Hello Ken,
You have been a wealth of information to me lately and because of that, I have a semi-hypothetical question for a real-life situation and how our geocaching guidelines apply to it....

Let's say you and I are good geocaching friends and we call ourselves "GeoPair". So maybe I go out and make a find today (by myself) and sign the log as "GeoPair". I let you know I found it, and BOTH OF US log a find. But since GeoPair is just a pseudonym for our partnership, we have to log our find individually using our separate usernames on geocaching.com. The owner of the cache does a log check and finds GeoPair signed the log, but you and I both posted finds. Perhaps it is well known that you and I together are "GeoPair", perhaps not. The general guideline is once you've signed the physical log, you can post the find on the internet. In this situation is it allowable for both of us to log a find? Is it acceptable (without repercussion) for the owner to delete both of our logs (due to the "bogus" nature of the logs)?

I ask these questions because I am aware of a situation that exactly mirrors my description of this hypothetical situation. What are the exact "rules" that apply here? If I had made this "find" today I could have just as easily signed my name and "forged" your name and the owner probably wouldn't/couldn't know the difference. I assure you, I am NOT doing this. I am aware of another geocacher that IS doing this (signing a pseudonym and/or signing for others). I am just looking for clarification of our geocaching guidelines and options/remedies for a situation such as this. I am relatively new to geocaching, but I believe in and insist on maintaining the integrity of this sport.

I would appreciate your insight and opinion regarding this matter. Thank you!

I appreciate your efforts to protect the integrity of geocaching, but the geocaching logs are sometimes a mysterious place where one person's viewpoint conflicts with the next person's. As a volunteer reviewer, I have been instructed time and time again that reviewers are not the log police, so we shouldn't be editing or deleting logs on caches (other than those we own) unless a log violates terms of agreement that all geocachers "signed" when they created their account on geocaching.com.

Note: The rest of this email is my personal opinion and not necessarily that of geocaching.com. My personal opinion -- and I believe the widespread opinion of many long-time geocachers -- is that if you are not physically present for a find, you shouldn't claim it as a find.

In additon to my IowaAdmin account (which I rarely use to log finds), I have an account that I use when I cache hunt on my own and a third account that my wife and I use when we geocache together. Having said that, I know of many couples (usually husband and wife) who have just one account and log all their finds there regardless of whether they were both present. If a single account is shared by a nuclear family, there's seems to be widespread agreement among geocachers that it's OK for family members to log a find even if a spouse or kids were not present. To each his/her own.

Regarding the situation you describe, the cache owner IS the cache police for his/her own cache. I believe the cache owner is justified in deleting any logs he/she truly feels are not legitimate. Like any situation where there may be a difference of opinion, all actions by the cache owner should be done with tactful courtesy and not out of spite or nastiness. The cache owner should clearly explain why he or she is taking the action, such as deleting a log, and give the geocacher a chance to respond or revise the log. If the geocacher doesn't like the outcome, he/she can choose not to search for any more caches owned by that particular cache owner. But there's no need for public shouting matches about it. Just accept it and move on.

I hope this helps.

• I reviewed 3,053 new geocaches during the past year -- roughly from September 2008 through August 2009. All of these were in Iowa. That comes to an average of 8.36 caches reviewed per day.
• Worldwide, 391,742 new geocaches were reviewed during the past year.
• In the United States, 193,054 new geocaches were reviewed during the past year.
• Iowa now has 7,949 active geocaches (including event caches but not including EarthCaches) listed on geocaching.com.
• Worldwide, there are now 912,967 active geocaches.

"This cache appears to be in a cemetery. Because of complaints about geocachers
playing 'games' in cemeteries across the country, I need to make sure you
received permission from the cemetery owners or caretaker before this is listed.
Also, the cache needs to be placed away from graves so it doesn't upset mourners
who may accidentally find it or see geocachers in the cemetary. Please reply by
posting in a reviewer note the name and contact information of the person who
granted permission for this cache and then re-enable the cache so it reappears
in my review queue. If you don't plan to seek permission, please archive
the listing and remove the cache. Thanks for your understanding."

Ken,
Just a question regarding our upcoming event. For last years event,
you allowed us to submit caches "pre-approval" before the event and then
published them a few days after the event. We are already scoping out
places for this year's event and were hoping to do the same thing. A few
of the containers we make for a specific spot. How much extra work
is it for you to pre-approve these caches and then sit on them? Do you have a separate database of caches that have been approved
but are not yet published? As always, thanks for your time.

Is this coordinate confusion becoming the new trend? How is it possible for a cache owner to view their cache page, see the map of their cache so far away, and do nothing to fix it? My little yellow eTrex can at least put the cache in the correct county! Isn't THIS the reason we have reviewers?

To find each cache, I thoroughly read the cache description, pulled up the Google Map view of the coordinates, zoomed in as much as possible, and could identify within approximately 10-12 feet exactly where the cache was hidden. If fact, I felt more confident about finding this cache than I usually do whenever I use my GPS. Not only did I know what area of town the cache was in, what street it was near, and what park it was inside; I could tell which tree it was under and almost which side of the shrubs it was on. Needless to say, it took me longer to ride the elevator down from my hotel room than it did to find this cache - even without a GPS.

Aerial views are great, but Google has now gone one step further and added Street Views to its maps for most major metropolitan areas. This extremely close view can help you pinpoint exactly where a cache is located from ground-level. Using this feature, urban geocachers can not only see what an area looks like from above, they can view extremely close details of the hide location allowing them to scout out an area well before they arrive on the scene to begin searching. So, is a GPS receiver still necessary for Geocaching?

Knowing that it was already after 2:00am and we would be returning less than 2.5 hours later, we decided that we would just go and grab a bite to eat at Denny's before returning to the park entrance around 4:20am. As we were approaching the park again, we saw what we thought was the same police car driving away from the park. Shortly after, we could see the first of many cars re-entering the park well before 5:00am. My wife and I decided that if we were going to find the coin and win the hunt that we would at least do so honestly and play by the rules. One of the official rules says, "Do not enter locked or closed premises or premises without authorization." To us, this included White Rock Lake park until 5:00am, so we sat and impatiently waited.

We knew that if the coin were just recently hidden between 2:00-5:00am under the small footbridge closest to the stone tables (the same bridge that we had thoroughly searched hours before) that it would easily have been found already by the pre-5:00am searchers. So we decided that we would thoroughly search one of the other bridges in that section of the park. There were two road bridges and one additional wooden foot bridge over the creeks branching off of the lake giving us a 1 in 4 chance of searching the correct place. Because of the words "amble," "ramble," and "rover," we thought our best bet would be the one remaining large footbridge over the creek instead of the two road bridges.

As soon as our car's clock said 5:00am, we drove to our bridge location and began our search. When we arrived, we were the first car parked there, but not the first people searching. One of the cars that we could see driving through the area before 5:00am was apparently dropping people off at the various bridges in the park and leaving again trying to avoid being caught by the police officer. Even though we knew we weren't the first hunters to search this wooden bridge, we gave it a good hour of our time anyway.

We grabbed our flashlights and climbed over and under every inch of that wooden bridge while trying to avoid spiders, wasp nests, and who knows what else. My wife and I both slipped and fell into the creek (feet-first thankfully) at one time or another so we both searched the creek bed under and around the bridge. We looked under rocks, in piles of debris washed up against the side of the bridge, under and over all of the bridge supports and girders, in the cracks between the planks, and in every possible nook and cranny. Finally, we decided that we had looked in and around every possible hiding place on and under that rather large wooden bridge and called off our search after almost an hour. At this point, we felt confident that the coin was not under our bridge and knew that if the coin were under one of the other 3 bridges that it was probably already found.

But we still didn't stop. We looked under and around the original small stone footbridge and both of the road bridges although not going into the water to search since these bridges crossed rather deep sections of the creek and smelled like raw sewage. Once we were convinced that we had searched all of the bridges in the area without success, we started our search on other areas thinking that maybe the clue didn't mean a bridge but instead was something that we would normally just step over instead of walk or drive over like a large rock. We searched drainage ditches under roadways, under all of the slides and playground equipment that kids could climb over, and even resorted to fanning out over the area looking under individual rocks, sticks, trash, and anything else that a coin could be hidden under. Still no success. After almost 8 hours of searching and waiting all through the night and early morning with only a few hours of a break at Denny's, we were tired, wet, and physically exhausted from our search. For one last attempt, I called for advice and maybe an additional interpretation of the clue. My mom suggested that maybe it was talking about "going over" the park guidelines possibly on a sign about dogs. With this latest interpretation, we drove around that area of the park and searched on, around, and under every sign that had any sort of rule including several ones about dogs.

Finally, after around eight and a half hours of searching every square inch of that park and zero hours of sleep, we said goodbye to some of the other hunters still hanging around and left Dallas around 9:30am. While talking with some of the other hunters just before we left, we compared clues and clue interpretations. Interestingly, none of the hunters present at the time interpreted all of the clues. Nobody understood "DeagleD". Nobody understood for certain "don't lose your head." We were the only ones that understood, "the truth shall set you free," but were the only ones NOT to understand that "Legal Hill Fop" was an anagram for Flag Pole Hill. Some of the hunters we talked too heard from another hunter that a guy found the coin in a small black pouch under the small stone footbridge at 3:30am, but who really knows if that is accurate.

Overall, there are several possible scenarios for what happened. The coin could have been found by accident earlier in the week. The coin could have been hidden after the police officer made everyone leave the park at 2:00am and found later by someone who sneaked back in before 5:00am (most likely scenario in my opinion). The coin might not have been hidden yet and could have been hidden later that day when all of the original hunters left. Or, all of us at White Rock Lake who didn't correctly interpret all 30 clues might have been searching for a red herring in the woods.

Whichever scenario turns out to be true (and we may never really find out), we had a fun time and enjoyed our late night adventure in Dallas.