My Geocaching Getaway

This weekend was a fun one for my wife, we elected to take Friday off and head to Southern Utah.  Down to St. George to the event was the goal on Saturday, but I had no other plans. 

Great group of geocaching jeeps.. sorry about that chevy thing that made it in the picture.

I did have a few that I will throw lists on tomorrow night.  I made a list of all the virtuals and earthcaches on the way down and back, we made a trip down to Richfield to stay Thursday night, then over to Cove Fort, and south to St George on Friday.  Then Saturday was the event, and through Zions, and north up highway 89 until we hit Richfield to see family.  Then we came back on Sunday.

The even in St. George was great.  It had a ton of people in attendance at there breakfast.  I counted about eighty people in the photos.  It was a big crowd and I am sure the Golden Corral was happy for all the money that geocachers brought in for them.

I actually took some of the UNPC coins down to sell.  We had to scramble to get up and get over there.  So I forgot about them completely. 

There were so many that I wanted to visit with that I missed most of them. 

I should have grabbed a t-shirt that Tico Jeffrey had made and sold to many of the people that were attending.  I did not think of it until it was too late, maybe another time.

I want to give thanks to everyone that was involved.  It was one of the best events that I have ever been to.

There are a few events that are larger, one or two of the UTAG events have been near this size, and the Potters Ponds event calls out a group of people that is larger.  Some of the events up north in Logan tend to be near this size as well. 

However after a long winter and people dying to get outside and actually do something, the timing of this event, the nice weather, hosts, and people who attend make this the best getaway in Utah. 

I recomend it to all, and hope that schedules allow me to come down every year.

In the next few days I will post some of my other experiences on the trip south, It was more than I could list in one big pile, so if you want to see what else happened, stay tuned.

Update on 2011-03-09 17:03 by firennice

Heading South

Well tonight I am heading on a road trip.  Officially it is time away with my wife. We don't know when we are stopping or where, but we are heading south.  The only know stop is the event in St George Saturday morning.  I do have my big list of Virtuals and Earthcaches to grab, and explore.

I hope to see many of you there. I will post a follow up with pictures when I get a chance.

New Poll - 2/28/11

I have a new poll today asking what geocaching sites you use on a regular basis.

On that same page the last poll is still going:  What is your favorite cache size.  That one will be open for a few more days.

Winter in Pine Forest 2011

Cerving Girl teaching the kids (and grownups) how to use the skis.

What has quickly became my favorite event of the year hit yesterday. Cervine Girl's Winter in Pine forest event.  At the scout camp up Payson Canyon there is a ton of fun to be had.

The BSA (thanks to Cervine Girl) lets us use cross country skis and snowshoes to head out to Pine forest.  It is a great trip. 

Getting ready for the tripAfter a brief instruction on the use of the skis, how to get in and out, and some tips on how to keep out of trouble on the trail we headed off.

The trip to pine forest is not very long.  I would guess it is a half mile to the forest and the snow was really sticky so there was not a lot of sliding, just walking on the skis. 

A few took the time to grab a number of Baldin Eagles caches that were along the way.  He has a pretty well known cache series of puzzles in the hills around the camp. So when we left the camp gates we were taking the time to grab them and hunt for Stopping for a Baldin Eagle Cachethem.  One was never found, but most likely because it was under 3+ feet of snow.  Poking with ski poles found the other when people heard the "thump" of hitting the plastic containers.

There were a number of smaller kids this year than I remember in the years past.  I wish that I had thought ahead and brought my kids on the trip as well.  The weather was warm and it was snowing the entire time.

Ski cachin' in style... with a tie. All in all it was a blast, after a long trip caching, and talking we worked our way back to the kitchen. 

There we had Hot Chocolate and doughnuts waiting for us. So it was really fun to sit around and visit with people that had gotten ahead of us on the trail, or behind us as they arrived.

I had one other thought.  It was at this event last year that I told people that I was the reviewer,  catching everyone off guard. 

So it was interesting to think what I had been involved in since that time, and the changes in geocaching.

I will write the changes that I have seen soon, and toss in some thoughts on them.

Thanks for everyone and your support.  It makes all the work worth the effort.

 For more pictures from the event visit the set on Flickr.

opencaching vs opencaching

Well we are over two months in, and I have my predictions.  I have written a few times about opencaching.com but not the opencaching.us site.

.com or .us what opencaching site has the longest legs?

Let me jump back to a few months ago.  The opencaching.com site was launched.  I thought this was a horrible name first of all.  Using one that belonged to someone else.  I had heard a while before that it was coming out and had been watching its home screen.  Though I do not do much of anything with the other sites I was, like many of you, curious to see what it was like.

I was nervous.  There was a large company whose profit is in the Billions, with thousands of employees, that could come after geocaching full boar.  With resources that would dwarf that of the little 40 person (just a guess there) groundspeak.  What would the future hold, how would it evolve.  I thought the original Opencaching sites were doomed.

Birth of .com

Well the first week of December it exploded onto the scene.  It was in the news, all the blogs, podcasts, and other sites rushed to find out what the new and most interesting thing.  Many went over right away and cross listed some or all of their caches on the other site. 

But in all that there were issues. Few cache types, nothing really new, the site was riddled with bugs. People seemed to jump on, look around and leave.  Many tried to reserve names, only to find out they were taken, or Opencaching.com would not allow some characters, or spaces in names.

I was randomly assigned a different name., even though i asked for a specific name.  Apparently the original was taken in the Garmin system.   Then in the forums it defaulted to my real name.  Oooops.

January

by the end of December 7ish thousand caches were listed.  A good number, a number showing real growth and real potential.  Except for one thing.

There were no new caches.  Well there were.  A friend going through the caches located only showed a small percentage of original caches.  And that number has not changed.

I am betting that you are not aware that apparently there are more caches on Opencaching.us (500+) than there are original caches on all of Garmin's site (about 400ish).  It is tricky how Garmin numbers its caches, but caches that are imported are given similar numbers, and if I just enter a cache, I get a unique number.  I do not know how many opencaching.us caches are unique (flaw in my system).

that would mean they are about even, except many of Garmin's unique caches, were caches that were just entered in, without a corresponding GC code, which there is.  So there are actually fewer than their numbering system shows.

Growing?

Both sites are growing.  Still the Garmin site is getting more unique caches each week than the .us site.  But there are more than just that site.   Skimming over all the caching sites I am seeing some 300ish new caches this month on opencaching sites.  Garmin's site? about 40-50 new unique caches.

Many that were disgruntled, banned, or otherwise annoyed seemed to have found a home there.  I know some that are annoyed that their forums are a never ending geocaching.com bashing session.  I drop on in and read once and a while.  Being a moderator in geocaching.com forums I see a some abusive behavior.  It can get ugly at times.

The chart above shows the Google Insight chart for the past 90 days.   One is sorted with three of the Opencaching sites lumped together, (US, Germany, and Poland).  The other line is the one for Garmins opencaching.com.  You can see the spike when it came out.  Then it fades away.  Why is that significant?  Well no one is searching for it.

Loss of Sales

Another interesting thought. Looking at Its Not About the Numbers Blog he mentioned that 90% of those taking his survey are Garmin users. Of those nearly half expect say they will not be buying garmin next time.  That is horrific for Garmin. 

Garmin makes a lot of money on GPS units. Sales have been dropping, that means profits as well.  Are they loosing money?  Nope, but that does not bolster confidence that they are alienating their customer base.

Future

What does the future hold?  Wow. My prediction?

Well Garmins mess.

Garmin is a publicly held company.  They never put their heart into it or they would not have released a product that was still deep in Alpha testing.  Make no mistake, it was not in Beta testing.  I have been a part of Beta testing over the years, this was not ready to be seen the first few weeks.

They have to show a profit, and a market. They appear to not have either, and in fact have alienated their market.  Do I think that 50% of Garmin users will leave?  Nope.  but 25% is a big blow. 

When someone goes to geocaching they need to see something new.  They want the new caches. Not going to another site to see the same thing. Navicache, Terracache, and Opencaching sites all have something special, rugged caches, unique types of caches, scoring methods, or something.  Garmin has created a poor window with 1 in 20 being unique, and you cannot tell what caches are unique, unless you decode their numbering system in GSAK and wade through the numbers.

So Garmin will trudge along.  The war was lost in December.  I think if a finished product had came out many would have jumped ship.  It may just sit as a side project to keep some Garmin VP from loosing face, just pushing along, but it is in all essence doomed. Garmin has to pay for it, advertisers may not appear in force (why would competitors spend money there instead of Garmin).

opencaching sites.

They are pulling along.  I think they are far more successful than the other sites Navicache, Terracache, and their future is brighter.  The cache owners of those sites will hang on.  The costs are not high there, no overwhelming programming costs.  You many not see a lot of new widgets on the cache pages, but the sites run, and they experiment with cache types.  Drawing people in.  They are devoted and keep the sites alive.

Winner - the original opencaching sites

Looser - Garmin