Archive for the ‘Caches’ Category

Do you remember that commercial? That one where the company launches their website on the Internet and the owners are all gathered around a computer in an otherwise empty room. They’re watching the counter.      Nothing.

Watching the counter.      Nothing.

Watching the counter.      Nothing.

And then suddenly, a click, an order. Then another! Then the numbers shoot through the roof and one man turns to the other and says…

I think that might be one of the experiences new geocachers have with placing their first geocache. A few people find it and then WHAMMY! your geocache shoots to be the most popular cache in your area. People are talking about what a great location, what clever clues, fantastic swag. It’s worth driving two hours JUST to find it.

Okay, that might be a bit of an exaggeration! But, still, when I placed my first geocache, I expected it to be found regularly. And to have comments about it more exhaustive than TFTC SL.

The very first geocache I placed is called High Gear. And it IS in a fantastic location, if I do say so myself. A friend of mine explained the location: a bike frame hanging about 15 feet up a ponderosa tree. Wow! What a neat place. AND, there’s a bike shop in Prescott that happens to be called High Gear — a perfect name.

I spent WEEKS getting ready to place the cache. The friend who knew exactly where the bike was made a trip to the site to take a GPS reading to make sure there wasn’t a cache there. At the time I didn’t know about how I could use geocaching.com to figure out if this was a good location WITHOUT heading up there. (I’ll write an article about how I do that!)

Then, I actually went to Wal-mart and spent a small fortune on a cache container. And on perfect bike swag. And on camouflage patterned duct tape. And then, I visited the High Gear Bike store to get my FTF prize: a $15 gift certificate.

When the bike store heard what I was doing, they actually gave me some swag and the gift card for FREE. Funny thing, the owner had NO idea what geocaching even was — just liked the idea that I was going to call a bike in a tree “High Gear”.

On the day of placing the cache, we had a picnic and then headed up the trail. And up. And up. Since I had never been up the trail before, I didn’t realize how long it was, about a mile. And it was a good trail but covered in loose rocks so I had to be careful in the climbing. And a pretty steep elevation gain.

So, cache perfectly placed, I headed home to nurse my blisters and aching legs. And to post it on geocaching.com.

And then I waited for somebody to find it. And waited some more. The FTF was by a die-hard cacher in the area nearly FIVE DAYS after the cache was published. In my area, that’s unheard of! FTF can happen in as little as 5 HOURS.

And two weeks later the cache was found again. Then no finds for 5 months.

Needless to say, I wondered what I had done wrong in placing the cache. I mean, yeah, it was a hike, but not a crazy hike. It wasn’t like hiking all that way to find a micro. I had good swag in there! And, it was well hid from muggles, but kinda obvious to anybody who plays the game.

What gives?

Then I realized something: it was the only cache on that trail. There had been one about half way up, but it had been muggled and removed. It was just too much of a hike for anybody but a serious cacher to go after.

Then, something really neat happened: four OTHER caches were placed along the same trail, all leading up to High Gear. Suddenly people WERE making the trek up and down the mountain to find MY cache. Apparently, in my area at least, four caches with a 2 mile hike (since you have to hike up and down!) made it a worthwhile trail.

Here’s the moral of the story:

Caches along a trail get found!

Most people like PNG caches, but it’s nice to get out of the car and stretch your legs a bit. It’s even better when there are plenty of geocaches along the way.

So tell me, what’s your experience in your neck of the woods. How far will people hike for a solitary cache? Do caches along a trail see more action?

By the way, High Gear has now been found a grand total of 9 times in the last 9 months. Not going to win any most-visited-cache awards, but I still think the swag is cool!

I’m always very interested in the best cache camouflage that’s out there in the “wild”. Like in the animal kingdom, camo can make or break a cache. If it lacks camouflage it’s just too easy. Of course, too hard of a hide isn’t always fun either! In my opinion, there’s a big difference between camouflage and unique hides. Camouflage is designed to be that thing that you look at and look at and you’re not sure that the cache is there and then you get an “a-ha!” moment when you find it.

Unique hides are for location or whimsy. They’re usually evident that the cache HAS to be there.

Here are some examples from my favorite caches. I’m purposefully leaving the GC codes out (the codes provided by geocaching.com that give the name and coordinates of the caches) so there won’t be any spoilers.

Whimsy Caches:

This metal javalina is on the side of the road, nearly in somebody’s front yard. A park-and-grab style cache that gets serious props for it’s whimsy.

Now, this man is in the middle of nowhere. And NO, before you ask, it wasn’t built to hide the cache! The person who hid this cache actually says that he found it out hunting in the late 1970′s or early 1980′s — that’s long before the creation of geocaching. Of course, this stone man in Northern Arizona gets my whimsy vote since it was the ONLY place the cache could be hidden. Plus, the cache container was hidden in the man’s chest. He is a geocacher at heart!

Excellent Camouflage:

Ah, a stick. Under a tree. With LOTS of rusty tin cans lying around. Now, the photos just don’t do it justice. Since this stick was under a palo verde tree. In a basin full of OTHER palo verde trees and the clue was something like: “Stick”.

You can see in the background all the palo verde trees as well as the multitudes of “sticks” on the ground. Not very helpful!

This pill bottle was painted grey and then clipped into a carved hole in the stick. The clip is a hose clamp. The whole thing is VERY clever. In fact, the Queen Mother actually moved the stick with the end of her walking pole before me, the ever brave Outdoor Princess, actually flipped the stick over. Of course, being in Arizona, there could have been any number of poisonous creepy crawlies in residence under the stick. There were evidence of biting spiders but no actual spiders in residence at the time.

And then of course, there are the caches that fall somewhere between whimsy and excellent camouflage.

Best of Both Worlds:

This is a favorite cache of mine in Tucson, Arizona. Not so much that it was hard to find, in that there were so many great PLACES to look! This is the type of place that you just need to visit. My first trip was Thanksgiving 2008 but I was back for Thanksgiving 2009 to enjoy the garden in the daylight. (The light was failing on my first visit.)

This could be excellent camo except that the bolt was a bit out of place in the welcome sign. It was a bit TOO easy to find since it was the only bolt of it’s kind. Full props for camouflage, it’s just the context of the hide could have been more exciting.

I’m sure that sign posts all over the geocaching Universe have micros like this one. But this was the first time I’d ever seen it and I was impressed. A little obvious for the next time I go looking for one like this (whimsy) but for the size and coloring (excellent camouflage!)

What are your favorite camo hides? What about the whimsy hides? Let me know what YOU think!

Don’t forget: You can find caches near your favorite attractions on EatStayPlay.com!