Date

Northeast Wisconsin Geocaching

High Tech Game of Hide and Seek
Breast Cancer Ribbon

29+1

posted by:
Mark

We celebrated our 29th wedding anniversary a few weeks ago. We decided to do something we both enjoy, we went GEOCACHING.

We had been out for a couple of hours and Patti said maybe we could find a park to treasure hunt at, well our travels kept taking us to Spirit Quest caches, not one park. Our journey brought us to an old cemetery on a country road. It took a little while to find the small cache but eventually we were successful. After we had found the hide, Patti said come to the back of the van, there she had set up a little picnic with a candle (that’s the little light inside the van), her special white linen from Ireland and margaritas with a little snack for us to enjoy. It was a very windy Saturday and while Patti had been hoping for a park for our picnic, it probably would not have worked very well at a park with the high winds.

In all our years of celebrating our anniversary, this old cemetery was probably the most interesting place we have celebrated our day,  no one there seemed to mind and somehow it fitted our personalities. It really was a pleasant surpirse!

The plus one in the title is for our third hide. Recently we put out the Treasure of Preston, it is the second cache in a series of four we will be doing in honor of our grand kids.

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Why We Love Geocaching

posted by:
Mark

This is one of the many reasons we love this game so much. After spending the morning at our grandsons school for Grandparents Day we took them geocaching for the first time. In the process of looking up caches near their home, we stumbled across some wonderful Wisconsin history we never knew about.

This cache taught us something we never knew.

After a little research we found this information, also this site had some interesting pictures.

This was their first find, one of the boys wanted to keep the AMMO BOX for his swag, had to explain to him several times why that was not possible.

It was also great to learn about this site and the history behind it.

Thanks to geocahing we now know a little more about the state we call home.

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TFTC

posted by:
Mark

Never thought four letters could spark such a strong emotion in people. Recently did a few WSQ caches and while in the field I would just do a simple TFTC from my smartphone. When I got home that day I had an email saying people  who place caches sometimes like a little more than just four letters in the logs.

I was a bit annoyed by the email and went to a forum to express my two cents. Because of the spirited discussion I have learned some valuable lessons.

One of the things I often did was once I was home I would go back in and add a little more to the log. I learned however that the Cache Owners do not receive edits to “found it” logs from Geocaching.com. the only way to know that a TFTC post was edited to include an in depth log would be to visit the cache page. One os the suggestions I received was, One option would be to list it as “Found it – More Later”. That accomplishes the same goal, but lets the CO know more is coming. This is a good idea but then the CO needs to go back again and look to see if anything new has been added not something all will remember to do or want to do.

Another poster had this suggestion,

To “get around this” when I post a “Found – More Later” I then post a NEW Found It log with all the details and delete the original. That way the CO gets another email with all the details.

Another thing I do is include the text “Pictures Attached” when I know I’m going to include any photos. The CO’s don’t get notifications when photos are added so I try to give them a heads up via the log that it includes some photos.

This seems like another excellent idea. Someone else had a new twist on the whole topic.

What happens to the game if there are no more new caches to find or all caches become skirt lifters and rail caches?

Ammo cans- $10-$15
Swag- $5-$10
Logbook w pencil- $1-$2
Cost $16-$27 per cache.

Taking a few extra seconds to write a sentence- $PRICELESS$

From the discussion there were some interesting points made. Possible the biggest being that we all play the game differently.  I for one have learned a lot from this discussion and know in the future I will take more time when it comes to logging and no more TFTC from me.

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