[Team Deejay]

Roger,

You can have as much time as you need to maintain your caches. Just post a note to the cache page that you need more time. The idea is to shutdown caches which are completely abandoned and in need of repair. Since you want to keep your cache active, just post the note so it doesn’t keep coming up in my screens. I’m certain that someone local will repair this one soon, since you have asked.

And as someone who is reliant on terrain ratings (Julie just graduated up to 2 star last weekend), I can tell you that most of the terrain 1 ratings are accurate (or at least only really 1.5). The most notable exception in your area is Lakecache in South Milwaukee. This cache requires that you descend on rough log stairs about 200 feet into a ravine, follow a short length of wet, rocky trail, traverse a sandy beach for about 100 yards, and then climb up a small hill (maybe a 5 foot climb at 5% grade). And yes, I did this on crutches. I will always remember making the trek, but I don’t recommend this for anyone else with a handicap.

[Team Deejay]

Letterboxes can be just like a mystery cache. There is nothing you could do that would push it to be “too much like a mystery cache”. That said, be sure you have GPS usage to find the cache. If you are using verbal directions, they should start at some random point, not at a parking lot, trail intersection, or other “obvious” location which could be found without a GPS. Note that this same restriction applies to mystery caches.

[Team Deejay]

Wow! Congrats, guys!

[Team Deejay]

It is the same as a regular geocache (traditional, multi, or mystery) except the contents include a stamp which letterboxers use to stamp there books and a stamp book that letterboxers imprint their personal stamps into. Typically these are cross-listed on Letterboxing.org, but that is not a requirement. Many of them are “mystery” types where the coordinates take you to some random spot and then you are given verbal instructions to get to the final site, but again, that is up to the cache owner.

[Team Deejay]

I’ve been staying out of this thread for various reasons, but I do need to say that these particular logs will have no effect on whether a cache is archived for being disabled for an extended period of time. We use a standard procedure for this, as follows:

1. Checks are performed monthly, around the first of the month.
2. If a cache has been disabled for more than 3 months without any notes from the owner on the cache page, it will receive a standard “Fix it or lose it” warning letter. (This time frame was specified by Groundspeak.) The only exception is if the original disable note included a longer time frame for a specific purpose, such as “I am disabling this until April 15 to allow the snow to melt.” or “The park is closed until June 1, so the cache is disabled until then.”
3. If the cache owner posts a note on the cache after the warning indicating they need more time, they get it.
4. If the cache owner sends an email to me telling me they need more time, they get it, but I tell them to post a note so that they don’t get flagged again the following month.
5. If nothing happens after a month, the cache gets archived. If the owner later asks to have the cache reinstated, we will do that if it still meets the guidelines (meaning no one else has already put another cache there, which has happened a few times.)

So, as you can see, posting a Needs Archived on a disabled cache is basically a waste of time, as it is already being watched. Simultaneously posting 100 SBAs on disabled caches (resulting in 200 emails hitting my mailbox, mixed in with all the legitimate emails and notifications) is likely to convert me from my normal “nice, pleasant, helpful” mode to my “not so nice, snarky” mode. So please don’t do this! Like Brian said, we really want you to use the Needs Archived and Needs Maintenance logs when they are merited, but they are not merited for caches which are already disabled.

[Team Deejay]

@nohandsgps wrote:

Bumping into to fellow cachers was half the fun especially when you get a group of them together trying to figure out how to turn 130 degrees using a gps? Had it not been for the group, I may have been walking in circles for hours.

Maybe you need to invent the “nohandscompass”! 😆

[Team Deejay]

What they don’t tell you on that website (unless I missed it) is that the origin of that expression is the specific “Happy Days” episode referenced above. After that episode, most people thought the show had run out of ideas.

[Team Deejay]

@marc_54140 wrote:

@Lostby7 wrote:

We will see; I think it will be close to Mega status…it was a great time Marc….sorry you couldn’t make it.

Not ‘couldn’t make it’. I chose not to go. I figured there would be way too many people at all the cache sites, and was not interested ……

Ya know, Marc, this was a lot different than other events I have attended. Unlike most local events, the choice to use permanent caches made the distance between the caches significant. While we did run into some people, it never felt like a parade of people lining up to sign the log. On the other hand, we ran into a lot of old friends on the way to and from caches, and met a lot of new friends as well. All and all, we had a great time and got a few finds. Doesn’t get much better than that.

[Team Deejay]

First of all, where you are camping is the Southern Unit of the Kettle Moraine, not the North. That said, I’d probably skip Bare Escentuals. This cache is wet, nasty, not loggable, and apparently not being maintained by its owner. The earthcaches are all nice, but not really the “geocaching experience”. Also, just across highway 67 is the Scuppernong Trail system, which has a couple very nice multis along with some hikes to traditional caches.

[Team Deejay]

We can claim 255 DNF logs. The only time we don’t log one is if we were the last people to search and had already logged the most recent DNF.

I do think that most experienced finders log their DNFs. You can see this by looking at the DNF logs on the recent logs page. I would think that anyone posting here probably already understands that posting DNFs is necessary to keep the cache listings accurate. Now if we could just get all the cache owners to pay attention to them…

[Team Deejay]

You don’t EVEN want to know how many emails I get like this. Pretty much a sure way to drive me into Snarky mode.

[Team Deejay]

I can tell you what NOT to buy, as I have one. While the Palm Zire Z22 is a nice unit at under $100, it has a problem for geocachers. The display is almost unreadable in bright sunshine due to glare. Looking at some other units, the key is apparently to get a unit with a “transreflective” display. So, if you see me duck under a bridge or go out of my way to stand under a big tree, its not because a cache is there. I’m just trying to read my Palm.

[Team Deejay]

@SammyClaws wrote:

@Team Deejay wrote:

We get notified for the Needs Archived logs, but not the Needs Maintenance logs. I use the WGA website to see the Needs Maintenance logs as well, so I look at each of those also.

Where on the WGA do you find that list? I would definitley check that list out before planning a route of 30 caches.

For you, Steve, it would be easier to filter your query by log type in GSAK. Just go to the log tab of the filter dialog, change logs to search to “Last 5”, uncheck the “Select All” box next to log types, and then check the “needs maintenance” and “needs archived” boxes, and hit Go. This will give you a list of all the caches in the DB which have one of these two log types in the last 5 logs. Alternatively, you can also filter for every cache which does NOT have these types of logs, and just search for those.

[Team Deejay]

We get notified for the Needs Archived logs, but not the Needs Maintenance logs. I use the WGA website to see the Needs Maintenance logs as well, so I look at each of those also.

My thinking is that you should post a NM log whenever you think the cache needs maintenance. This would be for wet logs, broken containers, insect infestation, and the like. It is also ok to post it if you are fairly certain that a cache is missing.

A Needs Archived is appropriate when you find a cache on private land/school property without permission (i.e. you are cited, arrested, detained, questioned, or chased off the property by a guy with shotgun), placed in forbidden area (mailboxes, train tracks, bridges, etc.), or when there is no response from the owner after numerous requests for maintenance, cache checks, etc.

So what happens when you post a NM/NA log? In the case of major violations and access issues, we archive the cache right away. Fortunately this is very rare. In all other cases, I look at the caches and make a judgment. If this is the first log to note a problem, or the other logs noting the problem are all within the last month, I just ignore it and give the owner time to fix it. If, on the other hand, I find a cache with complaining logs going back more than a month, I disable it and post my usual “fix it or archive it” note. If the owner ignores it for another month and doesn’t email me with an explanation, I archive the cache.

In the case where someone is claiming the cache is missing, I use the same “one month” rule above, plus, I look for a significant number of DNF logs in a row. So, what is “significant”, you ask? I use Dave’s Law of Consecutive DNFs, which is

A cache is probably missing if the number of consecutive DNFs exceeds the difficulty rating squared plus 1.

So, if a one star difficulty cache has 3 consecutive DNFs, it is probably missing. On the other hand, a five star difficulty cache with 10 consecutive DNFs wouldn’t concern me. Note that I also exclude DNFs where the person logging is really logging a “Did Not Look” rather than a “Did Not Find”, such as “I got to the cache site, but there were a bunch of mosquitoes so we gave up and went to the bar.”

The final rare exception is when the NM/NA log states that the person logging removed the cache for some reason. In those cases, I just disable it right away and let the owner enable it when they get it replaced.

[Team Deejay]

Assuming you want accurate street maps in your GPSr, you will need to buy a European map for the GPS. I don’t know if your older GPS units can use the microSD cards, but if so, you might be able to borrow it. Alternatively, just buy it and then resell it on Ebay after you are done. If you want to navigate using a laptop instead of your handheld, Autoroute 2007 (The European version of S&T) is available on Amazon for around $40.

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