Last Saturday I drove 2 hours down to Cape May to find a cache that's been sitting there since 2019. The coordinates looked easy, right off a beach trail. Got there and the whole area was underwater. High tide had come in and the path was gone. I stood there in ankle deep water checking my phone like an idiot. It took me another 45 minutes to find a dry route around. When I finally got to the spot, the cache was wet inside and the logbook was mush. Some other finder had tried to seal it with a ziplock but it didn't hold. I looked back at the listing and sure enough, the guy who hid it mentioned it's only accessible at low tide. But it was buried in the description, not highlighted. Has anyone else had a cache ruined by not checking the tides? Or do you have a way to filter for tidal caches before you head out?
Last month I was out near the Columbia River Gorge chasing a geocache that had 3 DNFs in a row. The description said 'look for the tall pine with the split trunk,' but every pine up there looked split to me. I ran into a park ranger at the trailhead and he said, 'forget the pines, find the lone oak that doesn't belong, caches love the odd one out.' Sure enough, 40 yards past the oak, tucked under a rock that was way too small to hide anything, I found the ammo can. Has anyone else had luck ignoring the obvious landmarks and trusting the weird detail instead?
Turns out the coordinates in the listing were for the parking lot, and the actual cache was across the bridge on the other bank. A kid on a bike pointed it out to me after watching me stomp through the same bushes for 20 minutes. Anyone else ever trust the pin over the hint and pay for it?
I read a comment last week from someone who said a waypoint that was off by 40 feet ruined their whole day in the Sierras. I get the frustration, but honestly, chasing a coordinate that leads you to the wrong rock pile is where the real skill comes in. It forces you to actually look at the terrain instead of just staring at your phone, so has anyone else found their best caches after ignoring the GPS and trusting the map lines?
Ten years ago I trusted a Garmin eTrex with AA batteries through 4 miles of Vermont forest and only missed the cache once, but today I followed Google Maps to a geocache behind a Walmart and it dropped me in a loading dock, so has anyone else switched back to old-school gear after a phone let them down?
I used to skip any cache with a city zip code. Figured they were all micros stuck to guardrails with 40 muggles watching. Then a friend dragged me to the Dequindre Cut last summer and we found 9 caches in 2 hours, including one hidden inside a rusty pipe that looked impossible. The logs had stories from people who actually lived there, pointing out murals and history I'd never notice. Now I check urban spots first, especially ones with high favorite counts. Anyone else had a city cache that flipped your opinion?
Last month outside Austin, my buddy and I were doing a multi-stage cache that required 4 waypoints in order. I watched him log all 4 on his app, but when we got to the final, the coordinates were off by about 60 feet and we dug around for 45 minutes. He admitted he'd actually driven past the second waypoint and backfilled it later, just to save time. I get that some people treat geocaching like a checklist, but to me the whole point is following the trail, not just the stamp. So which is it, do you hunt for the finish or the journey? Has anyone else caught a partner fudging the route to claim a find faster?
I've had a hidden cache near the old railroad bridge outside Asheville for about 2 years now. Someone kept swiping the trinkets every few weeks, so I set up a cheap trail cam on a tree 40 feet away. Caught a raccoon, not a person. Little guy pulled out a keychain and ran off with it. Never expected the wildlife to be the culprit. Has anyone else had animals mess with their hides or is it just my spot?