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How creative are your geocache hiders?


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I still very new to the geocaching world and I am wondering how creative you are when creating your geocaches or if you find a lot of creative geocaches. I find mostly 35mm film canisters around here. How are the geocaches in your are?

 

That's actually a much more complicated question then you would think. I have about 2,400 finds over 9 years of Geocaching here in 8 or so U.S. States and Ontario, Canada, and I'll bet maybe 10% st most of them were "creative". From the parking lot and guardrail hides (most of which I ignore), to the traditional hiding spots "in the woods", most of them have been essentially the same. Not that I'm an advocate of those who ridicuously compare parking lot lampskirt hides to "piles of sticks" in the woods. Really, people? Let me put a .50 cal ammo box on a rocky hillside under heavy tree cover, and you can compare that to an LPC. :anibad:

 

You haven't been watching too many of those "Geocache Spoiler" videos, have you? Such caches are few and far between, in my opinion. :)

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"Creative" can mean a lot of different things.

 

I hunt primarily out of town, so I find a lot of small or regular-sized containers hidden in the woods, often in a hollow stump/log/root ball, so it's "creative" if the container is hidden somewhere I don't expect (in a fern, hanging high up in a tree, etc.)

 

I've found plenty of film cans and they're usually not overly creative hides, but occasionally they've brought me to amazing places that I would not have found otherwise. Not creative, yet still a good hide.

 

I've found ordinary containers that were so well camouflaged that even though they were hiding in plain sight, it took multiple trips, help from the CO, etc. Does camo make an otherwise ordinary container "creative"? idk, but I was impressed.

 

And then I've found extra-ordinary, unequivocally "creative" containers like a homemade, fairly realistic beehive. Awesome hide - I'll never manage to hide one like that myself just from lack of beehive-making skills. HEH.

 

When I really enjoy a hide, it often inspires me to think about creating a similar hide myself. Hide what you would enjoy finding. And if that's an untra-creative hide, then so much the better. You might inspire folks around you to follow suit.

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The creativity of cachers around here usually comes in the form of finding cool places for caches. Personally I don't care much for what passes for creativity. The coolest cache container ever, if hidden in a Walmart parking lot is still a cache in a Walmart parking lot and of no interest to me.

Edited by briansnat
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We have a cacher here who does the Presidential series and a second who does these great "historical" story caches (very loosely based on fact) who do REALLY creative caches. When either pubs a new one, there is an immediate stampede to their sites.

 

I was also in Maine recently and was SUPER impressed with the caches along the greenway near Saco.

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The creativity of cachers around here usually comes in the form of finding cool places for caches. Personally I don't care much for what passes for creativity. The coolest cache container ever, if hidden in a Walmart parking lot is still a cache in a Walmart parking lot and of no interest to me.

+1 I love a cache in a cool location.

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The interesting thing about creativity is it can get old once it's copied a few times. The first time I found a fake bolt in a guardrail, magnetic sheet on a power box, Lost Dog sign on a post, 50 film canisters in a bucket/ammocan, pine cone in a tree, fake rock in a rock pile was uber cool. The 10th time was boring, sometimes irritating. The hard part is creating something that hasn't been done before.

 

Sometimes creativity comes in the form of the cache description or cache title. I like a funny cache title that's a play-on-words or a title that makes sense once you visit the location and find the box.

 

My attempt at creativity is carving theme or location-specific handmade stamps for our letterbox hides and making the occassional handmade logbooks.

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I live in a growing "city" and most hides are pretty common and repetitive that's why I have only 65 finds since I started last November I will still do the random lpc but only rarely....Now my home town out in the "country" is actually rather creative with their hides and there is far less caches.

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We have a cacher here who does the Presidential series and a second who does these great "historical" story caches (very loosely based on fact) who do REALLY creative caches. When either pubs a new one, there is an immediate stampede to their sites.

 

I haven't found any of those cache so can't really comment on their creativity. More often than not though creating a series based on some theme rarely demonstrates creativity and usually just looks like an excuse to hide a large number of caches. For example, creating a U.S. Presidents theme series would mean that one could hide 44 caches. A bit north of me someone seems to be hiding caches with the name of a song for the title. I have no idea how many are in the series but they could probably come up with thousands of song names as a reason to hide a cache.

 

It seems to me that if one chooses a location first, then constructs a cache which works for that location, then chooses a name for the cache it's likely going to be a better hide than if one chooses a name first, uses any old container, then looks for a place to hide it.

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We have a cacher here who does the Presidential series and a second who does these great "historical" story caches (very loosely based on fact) who do REALLY creative caches. When either pubs a new one, there is an immediate stampede to their sites.

 

I haven't found any of those cache so can't really comment on their creativity. More often than not though creating a series based on some theme rarely demonstrates creativity and usually just looks like an excuse to hide a large number of caches. For example, creating a U.S. Presidents theme series would mean that one could hide 44 caches. A bit north of me someone seems to be hiding caches with the name of a song for the title. I have no idea how many are in the series but they could probably come up with thousands of song names as a reason to hide a cache.

 

It seems to me that if one chooses a location first, then constructs a cache which works for that location, then chooses a name for the cache it's likely going to be a better hide than if one chooses a name first, uses any old container, then looks for a place to hide it.

 

Yes, I've seen the same thing. A large series of caches with the same theme but there's nothing about the location or the container that connects to the series titles. I don't get the point of it. Definitely not creative.

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