Location, Location, Location!

Last weekend we placed our first cache. As usual when doing something for the first time, your expections and the reality don't quite meet. I thought, hey, we'll place it on Monday afternoon, and go post it on the site, and that way someone can still discover it today on this holiday weekend. Yeah... no... So it takes 36-72 hours to be reviewed and posted. It finally got posted on Thursday I believe it was. So once again I'm all excited waiting for our first finder. Except we'd goofed, and the poor first person (luckily very experienced so he knew better than to stick his hand in there) got sent to the wrong coordinates. As soon as he posted this, I quickly disabled the listing so I could fix it. I was mortified. You see, we had a couple spots in mind. The first one we ruled out because there was poison ivy there. Only we forgot to tell our GPS that, and being still newbies at using it, what coordinates do you think we mistakenly put down? Yep, that's right, the bad ones. *sigh* And did we think to check it against the satellite map which would have clearly shown me it was in the wrong place? NOPE! So, when placing a cache, it is VERY important to check your location again and again and again! Luckily our very experienced first attempter is good natured (as is the second one, also very experienced) and went back out that very night to find it after I had posted that I had fixed the coordinates! We also quickly got several more entries, all successful, so now we're on our way! But hey, now I know how to use all those different types of updating posts that are available! LOL!

Here's another no-no I've discovered... I'm not sure what the real term for it is, but it happens when someone mistakenly (or intentionally, in my case it was mistakenly) posts pictures of travel bugs with the tracking number clearly visible. This allows someone who has never seen the item to discover/grab/place it wherever they want. I think I may have had this happen to me, and it was very puzzling. I posted pictures awhile back from the picnic we attended of our first travel bug, unfortunately I didn't think about the number being visible in the picture. We took it to the picnic, all the attendees "discovered it" (meaning logged it without taking it, just to show they'd seen it) and then someone from the picnic had taken it with them to eventually place in a cache, perfectly acceptable, and what we had intended. Several days later, I get a few weird log entries, culminating in a placement in Iraq! Excuse me? I suppose it was possible, but it seemed unlikely. The logs said it had been placed in a cache. The next logs for that cache, very soon after, said it was not there, and I believed it had been lost. Oh well, that's why you don't want to use anything near and dear or expensive as a travel bug, there's always that chance it will go missing. Then, I get another log for it, a local area cacher has found it again. Still in town... hmmmm... Obviously whoever logged it placed in Iraq, was full of you know what. So, all I can think it that someone took the number from the picture, and posted these false logs. I don't know why they would do this, but then I don't know why people do a lot of things! ;) I was able to delete the bad logs, bring the bug's mileage back to a correct couple of miles rather than over 6,000, and I've learned a valuable lesson, don't post pictures of trackables with their numbers visible! The reason? You didn't see it, you don't deserve to count it in your numbers, and it's not fair to disappoint people expecting to find it when it was never there!

In spite of these newbie goofs, we're still very enthusiastic, and managed to find several caches this weekend that we had tried and missed on the first time, so we feel quite successful this weekend at having hit 50 finds. :)

The adventure continues!

Our second travel bug is a keychain of my college mascot, placed in a nearby park, so far lying undiscovered...