state of geocaching

I went geocaching last week.

Yes, I admit it. In the hopes of not letting geocaching pass me by, I visited a local state park to do some caches I had never done. Some were easy, some harder. But in the end, the hope was to find a way to get the “caching bug” again.

It all leads me to the next installment of this series, however.

Creative caches (in the urban setting) vs. the old-fashioned ammo box in the woods after a fun walk and/or hike.

See, it seems in recent years that creative hides have become the norm. The micros go extremely far in testing a cacher’s mettle, patience and creativity when finding a cache.

Some of the “creative” hides I’ve come across in recent years include:

• Cut-out logs
• Fake mushrooms on trees
• Fake pieces of gum
• Fake bolts on guardrails
• Fake sticks (sometimes in the woods)
• Fake sprinkler heads
• Tops of chain-link fences
• Fake plants
• Fake electrical covers
• Fake rocks (sometimes in a pile of rocks)
• Fake broken beer bottle
• Flat magnet caches (can be on anything, including signs etc.)
• Fake fruit (hanging in a tree)
• Fake reflectors

Some others, which I’ve not personally found, but have seen photos of or have heard about:

• Fake electrical outlet (seriously)
• Fake cables (such as at the bottom of a phone pole)
• Fake bugs/insects
• Fake cigarette (seriously)

Of the caches above, I’ve enjoyed some. Others I’ve thought they were a waste. I understand being creative. But there’s a difference between being creative and just thinking you are all evil.

Is that the point of geocaching?

Being out on the trails is so much nicer than finding "creative" urban hides.

People have also started to actually unhinge official signs (such as on a electrical pole) and drill a hole, place a micro and put the sign back. You have to find the right way to remove said sign, take the micro, replace and get it all set. My issue here? Not only being potentially dangerous (depending on how it’s done), it’s illegal. I’m pretty sure most companies didn’t — and won’t — give permission to drill in these poles. I’ve seen this a few times and it blows my mind each time when I see it. I realize it’s supposed to be a “devious” or “evil” hide, but when you are doing something that likely has not been OKd, then it’s bordering stupidity.

There’s a difference between being creative and doing something illegal and potentially dangerous. I don’t say dangerous necessarily for personal safety, per say, but in the situation that someone could get in quite a bit of trouble if the wrong person/people saw them messing around with the pole.

Look, I have an evil hide of my own. It’s a nano on a square in my town. It’s easy to get, but it’s a tough little bugger. Over time, I’ve tried to make things easier (through hints etc.) because I don’t want people going away not finding the cache. I especially felt this way after once receiving a nasty e-mail about the hide.

I say right off the bat that it’s not easy and people may be aplenty. So I warn. But I also want to make sure people can find it.

Outside of that one, most of my caches are pretty straight forward. Some of them include harder puzzles (I know, many people don’t like puzzles), but I have a geochecker so people can check coordinates and I’m more than willing to help. When they solve said puzzles? It’s a decent walk to good caches.

I do, too, have a couple of park-and-grab micros. Some of those will be archived soon as I start my quest of placing more quality caches (and the archiving after a certain amount of time idea).

But that shows geocaching growth, I always thought.

Still, when I go to an area, I look around. I see micros. Many times, I see notes about evil hides. When I see a 3, 4 or 5-star difficulty rating, I know it’s going to be some sort of a “clever” micro hide. I don’t mind them sometimes. But it’s becoming more and more of the norm.

Seriously, the electrical cover cache is getting real old. It’s time to move on. Same with the fake bolt.

That leads me back to the beginning.

After writing the first two stories in this series, I decided I’d see what I could do. Get out and walk a few miles. Find a few caches. Take my time with things. And, let’s see what I could come up with.

So I hit up Gilbert Lake State Park, just outside of Laurens, NY.

For the day, I explored many trails and found about eight caches. Many were larger size, whether lock-n-lock containers or ammo cans. I took the time to look through the caches and reading the log books.

That also showed my point I’ve made a few times — nobody cares about the log anymore. A sign-and-dash and on their way.

There was one cache, however, that I enjoyed more than the others — Gilbert Lake Split Tree Family Fun Cache (GCAC2). It was placed in May of 2001 — a year after the game got started.

Though likely not the first finder, this was the first page in the log book at an old cache I found. Very cool.

For those who have logged online, I’m the 162nd finder of the cache, which is pretty cool. It’s historic and one of the, if not the, oldest active cache in our area. It’s a traditional ammo can, placed the way ammo cans often are. The find isn’t too difficult. The coordinates are quite good and the end result was a find of an oldie.

Though there was some useless swag in the box, the fin part was the log. Surfing through it was like surfing through some geocaching history in our area.

This also showed the trend I was talking about, however.

It was about 2009 or so when the logs in the book went from being longer and written out to signing just names. And that trend continues. I put a bit more than a signature in the log, but it really was interesting to see where things started going a little different.

Is it the smart phone? Is it just people not worrying about the log anymore. Is it more of a situation where people would (sometimes) rather write longer online (though isn’t always the case, of course).

Still, that the log book was in good shape and in the cache was a testament to the age and hide. It was fun to sift through the pages slowly and check out what people back in the older days of geocaching wrote. The funny part is that it seems like this was the first find for many people — whether local or not. The logs were longer, though. Some about their experiences. Some about finding the cache. Some just having fun with the log.

But they shared their experience.

I laughed at the one on the first page of the log that talked about taking a photo and that they will upload when they get it developed. Not many people use film anymore, so it’s fun to see that.

In the end, it’s nice to see some old geocaching exploits.

For the day, I had the chance to hike several miles, get outside and find a few boxes hidden in the woods. That’s what I think caching is about. I don’t mind the occasional quick grab, but it’s nice to still be able to get out there and find things how they used to be “back in the days.”

It’s proof, to me anyway, that one doesn’t always have to try and outfox another cacher or something like that. Take them somewhere, let them enjoy the area and let them soak things in. This is why I started playing this game and hopefully I won’t get chased out!

I have one or two more stories for this series and they will follow in the next week or so.

I do want to leave you with something from that old cache — one of the logs I found. It made me chuckle quite a bit, so I hope you enjoy it, too! (This is another reason to sift through the log books — you never know what you’ll find!)

This made me laugh!

How can we get some excitement back into caching? Let's take a peek...

I appreciate those who left comments to my first post about geocaching passing me by.

They were interesting comments and, it’s also seems that I’m not the only one who doesn’t have the “bug” anymore.

It also got me thinking about what could be done to fix this, so this will be my second post in regard to geocaching passing me by.

In the last post, I wrote about a few things, including the lack of good, quality caches and how Groundspeak has changed a lot of rules. With this post, I’d like to somewhat continue along that path.

Maybe not so much a rule, but a guideline.

When I first started caching, there were a lot of things that were done that are looked down upon now. Or not “allowed.” I think the game has been made “easier” for a generation of people who might not want to be challenged as much. Maybe challenged is the wrong word there. How about this — I think some of the newer geocaching generation doesn’t want to have to go above and beyond for a cache.

Don’t believe me?

Look at logs.

Most people don’t do much more than sign their name in the actual log. And online logs are usually short and quick. That could be for a couple of reasons — people don’t want to take the time for a good log OR the cache wasn’t anything special and hard to write about. If you don’t have an adventure, it’s hard to write something good, unless you repeat the same thing for every cache you found that day and/or just ramble about nothing in particular.

It's rare to see good in-person logs anymore.

I like to write good logs. But if the cache isn’t anything special, it’s hard to challenge myself to write a good log.

Note this, however — a good log doesn’t necessarily have to be long. Just keep that in mind.

Anyway, back to where I was going with this post. With Groundspeak changing rules and guidelines, why not change how long caches can be out in the wilderness?

I realize that there are some phenomenal caches out there that have withstood the test of time. I’m not advocating that everything should be archived. Far from it. I love finding the older caches because I think they are, most of the time, some great finds because it takes you back to what caching used to be about.

But I’m wondering if newer caches should have a limit.

Or even if this is possible.

Imagine if caches that have been out there for three or four years were archived and opened up spots to other people. Now, I don’t think Groundspeak or it’s crew of volunteers should do this. That would just be a waste of resources. But maybe if cache owners worked with this.

I look at it this way. There are many caches in our area that have been out for several years that don’t get hit too often. Mine hides included. We have a smaller set of people in our area who actively cache. When they are all found, the caches sit there for the people who come through. Realize the area is a tourist area, so caches can get hit during the summer quite a bit. But once they’ve been found, the hits start to dwindle.

When is it time to hang up a cache?

Though many of these caches might be good ones, if they are not getting hit, what’s the point? What about archiving some of them and finding new spots for caches? See, if you are in a park and have all sorts of caches there but they don’t get hit too often, why keep them there? Why not archive them and take people to new spots in the park? Or, open the spots up so others can hide caches in those parks?

One major issue, too, are multi and/or puzzle caches that require multiple stops.

I love puzzle caches and think multis can be fun and adventurous. But, if you put too many parts in a park, it can really close up great spots for hides. I know I had a great spot for a cache a few years ago, but I couldn’t do it because it was too close to a part of another cache — a water cache — that hadn’t been found in years.

So I got hosed.

I get the saturation rule of not being able to have a cache within .10 of a mile from another. However, if doing a multi-cache, you can have parts be very close. If that’s the fact, why not be able to hide a cache within those boundaries. Some people don’t do puzzle or multi caches. So it seems unfair that a person finds a great spot and then gets smoked because one piece of a 10-part multi is 300 feet away.

It’s happened to me more than once and it gets bothersome — and this comes from a fan of puzzles and multis. Imagine if you weren’t a fan of those caches!

There's no reason basic caches can't be archived and done up as a new one somewhere else every few years.

This all falls into one package, though.

If caches had some sort of a shelf life, then maybe there’d be caches out there for others to find a little more often. Again, I’m not saying all caches should last three years and be archived. If a steady stream of visitors keep going, well, keep them up. Or if they are great spots that take people to wonderful views or are milestone caches (such as golden ammo cans), then far be it from me to say archive them.

But the caches that get hit only once or twice a year and aren’t those super-long hikes etc., maybe it’s worth thinking about hanging ’em up and putting a new one out there.

That’s why I don’t think it should be a set rule, either.

There are some caches that are highly challenging — terrain or difficulty. Maybe it takes a 10-mile roundtrip hike. Maybe you have to climb a tree. I don’t think they should go. Keep ’em. High quality ones are beautiful to keep.

But the normal park-and-grabs?

Or the ones that are on a loop trail in a park that could be moved a .10 of a mile for a new spot?

Or the many-part multi that takes up a full park?

Maybe after 2, 3 or 4 years, it might be time to open the area up. Especially in this day and age with the economy as it is. It’s nice to know you can find caches in your area that are newer and maybe will take you to a new place of a park you know or a different look for a cache.

Could this work?

Who knows. But it’s an idea to keep things fresh in the geocaching world. Reality is games get stale. Things grow and move along. So do caches. The great ones will always remain. But the basic ones? Move them along and start fresh.

I look forward to hearing what others may have to say about this!

Note: I have several other items I’ll be dealing with in this series about geocaching passing me by over the next week or two. It’s my hope that by putting all of this out there, maybe I’ll get my “caching mojo” back and want to get back in it. It’s worth getting off my chest anyway, right?

Second note: I’ve renewed my Groundspeak membership and am heading out today to do a little hiking and some caching. We’ll see if I get the bug back. Even if I do, I plan on finishing this series of stories in the next week or two!