- passed along without comment.... ------------------------------------------------ Dep&Uno&Co has just posted a new topic entitled "Where Has The Creativity Gone?" in forum "Midwest". ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Hey all We just recently moved to Indianapolis, but this was becoming a problem back in Northern VA as well and from what I see, it is almost everywhere. When we got here to Indy, we immediately put in our home coords and what did we get in search results? Pages and pages and pages of micros. Now, we have nothing against a well thought out micro. But, it seems as though micros are now the norm instead of the exception. They are popping up on every street corner in our area, and there is no creativity, no thought, no anything to them. They aren't even fun to go out and hunt. We do them because they are all that's out there. There are a few people who get creative with containers or with the spot they are placed in, but these are rare. Most are just placed on a street corner, just so that they can say they have one placed. What happened to people actually placing (gasp??!??!?!?) ammo boxes where you could trade items and not just find a wet log. What happened to people creating caches that were big enough to trade items in, and that you could put an item in without fear of it being muggled? What happened to caches that were actually more than 1 star and where you had to walk more than 500 feet from where you parked? Now, before anyone goes off, I will say that we currently only have one adopted cache that is ours. We had another that was stolen, and another that we gave away when we moved. We don't believe in just placing 35mm film canisters everywhere so we can say we have caches placed. When caches are just placed willy nilly, it really starts to ruin the sport. We have seen a few caches where the description tells you where to park, and exactly where the container is. You don't even need a GPS. We constantly see a cache that was placed, soon get crossed off because it was muggled....hmmm, maybe because it was outside the local Starbucks? There is a cache in our area that log after log tells how the employees at a local repair shop literally TELL people exactly where the cache is located, so all you really have to do is stand on the corner and they will tell you where to go. What is the point? Yes you get another cache find, but is it rewarding? We have lost 7 travel bugs now before they even reached 1000 miles, all because of them being placed in caches that were too public. Now, we are currently working on two, possibly three 4 - 5 star caches that will not be for the faint of heart but, these take time and planning. We got the idea from a really awesome cache in Virginia called "Blood & Guts in Virginia". We started that when it first was published and it was a doozy. Unfortunately, we never got to finish it, but many people have now. Even just working on the first 2 stages was so rewarding. I can tell you that what was required for stage one of that cache made us think we were crazy, requiured 3 trips to complete (our fault) and was extremely messy. And we weren't even sure we were in the right place, but the pics we took once we found what we were looking for really made our day. We hope to finish it someday. All we are saying is that people really should try to put some thought in and make the game more challenging instead of continually dumbing it down. There is definately a place for a few micros and a few quick P&G's here and there. Every neighborhood needs a few. But, can't there be a few challenges that make you think? that make people have to work together? That actually have a really nice payoff that makes you glad that you spent the time and solved the puzzle. Sigh. I will stop ranting now. I am just really frustrated with the whole thing. Hopefully, others will jump on and really put some thought into some new caches for the 2nd half of 2006. If anyone in the Indy area is interested in helping us create ours, let us know. Dep&Uno ---------------------------------------------------------------------- **************************************** For List Info or To make _ANY_ changes, including unsubscribing from this list, click -----> //www.freelists.org/list/geocaching Missouri Caches Scheduled to be Archived http://tinyurl.com/87cqw