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@Trudy & the beast wrote:

4. When we look at the logos of successful businesses, it is noteworthy that each is immediately recognizable. Consider Chevrolet’s bad bow tie, The MB three pointed star, The logos of Microsoft, Nike, the Olympic rings are all immediately recognizable, very simple and effective. Simplicity is a key. Of course these companies have poured tons of cash into advertising and we have no intention of doing that, but simplicity still cannot be overemphasized.~tb

Hmmm, sounds like a good idea for a cache…

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This is just a 10 minute exercise in concept only. The ides is to represent the four seasons of caching in Wisconsin. Needs to much more simplified. One bloom for spring, a falling leaf or two for fall, a snow drift for winter etc., and better still if it’s reduced to a few colors. If it doesn’t get too busy, each quadrent could hold a cache type. Bison tube, ammo can, keyholder, etc.

To really get a decent logo, you need to invest some time into concepting and choosing which concepts to explore. Out of those you explore the good ideas and go through a few more rounds to get to some final options that are ready for presentation.

The idea that you are going to solicite ideas for a logo and then just pick one is, in my perfessional opinion (I do this stuff for a living) very short-sighted. I think WGA should step up to the plate and get some professional help so we end up with an outstanding logo that respresents all of our outstanding Wisconsin caches.

Don’t take any offence, anyone, ideas are ideas, but none of these, including my concpet, are any where near the quality of the existing logo, however rudimentary it may be. It is clean, simple, direct and uncomplicated. Everything a logo should be.

IMHO, the responsibility of effectively refreshing this established logo should be left to the professionals. Even I would call in help from my piers to present 6 good options for the cacing community to vote on.

To the BOD. Please re-consider your approach to coming to a new logo design. If you are intereseted in having me persue logo options, I guarantee, 100%, that neither you nor the vast majority of Wisconsin geocachers, will be disappointed.

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Ah, I love the Ice Grotto, unfortunately it was so warm last year that when I visited there was nothing to see. I assume this year the grotto was in much better shape. With spring though, most cachers will not see it like they should until next fall. When I get out that way again when the ice fall is present, I will be sure to visit and log this Earthcache, one that I had in mind myself.

I too have some on the stack and am simply not finding the time. I’m hoping with this warm weather that I can make some time now and get a couple Earthcaches on my list.

Thanks Gary for setting the bar so high. Can’t wait to get an excuse to travel and log some of yours. Well done on all your achievements in the area of Earthcacheing!

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Thanks for the Kudos, all!

Stopped in here to drop a milestone for Sagasu who hit 1500 with his son this past weekend. That guy’s like the Energizer Bunny… will his batteries ever wear down?

And then I spotted the milestone thread. You just can’t fly under the radar with all these forum fiends…

Just happy to still be here as lots of other things have taken priority over the sport and I don’t always maintain the balance between it and the other life I lead. I guess the caching community is lucky that I DO have other stuff vying for my time or you’ve be seeing a half dozen puzzles every week!

But, don’t worry the ideas just keep coming and I have to keep working them into caches cause I’m such a Head Case, so you will certainly have more pesky blue ?’s this year than you can handle.

I do love the idea of a Puzzle Hint for every milestone I reach! So here are 6 hints to get me up to snuff.

Milestone 100: My first 3 puzzles have something in common.
Milestone 200: Charolette ate a Giz cache before I fed her.
Milestone 300: If a rat walked a mile (presicely) to find some Cheese in his small World, where would he have come from?
Milestone 400: Preemption 44.15.5xx 88.26.0xx
Milestone 500: You can’t read the !Signs! if you are standing on them
Milestone 600: Your left ear doesn’t always hear what your right ear does.

Thanks everyone for all of your great logs in the past. Your encouragement and appreciation drive me to be ever more creative in the caches I place and that can only be a good thing.

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Whatever you settle on as a community I’m fine with, just don’t look for the designation on my caches.

As I stated before, I hope many Kids get an opportunity to visit some of my (and others) more creative and rewarding caches and aren’t ignored because they don’t have a KFC designation.

I, personally, do not like it when my ammo cans getting “re-stocked” with McD cast-away crap, in fact, I make a point of pulling it out of my regular sized caches when I find that kind of stuff in there. To that ends I have made almost all of my Ammo can caches THEME related so the stuff that does get put in there relates in some way to the cache.

I am content to know that there are many other ammo boxes out there for kids to trade down or take cast-away crap from. Now there’s an acronym I can use, CCC (Cast-away Crap Cache).

I think of all the creative, historical and educational caches out there that wouldn’t fit this designation and it would be a shame if families avoided them just because they didn’t end with an ammo can of junk.

Anyway, you can see that I am pretty opinionated when it comes to this topic and KFC finals and that’s just me. So, take no offence, just don’t be surprised when you see a new PUC cache pop up… (Parent Unfriendly Cache)

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These blasted forums… can’t go a single day lately without feeling compelled to write a novella.

As a purveyor of many puzzles I would be remiss not to say a few things about my appreciation and approach to them.

First, I tend to side with Zuma. I personally hate spending more than an hour on any given puzzle, especially when I feel like I am potentially not going to get to a solve without help. Precisely why I shelved SSSS. If I haven’t made any progress on a puzzle in that time it goes to the bottom of the stack. As for the convoluted code puzzles, I’m no fan. I want something more out of solving puzzles than just “breaking the code” and then going out to find the bison tube.

If I make progress on a puzzle and I feel like it’s enough to carry the solve through to the end but get hung up, then I just shoot the owner an e-mail request for a nudge. I’ve got puzzle to create with what little time I do have.

That’s it for me. If I don’t solve in an hour, I ignore it or get help from the owner. I think there would be a lot less consternation if others did the same. It pains me to know, for example, that -cheeto- has 10 hours into Espagutti and hasn’t asked for any help. But then, that just the way some people play. They want the complete solve and if that’s the case they have to live with the frustration of solving them solo. Their reward is the great feeling of accomplishment when they finally do make the solve. When -cheeto- does solve that one he will feel really good about it. This I know.

Here are my guiding principles for placing caches, of any type.

1. If someone asks you about an S|S cache you should remember it, either for location, container, historical content, or a good laugh.

2. If you can see an S|S cache before you are on top of it, then it wasn’t hidden like it was supposed to be. (there are exceptions).

3. You should never walk away from an S|S cache feeling disappointed or that it was a forgettable waste of your time.

This is how I approach the sport and why I enjoy creating them so much more than finding them.

There is such a great variety of puzzles out there that I think you’re cheating yourself by saying “I hate puzzle caches” and ignoring them altogether. Take another look at the puzzles in your area and you may find that you have been missing one of the most enjoyable aspects of the sport.

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@LDove wrote:

😯 Some puzzles, but only because I am too dumb to figure them out. THAT is why I am going to get some expert advice from Marc in his workshop! 😀

Don’t forget to go for a tour afterwards and get a few puzzles off your list…

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@LDove wrote:

😕 Well, you could always be lame and try my PU, What a Stinker. It is winter friendly, but not USER friendly. Just throw a rock at it and I will consider that a log signature, I don’t care… 😈 Congrats – you won’t have any trouble finding caches in West Bend! 😉

That’s a great suggestion as I think Milestones are lame and it would be perfect fit with that sucky, absolutely vile and completely worthless cache.

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Traditional is not on the list? That is my least favorite. Especially the tiny traditionals on pine trees, I hate those suckers! (oh wait, I just put one of those out today)…

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@Team Hemisphere Dancer wrote:

Also kids minds are like sponges wanting to soak up all the information that they can fit in their heads. With that in mind, please leave a little bit of knowledge for them to learn about the environment they are walking in. Look at it as a living classroom. Topics can be of any variety such as Nature, Geology, or History.

This is probably the bast part of the designation. I try to make everything I put about about something more than signing a log. But it is not always possible me to place a regular sized ammo can in, say, an Historic textile mill, where I certainly think kids would get a kick out of seeing a hundred year old machine chugging away. That’s an example of a cache that I have a “kid friendly” designation on, but doesn’t fall into your criteria.

My fear is that this designation will take on some merit with family cachers and out-of-town cachers, who will start pulling PQ’s to do just the KFC’s in teh Valley and miss caches like, Grapes of Wrath, Lutz Got Some Ice Off That, Pace Yourself, Again!, A Dam Tender Spot, Ahoy, I Zeeland, Postmarked | Faithful to my Master, Opti-mistic, Artisans of Appleton | For the Brunn of It, Big Sty Country, Matty told Hatty, For Immediate Release…, Boxed in a Corner, Consult the Oracle to name a few, and that list goes on.

All of those are fun for kids of any age to do, and many of them are specifically geared towards kids being involved. However, I’m not going to add the KFC designation to these caches (not just because they don’t fit the bill, but because I’m content with the Attribute) and I guess I will simply have to live with the consequences.

@Team Hemisphere Dancer wrote:

Here are also some for the “requirements” for the designation. I purposely left off the hike distance because I like to get them walking and to eliminate that would be too restrictive. Besides there are a lot of neat stuff to show the kids while walking through the woods.

1. Must be of regular or large in size.
2. Kid type swag.
3. Must have a short lesson describing something in the theme of the cache written to no more than a 6th grade level.

Happy to see this fairly open set of requirements, especially the leaving off the distance thing. I agree that taking kids for hikes should be considered a good thing.

@Team Hemisphere Dancer wrote:

One last thing. My heart is not set on the whole “Chicken” thing. If someone has a better acronym then by all means post it. I had one but the reviewers didn’t think it was Kid friendly.LOL

I hope you all realize that I was just playin wit cha in the logo I posted. I was seriously not intending for that to be considered!

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Seriously though, I’m not sure where I come down on this one.

I love kids, especially my own.
I love caches, especially my own.

I though that combination would have mixed well, but my kids aren’t all that enthusiastic when it comes to caching because of what they find, specifically in KFC’s. Maybe it’s just my kids. Maybe because the oldest got burned early on. Or maybe they just don’t like it.

Here’s why I wonder about the designation. What does “Kid Friendly” mean?

A cache that a 5-yr old would love, i.e., full of castaway McD toys would not be at all liked by a 12-yr old. That 12-yr old kid might love an Evil Monkey cache cause he gets to climb to get it and could care less what’s in the container. By the same token, an 8-yr old might love to go get those 5-star island caches cause he/she loves being in a kayak. It’s all relative to the kid, isn’t it? Aren’t these all caches that some kids will love?

Or are we just talking about caches that you can step out of the car to get? Personally, I want my kids to walk a half mile and get some exercise. Some day you can ask them about the trek to Goosy Larry which both my 7-yr old and 5-yr old walked to (.5 mile) at night in 10˚ weather, and they both enjoyed the walk and cache hunt even though we were frozen to the core and didn’t find a cache.

I actually think the KFC double entendre is perfect! It designates caches that will have McD toys and other junk of equal or lesser value, just like a kids meal. you couldn’t have come up with a better acronysm.

To the point, I’ve actually gotten away from ammo cans since I start them out with 2-5$ games and puzzles and juggling balls and kites and dominoes, etc. and without fail they are reduced to junk in short order. I don’t have any faith in the optimism that this trend will change.

Anyway, that my kids meal worth and have no fear, I will be putting out a KFC in the next week, but don’t be surprised if it isn’t an ammo can!

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@zuma wrote:

I don’t think, and I don’t think S/S meant to imply, that all Lonely caches are delinquent. Some are, of course, and those should be archived or adopted. But most of them are just in areas where geocaching traffic is less, which is the only issue with your caches. Your caches are great, and it would be a shame to decrease the available number of caches in the BRF area.
zuma

Yes, PCFrog, please don’t over-react to this thread. The question I was getting to had more to do with Puzzle caches than anything else.

The Lonely Cache Game will take care of itself. If indeed you have many unvisited caches on the list, eventually someone will get out there to find them and then they may post a note like “Great cache, wish more people would get out here!” or “Tried for a long time but couldn’t find it and it may be time for the owner to have a look”. Both of these reactions accomplish the mission of the game.

Even if they are visited once a year, they may be great caches that just don’t get the attention or traffic they deserve.

I don’t think there’s any reason to archive any of yours based on anything you’ve read in this thread, unless there are serious issues with them. You can always find an area cacher to serve as Trailboss or at least put them up for Adoption first, if that is the case.

Unless they really are sucky, in which case, feel free to archive!

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Interesting feedback.

I expect that the lonely cache game will flush out the caches that need attention.

I posted the Poll question not necessarily to get everyone to comment on cache placer’s responsibilities, but to get a sense of how everyone’s response about Puzzle cache finals would jive with my sentiments on the issue.

Observations:

There is a strong sense that everyone should be responsible for their caches, and perform whatever maintenance they need when they need it. This is assumed and understood (by most).

That an infrequently visited cache does not mean a “bad” cache. Quite the contrary. An infrequently visited puzzle may be a top-notch cache, just difficult to solve and find.

If there are good caches are there, traditionals, multi’s or otherwise, and there is little or no room around them for any more caches, so be it.

At some point and in some places, specifically Appleton, we have reached cache saturation in almost all of the public parks. I understand where Hemi is coming from on this. In another year, with the prolific cache placers we have in the area, there simply will be no more room in Appleton Public Parks for any new caches. This doesn’t concern me as I am adept at working around the issue, but does concern new cache players who are just starting out and want to place a traditional in a park. They are going to be pretty quickly dissuaded from placing new caches and they may in turn, turn them off from the sport. I think this is Hemi’s larger point.

Unanswered questions:

One question I was asking, specifically, was whether or not you’d be willing to move a Puzzle cache final where the final location has no bearing on the Puzzle. For example, would you move a Puzzle final from a Park location to a more urban location if that meant opening up the spot for a traditional? In hindsight, that should have been my poll question.

Any response to that?

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