of which start with running a “My Finds” pocket query on geocaching.com (I’m assuming you know how to do this).
Option 1. Open your “My Finds” pocket query in a mapping program, like ExpertGPS or MapSource. From this graphical view, it is usually pretty easy to pick out the counties, especially if you’ve only cached in a few.
Option 2. Run your “My Finds” pocket query through the excellent CountyCount program. I (and others) have found it to be more than 99% accurate in determining what WI county a cache is located in.
Option 3. Wait for the “My Finds” pocket query parser I’m working on for the WGA site to be completed. I’ve got no ETA on when this might get done, but I’m guessing by the end of July.
Doug of abcdmCachers has graciously shared the source code for the CountyCount program, so the WGA parser will have the ability to determine WI county finds using some ideas “borrowed” from CountyCount. The advantage of the online PQ parser is that all the information, including the date of find, cache name, etc. for your county, state, and country finds will be automatically entered into the WGA database.
My suggestion would be to use the CountyCount to get a list of counties you’ve cached in and use our multiple entry form to enter them on the website. When the PQ parser is completed later, you can use it to easily fill in the details (date, cache, etc.) of your finds.
@Cache_boppin_BunnyFuFu wrote:
How’d you get the one with the counties marked in red, etc. ❓ I have the one for the states that I generate thru that route66 website.
Anne, I’d like people to start using the WGA maps instead of route66 maps, “Map-Maker” Utility (monarch.tamu.edu) maps, etc. in their geocaching.com profile. But I realize that I’ve got to provide some additional features so that the WGA maps “work” for most people… I’m just not sure what the critical features are.
So what do I have to do to get you to switch Anne? Provide custom colors (sounds like you like red :)), add the ability to put notes or text on the maps, plot out the location of cache finds, pay you :)?
If anyone else has ideas for improving the maps, please post them here.
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