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Event photos?
Things found/seen while caching?
Animal encounters on the trail?I have no brilliant ideas for an album name, but it’s a great idea.
Add me to the list of people who found the parallel world thing thought provoking. Fun read.
We’ve archived two. One was archived because people tended to be careless in replacing it and it kept ending up in the wetland. Too many maintenance visits! We might rework it to be smaller, but the point had been to provide kids swag of a nature exploration variety.
The other we archived because we decided it was too tough for a cemetery hide. We redid it with a different kind of hide, and one that drew attention to one particular stone.
I had to laugh at Bill’s comment. You can sure tell a difference in cache rich areas. If *any* of our caches have had 50 visits, EVER, I’d be thrilled!
Course, it seems like what we place isn’t all that popular—-long hikes in interesting terrain, letterboxes and sneaky containers (Trekkin’s fave). Not usually quick finds.
Congratulations on another milestone! Glad to have shared a few along the trails with you.
Congratulations on the big day…..did you sense us along for the fun in spirit?
Annie, These are GREAT ideas. It’s true that big events show big impact. What a rotten deal about the garden last year, though. I’m a gardener, so I’m always pretty careful in those settings. Heck, I’ve been known to do a little weeding while searching!
I’ll make sure board people see this thread, if they haven’t already. The fall event would be a great place to try some of these ideas out. Thanks for sharing your brainpower!
The LaCrosse Airport has a beach right by it where the waterskiing team does its shows. The runways aren’t quite that close, however, since the airport expanded and moved operations a bit west. Now it’s mainly the private carriers and pilots’ playground.
I think I’d dig a hole in the sand if I saw something like this!
Dave,
I don’t think your “diatribe” is too harsh. I agree that part of the problem is the fact that the vast majority of cachers do NOT visit forums and probably don’t place caches themselves. In past threads, other cache owners have stated they would rather people take the stuff for the kids and let the owner know in the log, rather than throwing a bunch of junk or even trash into it “to trade.” We also try to stock any of ours with a decent choice of goodies, and like everyone else, when maintenance time comes……it’s filled with people’s cards, useless drink chips and rubber band bracelets.
We went out on a limb a couple years ago. Our third Coulee Birding cache was placed specifically for kids. In it were things like kids’ Natl Geographic field guides, little magnifying glass things for kids to look at bugs, various nature related kids’ tools, and a pair of good quality Audubon children’s binoculars for the first child to help find it.
Thankfully, others did respect that and leave them for a couple of little preschool boys. Can’t say as much for the rest of the goodies. Or the cache, for that matter. Hopefully the items taken have sparked in interest in the natural world for their takers, if nothing else. We had to check it many times. It was clearly labeled, “may need to wade,” and placed very well above the flood lines. Time after time, it was found…..in the water. People hurried to replace it, whined about the three foot walk on a log bridge over the water to the huge tree and…..threw in crap.
We archived it last fall. It was the first time we’d ever archived a cache, but there is no reason for it to have been in the water so many times. If people respected the placement and returned it, it wasn’t going anywhere. If people traded even somewhat fairly, it would have been fine. But we hated having a cache that was a money pit to keep stocked for people who either don’t know how to say “no” to their kids if they don’t have swag, or don’t care.
I don’t know what the answer is. I’ve helped at a couple local How-to events and stress these things, and know that everyone else in the state does so as well. There are cache notes in the caches, but no one ever reads them. We try in a respectful way to direct new folks to consider the cache owner, but then they have to take the bait and run with it, or spit it out, I guess.
Basically, I’m afraid much of what we see is a reflection of society in general, which seems to say……”Get out of my way, it’s mine!”
You know, thrill seeker that I am, skydiving is one thing I’ve never wanted to do. Hang-gliding, parasailing, those are things I’d like to do someday.
For some reason, the skydiving doesn’t do it. But have fun. I’ll bet it’s a great rush!
Like cheeto, I tend to watch caches we’ve found, or hope to find sometime soon and want to keep up on the logs of those who have found it. I have a watch on the Isle Royale EarthCache, because sooner or later, we’ll get there. The photos are often worth the watch.
I just put a watch on three new ones around Mosinee, because they look so darn cool. A paddling night cache, for one. They have our name on them, just not sure how soon we’ll get there.
Congratulations! What a great way to enjoy your travels.
Welcome…..was ut a Wolf Spider? We get those at the cabin and they can be HUGE!!!
Shane, The water we had to cross was only about knee deep—-our knees. For you, it would probably be calf deep. 😉 Water sandals would be fine.
Pete, This is one that if there was very much snow cover, it would be luck only that finds this one. I hope others check it out, it was a lot of fun and not that hard, really.
Yes, we can Pat! Very nicely done, as always. We really got a chuckle out of all the homes on the way there….Trekkin’ taught at a school that served an area much like this once, and has some funny stories about home visits to round up errant students!
If we weren’t heading down to set up at the Villa Louis Rendezvous tomorrow, we’d be in Eau Claire grabbing that one and others, too.
This is helping. We’ve had to scrap our western travel plans, which would have included a boatload of letterboxes in the Black Hills. I’m sure the Badlands and Black Hills will still be there next year, however!
Trekkin’ and I celebrated 29 years on Sunday, out canoeing and caching. It helps that we both enjoy this, and that our sons are mostly grown up. Our younger son has been known to geocache, with us and on his own with friends, but rarely logs his finds. He probably has at least 50, too. So, not a numbers guy there.
When the boys were home, this wasn’t our “game,” but we had other pursuits we enjoyed. We made their events first priority, but tried our darndest to raise them to appreciate and enjoy active outdoor pursuits, too. Some of it seems to have stuck, though they express their interests differently on their own terms.
Actually, geocaching is one thing that has helped combine our separate interests quite nicely, and we’ve found that we probably spend more time together as a result than before, when I’d go birding alone and he’d be hunting or fishing, as examples. Each situation is surely unique.
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