A while back there was a thread on the Houston
Geocaching forums indirectly asking what kinds of caches others hunt.
A newbie was trying to understand why his hides weren't more active.
He thought maybe it was because they were micros and nanos. Here was
my curmudgeonly reply. |
Hmm . . . Usually you don't know what a
cache is like until you get there, so I doubt people are avoiding your
caches because of container size. I'm inclined to think today's cachers
prefer P&G micro caches to pump up their numbers, so yours should be in
demand. (See my cache size
evolution graphs.) By far my most active caches are micros. One's on a bench where you only
have to pull off the road and walk a few feet, the others are nanos along
the commuter rail downtown (these have since been adopted by another
cacher). My next to last cache
is a nice size ammo box in the woods, in a location with historic
significance and a scenic view. It's been there almost a two years and had
very few
finds. I think in the old days it would have been a popular cache. That said, at the top of my "I like" list are caches that take me to interesting places. Next are novel hides -- that doesn't mean hard to find, just novel/different/creative. In general I prefer regular or large caches, and second small, but not micros classified as small. To me a small needs to be at least tennis ball size -- that's volume, not length. Maybe with the advent of nanos and other tiny micros, newbies think an ordinary medicine bottle is a small. I've even seen a couple of 35mm film containers labeled "small" They were once the classic micro (in spite of the fact they often leak). In general, I'm not a fan of the burgeoning growth in the use of micros and I would ban nanos unless a convincing justification accompanies the cache submission. I think micros in the wood are an abomination. Not only does this make for a cache that's pointlessly hard to find, it hogs a location that could be used for a real cache. Micros are sometimes necessary and useful. I have a few because they take people to (I hope) interesting locations where there's no place to hide a regular cache. I call most of my micro caches micro-virtuals, because I began using them after virtuals were outlawed and when there was no way to place a real cache nearby. In summary, it's my opinion micros should only be used when there's a justification for using them -- not because someone wants to put out a zillion caches cheaply with little effort. And, certainly not skirt lifter micros -- who wants to visit a Walmart parking lot? Finally, I really, really hate containers that leak. There's little in caching more obnoxious than trying to sign a mush-wet rancid log -- and those teeny ziplock bags provide little-to-no protection. ![]()
|