jestcaching

When is a find really a find?

jestjuggle — Thu, 26 Oct 2006 02:53:00 +0000

The question here is a philosophical one of how you choose to play the game. There are no formal rules so it is up to you make your own. One rule that many geocachers think is the first commandment of geocaching is that you must sign the log to claim a find. In our opinion there is one instance when you can still claim a find without signing the log. This is the case when you have have posted a DNF, the owner verifies the cache is not there and sends an email saying something like "it is all about the journey" and tells you that it is OK to claim a find. This is a rare occurrence and it depends on the hide and the geocache owner, but it occassionally happens.

The main reason we are writing this post is not for the first commandment of geocaching. It is even deeper. It involves claiming a find when another geocacher tells you what to look for. An example of this is a puzzle or a deviously camouflaged container. You go there several times and just can't find the cache. You email the owner and are told that they do not wish to give you a hint, but "Good Luck". You either "phone a friend", email someone that found the cache previously or hound somebody at a local event to tell you what to look for or how to solve the puzzle. You head out the next day, sign the log and claim a find. You have to ask yourself some questions. Did I play the game fairly? Did I respect the wishes of the hider? Many geocachers do not realize the number of hours that go into a devious hide or a difficult puzzle. The effort to make the game fun for others on these caches is not the same as for a quick park and grab. Why should the effort put forth by the finder be the same as for a park and grab? If you do not wish to put the effort into difficult caches, do the easy ones. No one will disrespect you for doing so. If you can't solve a puzzle or are just curious as to what that devious hide is then it is okay to ask a friend about the hide. The right thing to do in this case is to write a note saying that you visited the cache, but not to claim it as a find. The community will respect you much more for doing this than for one extra cache in your statistics. One other reason to resist the temptation to ask another finder of a cache on how to do it is that you will feel a much higher sense of accomplishment. We can remember a really difficult puzzle cache. Others had found it, but we were determined to solve it on our own. We spent weeks working on it. I even had dreams of it. In fact I had looked at the graphics so many times that I had it memorized. You might say we are obsessed, but this puzzle literally took us 100's of hours to solve. We finally found it. It was one of our most memorable finds.

Some things to think about:

1. You can't find them all.

2. Play the game the way you wish, but respect the wishes of others and the community as a whole.

3. Don't worry about your statistics.

4. Hiders of difficult caches put a lot of effort into the cache.

5. Select the type of caches that you like to do.

AND

Most of all

Have FUN!

That is what it is all about.

Who really invented GPS?

jestjuggle — Tue, 03 Oct 2006 14:49:00 +0000

There is an interesting article in today's Miami Herald questioning who owns the rights to GPS technology. A defunct company called SPS claims that Motorola ended a joint venture in 2000 that gives SPS the intellectual property rights to GPS technology. Motorola claims that they gave SPS $5,000,000, paid for their offices, and paid employee salaries. The law suit could potentially be in the $1 Billion dollar range. The trial will take about a month.

How Does GPS Work?

jestjuggle — Sun, 24 Sep 2006 23:54:00 +0000

A lot of Geocachers ask; "How does GPS work"? We found a pretty cool video on the NASA Sci Files site. The video is intended for kids, but is a good explanation of the technology. If you get asked this question you might want to point the person to The NASA Sci Files movie titled - How Does GPS Work.

Rehiding geocaches

jestjuggle — Wed, 20 Sep 2006 02:40:00 +0000

On Saturday we did cache maintenance on several of our caches. We found both stages of a multicache missing and another hidden about 100 feet from the original area. On Sunday we went geocaching. We found two geocaches out in the open. This seems to be a common occurance these days. There are three possiblities. One is of course, muggles. Another is an animal or some other fluke in nature moving the caches. The third answer is a disturbing possibility. Geocachers. We are not accusing anyone, and hopefully we are wrong, but we suspect that some geocachers seem to think that geocaching is a race for smiley faces and do not rehide the caches properly. Although geocaches are officially owned by the hider, we as a community should have some pride in ownership of each geocache we find. When finding and rehiding geocaches we should use some logic and consideration to protect the caches for future finders.

1. Please rehide caches so that they will not be seen by muggles.

2. When hunting for a cache beware of muggles and wait until they are out of sight.

3. If you are hunting caches as a group the person that extracts the cache should rehide it as they are the only person that really knows how it was originally hidden.

A little extra care by all of us will make for fewer missing and archived geocaches making it more fun for all of us.

Yamji

jestjuggle — Thu, 07 Sep 2006 23:03:00 +0000

Need a break from geocaching? Like movies?

If so, you should check out Yamji a new social networking site devoted to cinema. It is truly in its infancy, but looks like it will be a great place to check out movies that you have seen, want to see, or to find movies to add to your Netflix queue. After registering you can submit movies to the database, write reviews or studies on movies and start a list of your favorites in your own folder. I added The Attack of the Killer Tomatoes. That should make for some fun comments!

So if it is a rainy day, or you just need a break from geocaching you go on over to Yamji and get in on the ground floor of a cool new site.

West Nile Virus

jestjuggle — Wed, 06 Sep 2006 02:57:00 +0000

Here in New England several cases of West Nile Virus have been reported in the past few weeks. Mosquitoes in 17 towns in Connecticut have tested positive for the virus. Although some communities are spraying to kill mosquitoes you should be ever vigilant to prevent contracting the disease. West Nile Virus can be serious, but you can minimize your risk if you take precautions. Avoid wet and swampy areas at dusk and dawn. Dress appropriately. This means long pants and long sleeve shirts. Spray yourself with a product that contains Deet when leaving the car and before setting foot on the hunt for the geocache. If you have been bitten by a mosquito and are curious as to the symptoms you can visit the the CDC website.

Finding your first geocache

jestjuggle — Thu, 31 Aug 2006 02:08:00 +0000

Geocaching is a lot of fun and we encourage everyone to try it. It is important to get off to a good start so that you have a great time and want to continue on with this fantastic hobby. Here are some suggestions on how to start.

If you have a good friend that geocaches ask them to take you along and “show you the ropes”. Ask them if you can carry the GPS and try to find the cache with them walking along. This way you will actually be a participant rather than a spectator.

If you don’t know a geocacher ask around to see if you know somebody that owns a handheld GPS that you can borrow to see if geocaching is for you. Ask for a quick lesson on how to use it. If not you will have to buy one and understand how to operate it.

Picking a good cache is important to success and fun on your first outing. Things to look for are terrain and difficulty ratings, if the cache has a hint and type of cache. We strongly recommend that you select a traditional cache for your first find. Micros and multi-caches might make your first hunt frustrating. We suggest you select one with no more than a 2 difficulty and 2 terrain rating. 1 ½ on both might be better. You might also want to pick out a cache that is hidden in the woods, but not a long or strenuous hike. Insure that you know how to decrypt the hint in case you don’t find it without the extra clue. Read a few of the most recent logs to insure that it has been found recently.

You probably want to dress appropriately for the area you are visiting and pack a few essentials to take with you. As a minimum you should take some paper and a pen/pencil and extra batteries for the GPS. If you are going during the week after dinner you should take a flashlight or headlamp along in case it gets dark while you are in the woods. Things look a whole lot different in the dark than they do in the light. A bottle of water is always a good thing to take along and if bugs are prevalent in your area some Deet is a good idea. You might want to bring a small trinket along to trade when you find the cache.

Okay, now you are ready to venture out. Hopefully the cache page has parking coordinates or instructions on how to get to parking. If not you should click on the map on the cache page and look where the cache is hidden and try to have knowledge of where to park before leaving the house. This is usually not a big problem for first time geocachers as you can select one that is fairly close to home in an area you are familiar with.

Okay now for the real adventure. Make sure that you turn the GPS on and have it near a window or on the dash of your vehicle so that it can receive continuous satellite reception. We highly suggest that you turn on your GPS and get satellite lock while still in your driveway at home. Select the waypoint you are hunting for and select the compass display to show the direction to the cache. If the cache you’ve selected is a distance from your home, drive toward the area and when you are 5 to 10 minutes from the parking area pull over in a safe place. Turn on your GPS, wait for good satellite reception, select the waypoint, and select the compass display to show the direction to the cache. DO NOT DO THIS WHILE DRIVING – IT IS DANGEROUS. Follow the arrow to designated parking.

So you are parked, and have the compass display on the GPS for the waypoint you are hunting for. Now what do you do? Well first of all start having fun! That is what this is all about. If the cache page has instructions on what trails to follow you are in luck. If not, think of trails like roads. Pick the widest trail that is in the general direction of the cache and head off. Stay on trails as long as you can. This is easier on you and the environment. When you get to within about 100 feet of the cache you should slow down. This will give the GPS time to settle down and give you a better idea of where the cache is. Keep you eyes open. Look for a place that the cache could be hidden in. Rocks, stumps, logs and the base of trees are likely hiding places. If the GPS arrow seems to be taking you in circles you should ignore it and look at the distance. You may never get to zero, but try and get to within 10 – 20 feet if possible. Sometimes walking in a cloverleaf pattern will make it easier to get to ground zero. Okay now you are in the general vicinity. Do you see any thing that is unnatural like a pile of sticks or rocks that look out of place? If so, that is probably where the cache is hidden. Sometimes a hiking stick or a stick you find in the woods is a good tool to use to poke in nooks and crannies in hopes of hearing a plastic or metallic sound. That is a dead giveaway. Been looking for 10 minutes and still haven’t found the cache? Then decrypt the hint. Hopefully it makes sense. Many times they still seem cryptic even after they are decrypted. For example, if it says something like “keep looking and you won’t be stumped” then is most likely in a stump.

Success, you found it! So what do you do now? Well open it up and see what is inside you silly goose! If you see something inside that you like you can trade it for that trinket we mentioned earlier. You should always try and trade for things that are of equal or greater value. If you forgot that trade item, no big deal. It is all about the fun of the hunt. Find the logbook. Write down the date, write a passage about your experience and sign your name. Make sure you seal the cache as best as possible and hide the cache like you found it.

Head for home, log into Geocaching.com and log your find. Remember to write a good log about your quest.

Congratulations. You are now a geocacher!

What to put on your cache page

jestjuggle — Fri, 25 Aug 2006 01:27:00 +0000

Okay now you have hidden a geocache.

Now what the heck do you put on the cache page?

Start at the Hide & Seek a Cache tab and click on the "Fill out our online form"

Cache type is first and is usually self-explanatory except for two categories, mystery and multi. We are not sure if when you have people collect information from historical markers, signs, gravestones, etc, which of these categories it should be categorized as. We select multi as some people shy away from mystery caches. Write a note to the local reviewer in the "Notes to Reviewer" box, asking how best to categorize the cache, but that you would prefer it to be a multi.

Size - pretty easy to pick an appropriate category here.

Nickname - Lots of latitude here. (no not coordinates - choices) Sometimes we select a name that could be a substitute for a hint. It is amazing how many people don’t read the entire cache page before setting out and don’t use the name of a cache as an additional hint. This makes for extra fun when you read the logs. You can also select a name for the area that you hid the cache. This is quite appropriate for historic hides. A catchy name can be used to spark interest. Strongly consider this if you hid a puzzle cache. If you are hiding a series of caches you might want to have each of the caches of the series start with the same name.

Who placed the cache - The default is your caching name, but you can put in whatever you wish. It will still link to your profile.

Yes this cache is active - You might want to UNCHECK this box until you have your geocache page perfected. You will find that once you look at the cache page you may want to make changes. This prevents the page going into the queue for the local reviewer. Just make sure that after you make changes and have the page exactly like you want it to look that you check this box and resubmit the listing.

Date placed - We prefer to use today’s date even if it was hidden a month ago. This way it shows up on the first page for new hides and gets more traffic. If it takes days for you to perfect the cache page you can always change it to the current date.

Background URL - We have never used this option and probably never will as it takes longer for pages to load. If you do choose to do this you can upload a picture to the cache page after you create it. Then you can click on the photo and copy/paste the URL into the Background Image URL box.

Coordinates - Again, self-explanatory, but be careful as it is easy to make a typo. We transposed numbers once and the coordinates were 11 miles off. Luckily we have a great local reviewer that fixed up our mistake after a local geocacher asked us if it might be an error. If you have the coordinates loaded into your GPS you might want to turn the GPS on and read them directly from the GPS screen rather than writing them down as it might eliminate transcription errors.

Location - Select the country and if in the United States you will have to select a state. Be careful here. We know of one local cacher that thought he selected Massachusetts, but instead selected Minnesota and the reviewer from Minnesota had to fix it up and send an email to the reviewer in Massachusetts.

Difficulty/Terrain Ratings -If you are an experienced geocacher you probably have a good idea as to how to rate the cache. If not you might want to click on “try this system” for help. One thing to keep in mind is that a terrain rating of one is for wheelchair access. Very few caches really fall into this category.

HTML - If you want to include pictures or links you need to check the box for HTML. For those of you that do not have any knowledge of HTML we will have a subsequent post on some simple HTML commands.

Short Description - We are not sure as to the exact number of characters available in the short description, but you can only write a short paragraph here. Many geocachers don’t read the entire cache page so put in anything that you feel is important here. If you want to test our theory about how much people read, bury the important info in the long description and have fun reading the logs for the cacher that waded across the river because they didn’t read where to park. :-) If you give directions on how to get to the cache, remember that many of the people that will be going there, are not familiar with the local roads and landmarks. Start your directions from main roads. You might want to mention anything that might harm the environment. We do not think that caches should be hidden in historic New England stone walls and always state “NOT HIDDEN IN THE STONE WALL” if there is one in the general vicinity.

Long Description - Here is where you can pretty much write whatever you wish. Many of our caches are hidden in historic or scenic areas so we try and give details about the history or the scenery the finders can expect to see. You can include info on wildlife that might be seen, if dogs are allowed, or if it is a good place for a picnic. We feel that within reason the more info the better. We think this attracts more finders. This is also where you can post pictures or links to things like trail maps or historical data using HTML. If you received permission from a land owner you should mention this here and if you are proficient with HTML, inlude a link. For example we have placed several caches on Joshua Trust Land and have a link to their site.

Hints - Again lots of choices here, but there are two basic rules you might want to follow. First if you don’t want to give a hint, then don’t. There is a lot of discussion in the forums from frustrated geocachers that decrypted a hint in the field that said something like “no hint at this time” or “you shouldn’t need a hint for this one”. Second rule is keep your hints as short as you can because when the mosquitoes are swarming you really don’t want to decrypt a long hint. A wise cacher said to us once that a clue that seems like it is a dead giveaway for the hider, matches almost everything in the general area of the cache. You might want to remember this when you select your hint.

Notes to the reviewer - This is probably one of the areas most neglected, but crucial to quick approval of your cache. If you got permission to place the cache tell them. If it is a multi you should give them the coordinates for all the stages. If you don’t they will probably come back and ask for them which will delay your approval. Remember that the reviewers are volunteers. Any extra information that you can supply to make their job easier will get your cache approved that much sooner.

Make sure you check the boxes that you read the guidelines for listing a cache and that you have read and agree to the terms of the use agreement. If you don’t your listing will not go through.

Check submit listing and you are done. Well almost. View your listing. Read it carefully. You will probably find something wrong, you'll see typos, or something that you don’t like and will want to change. You should also click on the map on the cache page to make sure that you listed the correct coordinates. You only have to make that mistake once to understand why this is a good practice.

Edit listing to make your changes, resubmit and view your listing again. After you are happy with your cache page, REMEMBER TO EDIT LISTING one last time and CHECK THE "This Cache is Active" box and submit your listing to get into the queue for the reviewer. You should add attributes, add additional waypoints such as parking coordinates, trailhead coordinates etc., and log in travel bugs. We will discuss these topics in future posts.

In a short time your cache will be approved and shortly after that you will find out who is the first finder. Then you can sit back and enjoy the logs of your fellow cachers.

Travel Bug Hotel Success Story

jestjuggle — Thu, 10 Aug 2006 01:24:00 +0000

About two years ago the local Groundspeak approver asked us if we would retrieve a geocache that had been placed in the Connecticut Welcome Center off of I-84 by a geocacher from Pennsylvania that would not be able to maintain it. We asked him for the coordinates, loaded them into our GPS, found the cache and headed back to the car. When we were driving out we saw a gate and figured we would check it out. It had a really nice trail along the Willimantic River. We said that it would be a nice place for a cache. A few months later we did some research on Travel Bug hotels. The best seemed to be along an interstate highway and were easy to find. We also noticed that some had restrictions to insure that they always had Travel Bugs to exchange. We decided to hide one at the Connecticut Welcome Center along the path we found. We decided to put a restriction on trading TB's. Here is the wording we used:

Take a Bug, Leave a Bug - Trading the same number.
If you have traded identical numbers of Travel Bugs, and can still help one or two more on their missions take more BUT please leave a minimum of 5 Travel Bugs for others to swap.

Some said - "Why did you do this, bugs will be stuck there forever?" One geocacher even called it a Travel Bug jail.

Well it is a very successful Travel Bug Hotel. Because there are always bugs to swap more people stop by. Some geocachers even stop by multiple times because it is a .15 mile walk along a nice trail and always has multiple Travel bugs to exchange. We are proud to announce that our Cache and Release Hotel has over 300 Travel Bugs logged in less than 17 months. Statistically that is a Travel Bug every 1.7 days and a vistit by a geocacher every 2.5 days. As the success of this Travel Bug Hotel quickly unfolded due to its location, scenery and traffic the negative comments stopped and the positive skyrocketed.

If you are considering hiding a Travel Bug Hotel you might want to use this model.

AND

If you are ever in Connecticut plan to stop by and help numerous Travel Bugs on their journey.

Mike and Barb

Hiding a Geocache

jestjuggle — Sat, 05 Aug 2006 00:44:00 +0000

Before hiding a geocache you should ask several questions.

Why are you hiding it?

1. I found a beautiful place and I want to share it with others. In our opinion this is the best reason to hide one.

2. I know of a historic site and I want others to learn the history. This rates right up there with the first reason.

3. I want to give back to the geocaching community.

4. Other cachers say I should hide one. This is the worst reason to hide a cache. Your heart should really be in it.

5. I have an idea for a devious camo job.

6. I know of a great puzzle that I would like to see if somebody can solve it.

What you want people to see?

1. Several scenic areas in a small park

2. Several scenic areas in a large park.

3. All the trails in a small park.

4. All the trails in a large park.

5. A single scenic spot.

6. Nothing in particular.

Who do you want to find the cache?

1. Everybody.

2. People that like strenuous hikes.

3. People that love to see cool places.

4. Nerdy types like yourself.

5. Primarily the local cachers.

6. Out of Towners. Make it worth their while to stop in your area. They've driven a distance.

7. Elderly cachers, those with handicaps, and cachers with small children.

How many people do you want to attempt to find your cache?

1. Everybody.

2. Quite a few.

3. Just a few that prefer challenging caches over numbers.

How many other caches are nearby and what types are they?

If all the other caches are multis or puzzle caches and you hide a multi or puzzle cache, you might not attract many cachers except for the locals that like to find difficult caches. You have to remember that many geocachers like to find as many geocaches as possible in an area. If all the geocaches in a locale look like they might be difficult they might avoid the area entirely. You can never go wrong in hiding a traditional cache.

Now lets consider the possibilites:

First the no brainers.

1. If you want to attract everybody and have nothing in particular that you want people to see, then a "lame" micro hidden in a guardrail or lamp post might be in order.

1. If you have a confined area, or short walk, of interest with no muggles (especially if all the above are true) then maybe a creative hide is in order.

2. You have a great scenic or historic spot and want lots of people to see it, then you should consider a traditional cache with a clue.

3. If you only want a few locals obsessed with finding hard caches, then you should hide a puzzle cache, a multistage cache or a devious hide.

Other possibilities:

1. You have several scenic areas that you would like people to see in a small park. You should consider a multi with containers at each area you want people to see.

2. You have several scenic areas that you want people to see in a large park. Maybe you should think about hiding several traditional caches at each spot.

3. You have several interesting historical facts you want people to read and see. Maybe you should consider a multi where people have to take facts from the signs or plaques, do some math and move on to the next stage (s) and final cache.

Placement considerations:

1. Height. If you want the cache to be off the ground consider putting it at a reasonable height. For all you tall people out there - remember not all geocachers are 6 feet tall.

2. Rivers. Check out the area of the normal flood plain and try to place the cache on ground high enough where it will not be floating down the river every spring or after a heavy rain.

3. Muggle factor. If it is an area that has many muggles you might want to consider adding a good hint so that you don't have to periodically replace the cache. The suspicious activity of the finders coincides with caches getting muggled.

4. Heavy tree cover. Not only is it hard for you to get good coordinates but it is also hard for the finders to get a good lock and find the cache. This is especially true in pine forests. Give a very good clue.

5. How far off the trail. If you place a cache on the trail it needs a great camo job to make it muggle proof. Placing it too far off the trail might be considered to be environmentally unfriendly.

6. The container. Pick a container that matches up well and fits in the hiding spot.

Summary
What you hide and where you hide it will determine who attempts and finds your geocaches. Consider what you hope to accomplish and whom you wish to attract to your cache.

Flobbing

jestjuggle — Tue, 01 Aug 2006 03:10:00 +0000

Ok - so what is flobbing and what the heck does it have to do with geocaching?. Well here is a series of logs by The Wilkens at one of our series of caches:

Church Farm Trailside
Now this wouldn't normally be a difficult climb at all, but add 92°F temps and Humidity in the 70's and you've got yourself a sweat fest! We signed the log, took nothing left a pint of perspiration.

Church Farm Crest
I had stated the hike weighing in at around 155 pounds. At this point I think I was down to at least 153. Sweating isn't really the best word for it. I don't think there is a word for it at all. Perhaps deluging? Maybe torrential fluid loss? Why don't I just make a word up.I was flobbing, flobbing like a maniac. Not sure if that'll catch on, but nevertheless I'll try it out :)

Church Farm Bird Sanctuary
As if sweating out all of my free fluid wasn't enough, the mosquitoes were determined to make a forcible withdrawal on my other reserves. Those little buggers ganged up on me! One would buzz around my ear while a pack of twelve of them snuck down to my elbows and bit the crap out of me!

Church Farm Wishing Well
Weak from blood loss, dizzy from sweating more than Elvis on a treadmill we plodded on to this next cache. The trails were nice, I think. I was getting tunnel vision. I couldn't drink water fast enough [:)]. I looked like a lawn sprinkler; seat was actually shooting out of me. It hit Skippermark in the eye once; let's just say he wasn't happy about it. Every time I turned around, people ducked.

Church Farm Lone Birch
At this stage of the game, Skippermark's son was using me as the source for his slip and slide. Bailey was licking me and the adults were staying the heck away from me. I jumped in a puddle to dry off. I think I'll stick to winter caching from now on. Not only that, I was now the pied piper of biting insects.

Church Farm Erratic
As I dripped my way along to the next cache, I tried to get ahead of the pack so as not to sweat on them anymore. This extra effort was directly proportional to the additional sweat produced. A very cool rock in the middle of the woods as I recall. It was at this point that I was bitten 4 times on the face by a squad of ninja mosquitoes. I hope they don't hang around there for the next cacher. I think I got a couple of them as there was, as Pam pointed out, blood running down my face! Wow, what an experience [:)]

Church Farm Bonus Cache
The end of our adventure today and I was overjoyed that it was at least in the vicinity of some pine trees. The bugs died down and the shade allowed me to regain some fluids without having them immediately squirt out of every pore in my body. A very nice hide and a fitting end to a good solid series.

Thanks for all the fun.

As you can see The Wilkens had a lot of fun finding these caches. We also had fun reading the fantastic logs. Geocaching is all about fun. It is not about just finding caches and adding to your find count.

Moral of the story. Write a good log so that the hiders of the caches can join in the fun that you had in finding the caches.

And most of all -- Don't take this hobby too seriously -- Have Fun!!
Mike and Barb

PS - Wonder how long before Flobbing shows up in dictionary?

Thanks to geocaching you can see some cool sites

jestjuggle — Mon, 31 Jul 2006 00:09:00 +0000

In past years I have been somewhat of a workacholic. This year I have decided to do a bit more vacationing. We took a week and went to Maine where a friend has a cottage. After a few days at the cottage doing chores (neither me or Barb are much good at doing nothing) we did some geocaching. We saw some wonderful places.This past week we took a road trip to Wisconsin to have Christmas in July at Barb's parents house. We were excited to add a few extra states to our list. We added Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, and Michigan. Again we saw some cool sites while caching. We even got to meet a geocacher finding his very first cache in Indiana. While in Michigan we visited some good friends of ours and introduced them to geocaching. It was really cool as we brought them to some waterfalls that they had never been to. We kidded them that they needed some "out of towners" to show them the local sites. We then headed across the UP of Michigan and was always close to Lake Michigan. Stopped at a few caches along the way placed at historic sites or within great views of the lake. There were many caches in rest areas in Pennsylvania that were a godsend as every now and then you need a break to wake up and stretch your legs. All in all we had a great time visiting friends and family and seeing some great sites. We would like to thank the geocaching community for hiding caches for us to find and show us some of the better spots along our route.

Review of CacheStats

jestjuggle — Mon, 17 Jul 2006 01:10:00 +0000

Sorry to not have a post in over a month. Summer is not prime computer time. Chores, hiding many caches (we now have over 100 hides) and a vacation (found 105 caches) took priority of my free time.

I stumbled across a program called CacheStats written by abcdmCachers. . As many of you know I am a bit of statistics freak. This program is really cool. If you are a premium member you can do a pocket query on your finds. Once you import the unzipped GPX file it displays a bunch of interesting stats. It includes most finds in day, most finds in a month, average terrain and difficulty ratings, dates of each milestone, find rates by year, projections for the amount of finds to expect in the coming year based on your find rate, and the states and countries you have cached in. It also allows you to tag your favorite and FTF caches. You can even inport HTML into your profile although we haven't tried that yet. Best news. This is only version 1.0. And even better news -- it is free.

We have to thank abcdmCachers for this cool software.

Joshua's Land Trust

jestjuggle — Tue, 16 May 2006 23:56:00 +0000

About two weeks ago we hid seven caches on the David Storrs Chapin Coney Rock Preserve in Mansfield, CT. To our dismay Pofe, the local reviewer at Geocaching.com, sent us an email saying these caches could not be approved because Joshua's Land Trust properties are considered to be private property. The local reviewer always plays by the rules, but hey that is the responsibility of these volunteers who devote lots of their time, and who can argue with playing by the rules. We were also told that if we could get permission that the review process would go forward, so we still had hope that we wouldn't have to go back and remove the caches. The first task at hand was to research and collect information about the Joshua's Land Trust before making a decision as to how to move forward. We were able to find that the President is Madge Manfred, then found her phone number and email address and some information about her background and duties as President. Our next step was to both email and call Madge to find out how best to proceed. It turned out that Madge is very personable, is always looking for new ways to promote the Trust Properties and she is a great asset to the organization. After the first contact she was in favor of having geocaches on the property, but as a formality wanted to put it to a vote with the Board of Directors. We agreed to put a link to Joshua's Land Trust on this blog and sent her information to present to the board including a brief explanation about geocaching, CITO (including a link about a local CITO event in Vernon on this blog and a copy of an article of the event in a local news publication), and the possible benefits to the Joshua's Land Trust. Probably the toughest part was waiting on pins and needles for ten days until the next Board meeting. The board voted in favor of geocaching on Trust Properties. The overall experience was very rewarding. We learned alot about this great organization and feel good that we were able to promote geocaching to the community.

The mission of the Trust is to supplement local, state and federal government efforts in preserving open space in Eastern Connecticut. Properties The Trust owns or protects by easements, over 3000 acres of open space land. It is a non-profit organization that operates on donated money, sales of the Joshua's Trust Walkbook, donated land and volunteers that not only administer the properties, but also maintain them. The membership fee is only $10 for an individual or $20 for a family and there are higher levels for donors, patrons, benefactors and corporate/lifetime contributions. Becoming a member is easy. Just go to the Join Joshua's Trust web page, print out the form and send it in to the address on the form. You can also contribute to the Trust in the name of someone else by going to the Joshua's Trust Gift web page.

We would like the thank: Pofe for being patient with us and giving us time to work on a presentation to the Trust, Madge for all her help in telling how best to get permission from the board, AND a BIG THANK YOU from the Joshua's Land Trust Board Members for allowing us hide caches on this scenic property.

Logging a micro

jestjuggle — Sun, 14 May 2006 19:55:00 +0000

Found a micro? What should you put in your log? The best thing is just your name and the date. Micros have limited room for logs. Recently a finder of one our caches alerted us to the fact that the log was getting full. We would like to thank them for letting us know that the cache needed maintenance. We drove the 20 miles to replace it. To our amazement a geocacher visited the cache today and took up room for about 5 names and completely filled in the remaining space with a sticker acclaiming their find. It is a good thing that we had planned to replace the log today or others would not have been able to claim their find. We also found that numerous others have stamps that they use instead of signing the log. Each of the stamps took up room for about 5-7 names. Although we think that stamps and stickers are creative and fine for regular caches they might not be appropriate for micros.

One other thought about micros is that usually the owner places them to bring you to a spot and they do not expect that people trade or leave items for future finders. Even tiny trade items make it difficult to get the log in and out. This is especially true for micros that are in high muggle areas. Finders need to be able to retrieve, jot in their name and date and replace quickly.