Geocaching Blog

Challenge Caches have gone belly up. This was GC management's 2nd 'virtual' game response to the ever-present 'bring back virtuals' request.

Their first new 'virtual' game to appease the masses was/is Waymarking, more like Locationless caches, not really like old-fashioned Virtuals, so the beseeching continued.

The now defunct Challenge Caches were introduced just a few months ago. They are more like a photo location game - 'go somewhere, do something', post a photo. Almost nothing like old-fashioned Virtuals where you needed to visit the location and prove that you found the cache by answering questions that could be answered by physically visiting the location.

Maybe geocaching.com management might re-consider bringing back real circa 2002 Virtuals. But to control them, so they don't get out of hand - charge $5 per virtual hide. People will probably be more selective about where they put a Virtual cache if there's a small monetary investment involved. The idea comes from the Munzee site. Virtual munzees got out of hand and were abused but are more controlled now that Munzee management put a price tag on them.

There are secret munzees. When you find them you can scan them via your computer screen and capture them for points. Tonight I found 4 and I'm on the hunt for more but it's not easy. Here's the forum topic that got me started: Special Hidden Munzees

1. Google munzee contra
2. Try to get a Page Not Found on munzee.com, you'll get a cap-able munzee with a frownie face
3. Google Plano Texas Fire Department. There's a munzee on their homepage.
4. The munzee on the munzee.com homepage is cap-able
5. I remember finding one at a Boy Scouts Jamboree site this summer. I think this is the NOAC Boy Scout munzee:

6. I think the Munzee creators list of deployed munzees will likely have lots of these. The trick is to figure out on what webpage they put the munzee qr code.
7. Ketchup
8. Wikipedia
9. Face book
10. Deuce of Hearts munzee:

11. Most of the munzees in the Munzee Store

Update: someone posted a list of "arm chair" munzees in the forums. Here's the list:

Armchair Munzees - GeoJewett's blog about secret munzees

I was impressed with this list of principles that Zalgariath follows. He posted the list to the Munzees: Have I been doing it wrong? forum discussion. I thought I'd share it here:

I will make durable, quality Munzees... and usually with a custom skin. Laminated and designed to last.
I will take care the location I deploy in is scanable, sensible, and has at least some interest.
I will attach my munzees in a decent manner and NOT damage the fixture with permanent glue or things.* Once they go, I want NO SIGN they were ever there.
I will deploy a Munzee in each of MY geocaches or at least nearby
I will deploy while travelling a long way from home if I find an awesome spot.
I will maintain cache Munzees
I will not maintain, I will simply archive, all my long distance ones if reported missing.
I will deploy series and trails, spaced close, in large numbers but taking into account the above quality / interest concerns.
I may or may not vigorously maintain these series, depending on if they are meant to work together and should be kept whole (like Munzopoly) or if they are a nature trail with so many along a walk the loss of a few won't matter.
I will help my fellow Munzeers with events, custom Munzees and advice.
I will comment on and rate every Munzee I find.
I will tell a Munzee owner if I think their deployment is a bit rubbish or needs a rethink... in a nice way
I will Cap Virtuals... I will not comment on them, unless done really well. Effort for effort!
I will Cap anything, but prefer walks and trails with a Munzee every 100-200m hidden in a variety of ways.

Density is good.... BUT! VARIETY VARIETY VARIETY.... 50 munzees under every seat? No fun. 50 Munzees under seats, on poles, on trees, behind signs, fences... much better

* Some glue jobs are fine. Guard rails, Trolls, Backs of some old signs... but I have seen a number that are stuck to places that they really should be like statues :(

Thought I'd post a link to an article that explains how Munzee team up with the Boy Scouts of America to munzify the Scouts:

QR codes used by Boy Scouts of America with the help of Munzee

Each event had a barcode for scouts to scan. And each barcode had points. The more important the event, the more points were rewarded. Members with the most points at the end of the National Order of the Arrow Conference won prizes. A great way to get members to attend events, at least long enough to scan the barcode. ;)

According to the NOAC site in addition to the QR code at the events, each participant received a personal munzee in their registration packet that could be shared with other guests which will lead to more points. Interesting. Maybe this was a test of the moving munzee concept that has been discussed in the forums. Perhaps in the future all munzee participants can purchase a traveller. It could be a quick way to get points especially when worn (tshirt, hat, badge, pin, etc) at munzee events.

I was doing a google search trying to find an old forum post of mine (which I didn't find :( ) when I came across this old Lost & Found Cryptosporidium-623 log nomination. Essence of Beldar Conehead on Saturday Night Live. I thought I'd post it here so I'd have a record of it:

Cryptosporidium-623 found Enigma #1

Friday, 28 January 2011Colorado

Look, I found a
RUBBER CHICKEN inside!

Bwah ha ha ha ha!

Your inverted bolita collector was no match for the mighty Cryptosporidium-623 from planet FURON! As my clone, 507, our K-9 Mark III unit and myself approached the location of your diabolical device, we happened upon a Hooman attempting to use his primate neurons to reassemble the unit. He ran from the scene, waving his arms and screaming something about being unable to solve the "reverse puzzle."

As we were more interested in a conquest of technology than another boring rectal probing (yes, we've learned all we are going to using THAT method), we obtained the device and analyzed its construction.

From our initial scans, it appeared, to us at any rate, as if the unit was intended to be an unholy pairing between a sewage evacuation system and a soup thermos. Interesting, tasty and sinister all at the same time (the way we Furons like them!)

Upon further examination, we discovered that the locking mechanism was left open, allowing us to quickly open the upper compartment and imprint our identities on the pulp-based logging analog. We then used our angular tractor beam device to retrieve the knowledge spheres that contained the security codes allowing us to PROPERLY SECURE THE UNIT. Oh look, we matched the patterned sequence on the FIRST try. Mwah haaa haaaa!

As far as primitive Hooman constructs go, we consider this device to be most worthy. In fact, we may borrow this design for a portable flatulence incinerator that we've been working on.

Thank you for your feeble attempts to postpone the inevitable downfall of Sol-III.

--Cryptosporidium-623
(AWESOME container, guys! TFTC!)

Adrian Faulkner · August 8, 2012

Munzee – A scavenger hunt for your smartphone

August 8, 2012 By Adrian Faulkner

It seems every time you look there’s a new geolocation game on the market. Some of these are little more than thinly veiled behaviour tracking vehicles fighting for a place in an already crowded segment of the app market, but some of them are genuinely fun games offering something a little different. Munzee is one of the fun ones, sitting somewhere between traditional geocaching and smartphone based location-based games such as Foursquare....

See the full article at GPS Tracklog

A very useful tip for iPhone users. I checked and turns out just about every app I have was running (including 3 geocaching apps and a munzee app). I'm hoping turning them off will decrease the amount of data I'm using up. It should free up some memory and battery life.

Excerpt from the blog The iPhone Mom:

Perhaps I’m the only one out there who didn’t realize that I had so many apps working overtime for me. Here are the steps to truly shutting down an app – just in case I’m not the only one who didn’t know how to do it.

Tap the home button twice.
At the bottom of the screen you’ll see a row app icons. These are the apps that are running. Slide your finger to move forward or backward through the apps. Chances are you’ll have more than the four that first show up.
Touch one of the app icon’s and hold your finger on it until they all start wiggling. A small red circle will appear at the top left of the icon.
Tap on the red circle and the app icon will disappear. The app is now no longer running in the background.
When you’re done shutting things down tap the home button and the apps will stop wiggling.
Tap the home button again to return to your home screen.
These steps will work even if you are currently using an app. In other words, you don’t have to be on the home screen to bring up the row of running apps.

If you, like me, prefer not to rate a munzee, here's how to do it on the app:

Hunt for the munzee, then Capture it.

The next screen asks you if you would like to "rate this munzee". Choose Not Now.

Tap the Hunt button and view the map.

If you are a Premium Member, tap the Apply Filter button and toggle off the Hide captured munzees option

Your captured munzee should now appear in red on the screen.

Tap the grey bubble to bring up the details

Click the Journal button

Click the + sign.

The default option is General Comment. Leave your comment and submit.

Instead of General Comment you can choose Needs Repair, Unable to locate or I found it!. Do not choose "I found it", you have already recorded your find. If you choose "I found it" you will have to rate the munzee.

This video struck a chord with me.

Kissing in Marden
6 kissing-theme munzees were planted on the Kissing Bridge Trailway yesterday. I'm hoping that people will like them enough to leave comments.

I planted a few munzees and geocaches lately.

Here are comments received on 3 new caches placed this week:

The captured munzees I placed in the same area - no comments. Which suggests to me that munzees are generally not exciting for finders. Geocaching is the meal, Munzee is the popcorn snack. It seems that it's easier to comment on the quality and flavour of the steak but tedious to write something about each piece of popcorn kernel consumed.

Two generous munzeers, DFX and thejoker have created databases that make munzeeing more fun.

Munzee GPX file generator
DFX has created a database that will generate a GPX file, a Google Maps preview or a Garmin POI (GPI) file. You can exclude your own munzees and your captured munzees. You can include special munzees and mark them as special. I love this database. I can save my iphone for capturing, saves battery life plus my GPS is so much more accurate.

Today I went out for some munzeeing and completely forgot to check my cell phone for battery life. It was down to 40%. So I shut it down and used my GPS. When I got to ground zero I used the cell phone to capture and to leave a comment then shut it down again. Walked a couple of kilometers and captured 4 munzees and still had some power left in the cell phone.

Munzee Skin Generator
Thejoker has created a database that generates a skin from an image of your choice. You incorporate your munzee QR code by pointing to the undeployed section of your user page. Click generate and you get a cool munzee to deploy. I created the one below using the generator and an image of aged wood.

For almost a year now I've been carrying around a cache - sandwich size Lock and Lock™ with logbook and swag. I've been looking for a good spot to hide it locally. A nice forest with good trails or an attractive spot somewhere.

3 times I've tried to submit, each time I've been turned down. Once because I was about 10m too close to a 5-year-old old cache. I forgot that I had it on my ignore list because it was a bring-a-ladder cache and required some strength to retrieve the cache. I went back to try to find another good largish hiding spot not too far from the trail but I just couldn't find anything I liked.

The next attempt about a month ago was about 20m too close to a 2-year-old rock pile hide with a number of DNFs and NMs. I found it 2 years ago. The coords are way off (I had posted better coords but the CO didn't update them). For the last 2 years people have been leaving miffed comments about the coordinates and the rock pile problems. I contacted the reviewer hoping they would intervene and alert the owner that if they didn't want to maintain the cache there was someone interested in hiding a cache nearby. But the reviewer asked me to post an NA before s/he would proceed. In my experience active but slack owners do not take kindly to NAs.

This week I couldn't believe how fortunate I was to find a new section of a local trail. Freshly blazed and no caches. I found a decent spot under a stump. Submitted the cache. Waited and 3 days later I get a friendly but disheartening email from the reviewer. Someone has put placeholders on this new trail. I may not be able to post my cache. He will contact the placeholder. I must wait for a remote chance that the spot may open up. Sigh.

This has never happened to me before. We've been planting/posting caches on geocaching.com since 2002 (over 40 cache hides) and have never been stymied.

The cache also contains a Munzee. I could undeploy and redeploy elsewhere but this is the 3rd time I've undeployed and redeployed it. So yesterday I decided I would post the cache anyway, on Garmin's OpenCaching site. This is a huge leap for me. I considered posting on opencaching.us too but they discourage cross-posting. I'll see how the Garmin site goes. I don't expect many visits maybe a couple if the Munzeers are also cachers who don't care which site a cache is posted on. If I get lucky and the placeholder relinquishes the location I'll also have it posted on gc.com but for now it's my first cache listing on another cache site.
--------------------------------------
--------------------------------------
Update:
"I must wait for a remote chance that the spot may open up. Sigh."
The trail opened up! I ended up planting 2 along the trail and have received some very favourable comments. :)

I tried submitting the cache to opencaching.com but I think because this was my first posted cache on OC, my submission was scrutinized carefully and the reviewer thought my coordinates were off. They are fine. I used a Garmin 62s to get the lat/long and averaged until I got a 100% rating. I decided not to post it on OC.com.

I went back to the first forest where I was too close to an old 5 year old cache. I was going to plant a letterbox in that spot but only post it on AQ. Well I couldn't find the log. Too much vegetation covering the area in the springtime. I looked for another spot and found a decent hollow base of a tree. Sometimes visiting at different times of the year gives one a fresh perspective. And, it turns out this spot is far enough away from any geocache in that forest. It's been 5 years since the 2 older caches were placed so it'll give people who visited years ago another reason to go treasure hunting in this quiet old-growth forest.

I was re-reading some of the logs on one of our letterbox hybrids and had a good laugh at one of last year's comments:

iHazFail99
10/10/2011
Me and my friend decided to go find it letterbox style. We were wondering where it was till we realized it was the trail we go through every day! We found it, and I told him to hold the lid for me. Turns out, there wastext on the lid and it freaked my friend out sooooooooo bad cause he never went letterboxing before and didn't know what to expect.It was aloud the lines of "You found a LETTERBOX. Letterbox is a sickness. If there is ink on your hands, it is too late. There was ink on his hands,and he freaked. I decided to have some fun with him and made him dunk his hands in the river. I then told him it was fake and we laughed.

On the inside of the lid I taped this message:

You have found a LETTERBOX.
Letterboxing is a sickness.
If you don't already have this affliction,
close this box immediately and put it back where you found it, well hidden.
Wash hands immediately after use.
If fingers are inky prior to box usage, it's already too late.
Seek another letterbox immediately.

An interesting article about the history of geoswag.

I've deployed a few munzees lately, with good results. Looks like the overloaded server is chugging along well enough now that the Easter frenzy is over. I was worried that there would be no more deploying until the site was moved to its own server. So far so good. :)

The Munzee site crashed. On Easter weekend. Probably because the special easter egg munzees are a big hit and everyone is going out collecting their extra points.

The site owners have announced that the server has fried and they need to upgrade to bigger and better servers, which could take a month.

Geez, the writing was on the wall. There were several server problems in the last month. The game is growing exponentially. Too bad they couldn't take action in anticipation of the growth and the huge increase in activity on a Special Munzee weekend. They create special extra-point munzees to increase play yet aren't ready to deal with the increased play.

The problem with Munzee - the servers go down so does the game. It can't be played offline. When the servers are down you can't capture, you can't deploy you can edit deployed munzees. You can't do anything. With geocaching, as long as you have downloaded geocache gpx files to your gps you can play. You can go hunt geocaches. Later when the site is back up you can log your finds and add comments. Same for letterboxing. Print off or save the letterboxing clues and you're good to go. The letterboxing Atlas Quest site just about never goes down. I don't recall there ever being a problem. The webmaster even encourages people to try to break the server on Plant a Letterbox day.

I think I'm going to take a break from Munzeeing (although I had this great trail and some creative munzees I wanted deploy today -- maybe I'll wait until mid-May and see if Munzee has the kinks worked out).

Most of my munzees are laminated colour copies of paintings that relate to where they are located - for example, my cemetery munzees have cemetery scenes. My forest munzees have paintings depicting forest themes. I've deployed 36. Got 18 captures. I thought people might enjoy the creativity. Of the 9 comments I've got so far not one person has said anything about the art theme. Maybe people just want a simple game - capture the qr code get 5 points.

Ooooo the sting of a low score on a munzee hide.

Yesterday I got a score of 1 on one of my cemetery munzee hides. The cemetery was tiny with a couple of evergreen trees. I picked the tree with the most cover. It was at the fenceline but also next to a gravestone.

My first visitor was upset by my choice of spots to hide the laminated card. I can see his point. So I undeployed the munzee and realizing that I had a couple of other cemetery munzees in evergreen trees too close to headstones I also undeployed them (luckily one hasn't been visited yet and the other was visited by the same finder so I'm not taking away points from anyone else).

I don't want to plant crappy or disrespectful munzees so I'm going to undeploy any munzees that get less then a 3 star rating. The Munzee site makes it easy to undeploy. I may also be able to move the card and re-deploy somewhere else, so it's not a waste of a thermal pouch, colour copying and the art print I include in most of my munzee hides.

One of my deployed munzees was captured today! Yeah.
Emmieo captured my first hide - Imperial Road Parkette.
The other 5 are still awaiting visits, but now I have high hopes. :)
I'm hoping people will leave journal entries, Emmieo left a note.
I thrive on feedback.

Amberel

Forum topic: Power trails vs other types of caches

Amberel

Posted 08 February 2012 - 06:11 AM

One of the problems with discussing "power trails" is what different people mean by the term. To me, by no means all cache trails are "power trails".

For me, what differentiates a power trail from other cache trails may include:
1) where a major influence on cache locations is minimum separation, rather than the best hiding places.
2) where the hides are repetitive and predictable.
3) where the cache containers are all the same, typically 35mm film cans.
4) where it is common practice for those who don't find a cache to drop another film can and call it a find.

For me, following a trail should offer two things - it should be a nice walk, and the caches themselves should hold some interest. If we were just walkers, a good walk by itself would be enough to make it a good trail to follow. But we aren't just walkers, we are geocachers. The geocaches are supposed to give the walk an extra dimension. If they are all the same and in totally predictable locations then after a short distance I would find them tedious, at which point they would start to detract from the walk instead of enhancing it.

If simply clicking up the numbers is enough to turn an otherwise boring series of caches into an interesting activity then I guess you like power trails. But while I sometimes enjoy having a bit of fun with numbers, that is supplementary to the quality of the caches and for me would not by itself change a poor caching experience into a good one.

Rgds, Andy

Now that I've been munzing for a few weeks I'm becoming aware of some features that are lacking and would make the game more streamlined and fun for me:

Notification when new munzees are deployed nearby
Search for munzees by ratings
Search for munzees by creators
Ignore munzees you do not want to find (e.g. parking lot munzee, guardrail munzee)
Suppress munzees whose last log was a DNF
Different coloured pins for different statuses - Found, Not Found, Last log is a DNF, Needs Repairs
GPX files for those of us who want to use our more accurate GPS units
Munzee creators get more points for their highly-rated munzees
Allow creators to manually enter in GPS coordinates
Allow uploading of photos when logging a find

What do you think? Are the features on the site just fine or are there features that would make the game more enjoyable for you?

Did some shopping today. There were 3 parking lot lamp post munzees at my first stop. Normally I would skip them but there's no way to ignore munzees, so the only way to get them off the map is to capture them. So with some anxiety, I forged ahead.

First lamp post had a cabbie next to it. Looked like he was waiting for a call. Lucky for me, he left just as I was about to drive away. I went in for the find. The lamp posts in this plaza were skirtless, so no lifting was needed. Looked under and saw that it was tucked into the tube. I was a little nervous about wires near the spot I had to reach into but pulled the munzee out safely. Scanned and returned it. The MO's magnetic munzee was put together exactly how I made 2 of my 3 undeployed munzees - and here I was thinking I had created something unique.

Second lamp post was in front of the store entrance. It was a busy Saturday in the lot - dozens of people coming and going. The parking spots by the lamp post were busy. But I tried anyway. Did a quick scan under the lamp post but saw nothing. There was a big pink wad of gummy stuff under the lamp post. Very unpleasant. I didn't want to stick my fingers under there so I didn't. Went shopping. Came back to the car, drove over to the 3rd munzee, about 300m away. The munzee app was all over the place. Checked 3 lamp posts quickly because again there were too many people in the lot. Saw nothing. Went shopping again.

It's going to drive me batty having those green active parking lot munzee markers on my map of nearest munzees. I don't want to try again. I'd prefer an "ignore" feature. Hopefully the munzee team will see the advantage of allowing players to ignore munzees that way we can concentrate on munzees in locations we'd prefer visiting. Otherwise there's going to be so much chaff on the map that it's going to be hard to separate out the wheat. Some of us may give up on the game if it becomes a chore.

After the plaza excursion I stopped off at a small city park. It has a metal feature/sculpture surrounded by ponds. Deployed my very first munzee. Deploying was quick, almost too quick. It gets deployed before you get to write up a description. Good thing it can be editted in the field, but it's not easy with a cell phone. I also took some averaged readings with my handheld GPS. I forgot to write the GPS coords and the parking info into the description (too cold to spend a lot of time writing up anyway). Finished the write-up when I got home. Added a more verbose description of where it is because cell phone coordinates can be so inaccurate.

I cold laminated the QR code and covered the back in camo tape. Punched an eyelet into the material then hung it camo side out against the trunk of a cedar tree, about 4 feet high. Hopefully it blends in enough so park users don't notice but munzee players see it fairly quickly. I've got my fingers crossed that munzee players tuck it back so that the QR code is up against the trunk and not visible. Time will tell.

My first so-so munzee find. That's not bad considering I've found 19 before this one and they've all been more then just a notch-in-the-belt kind of finds. This wasn't awful, just not inspiring- an unobtrusive munzee on a pole by a vacant lot off a busy road. There was a no parking sign but I'm not sure if it meant the tarred off-road spot was off limits. I was only a minute, actually less then a minute - that's one nice thing about scanning as opposed to signing a logbook, it's very quick.

I'm now hooked on 3 games: geocaching, letterboxing and munzees. They are all rewarding because they provide a day of discovery and adventure.

They all offer something slightly different.
For me the extra fun of geocaching is the swag.
Letterboxing - it's the handcarved stamps and the (often) handcrafted logbooks.

Munzees - it's the using the iPhone Munzee QR code app plus the different ways that a QR code can be hidden (as opposed to a container).

Today's adventure took me back to the arboretum for 3 more munzee finds. Armed with 2 successful difficult finds yesterday, I had an idea where to look for my 2nd attempt at the sign hide. Found it this time. Quite a muggly area even at lunch time on a mid-February day. I was surprised by a couple of hikers who I didn't see while I was attempting to scan the code. Took me about 10 tries before it finally took. The size was good but it was the position of my camera that made it difficult. Then I was off to a very interesting part of the arboretum where I found a nicely tucked away munzee. Then finally off to a spot near a gazebo where I found a pill bottle with a qr code inside.

Finished scanning, glanced over to a nearby tree. There in the nook was a beautifully spray paint camo'd lock-n-lock tucked into the trunks. I thought I had found all the geocaches and letterboxes (and now munzees) in the park so this was a surprise. I opened up the box. There was a sentimental note from the cache owner. They dedicated their find to the one they loved. Very touching. The person who the CO dedicated the box to signed it in 2010. Last month in January Team ??? (can't make out their name) signed the log. Then today I signed the log. The label on the outside of the container was an official geocaching label. I did some sleuthing and in 2010 the paramour was likely a student at the university. Perhaps her beau planted it without realizing there was a cache/letterbox within .1 miles.

Munzee in the woods

Later on in the day I captured 3 more munzees. These were in the woods. It was a great walk with my dog. One very clever hide (not the one in the photo). Initially I wondered how I was supposed to get the code then it dawned on me what to do. I really need to replicate the hide for the letterboxing community, it's one I haven't seen.

Wow, even in Munzees there are defenders of the lowest common denominator, the lame and the unmaintained. I thought it was just a geocaching forum thing:

Munzee TOO SMALL To Scan

Quote from: G

People are printing with low quality paper, low quality ink, the weather is eating these munzees up on a daily basis, then add to it they made them as small as you fingernail. NOW!!!!!!!!! Before we continue pushing how small these can be made why not try to use common sense and make the darn things big enough to scan well and yet blend well? For Pete's sake, munzees seem to blend no matter how large and where they are placed.

S

I take issue with this. First if you can not scan something, it doesnt always mean its the hiders fault. Maybe you should have bought a droid. 2nd you could have taken a photo and used the cameras zoom to enlarge a munzee, if you remembered to bring a camera that is. Also I bet the munzee wasnt faded or unscanable on the day of deployment. But you didnt go for the grab that day, whos fault is that? I recognize youre upset about your poor encounters, but just because you had a bad experience doesnt mean its everyone elses fault. And yes I agree, we all could do a better job with quality and maintanence.

Quote from: G

This reminds me a bit of the geocaching craze to create the smallest cache. WOW, we know how much fun it is to find a nano vs an ammo can.

S

I prefer a nano to an ammo can. I have never found an ammo can and exclaimed "No Freakin' Way!

"

I no longer feel like a novice. I think I've got the hang of this after my 2nd and 3rd find.

This evening I attempted the 'Unleashed' munzees. I first tried Unleashed 2. Got it with the hint and some careful searching. I like how it was not in plain view. It has a much better chance of surviving and it doesn't give non-players a chance to complain about an eyesore. So far I'm liking how the munzees I've found have been hidden - discretely and not destructive. Armed with Malbec's MO I was ready to try Unleashed, the one I tried to find in the early morning but wasn't successful. This time it was a quick find.

I've been reading little snippets here and there about Munzee. I set up a Munzee account a few months ago and then forgot about it since there weren't any in my general location. And it seemed to numbers-centric.

I checked back a few weeks ago and there were a few but they seemed to be mostly guardrail and lamp post parking lot hides, which fueled my suspicions that it was a graffiti-numbers-centric game.

Last week I noticed that there were lots more munzees in the area and more variety so I got serious about it. I checked the Munzee forums to see what people were saying. There were a couple of well-respected geocachers posting in the forums so that peaked my interest. Today I gave it a try and found my first Munzee.

I used my iPhone4, didn't have my GPS with me.

First stop Malbec's Unleashed. I wasn't sure what I was looking for. I assume it's an in-plain-sight QR code on a post at the entrance but I didn't see anything. I checked the posts and the signage but no luck. Didn't have time to try the other nearby Munzee. Maybe tomorrow.

My first impression - using an iPhone isn't precise at all. It's very bouncy too - ground zero moves around. Having good clues and descriptions would help a lot.

Second stop Wizardsnake's Arboretum 3. GZ put me between 2 signs. I checked both out thoroughly but no luck. Headed over to Wizardsnake's Arboretum 4. The iphone put me in the middle of several likely trees. I checked about 5 of them before seeing the possible hiding spot. A little further investigation and I had the container in hand. My first find! :) It was decent. Very much like a nice micro hide. The location was good, a real hide, not a graffiti-ish type of hide which I had envisioned munzees to be, i.e. QR code stickers in ho-hum locations. This was a water tight container, in a park, in a tree, nicely hidden but easily accessible to everyone (might even be wheelchair accessible). Not having to fish out a pen/pencil to sign a log made it very convenient. I was pleasantly surprised to see that I could leave a comment and rate the munzee via the iPhone app. These are two features that I really enjoy about geocaching.

So my first day of munzeeing proved to be surprisingly difficult but in the end, rewarding.

Wednesday, 5 December 2012

Tuesday, 23 October 2012

Sunday, 26 August 2012

Sunday, 19 August 2012

Friday, 10 August 2012

Cryptosporidium-623 found Enigma #1

Wednesday, 8 August 2012

Munzee – A scavenger hunt for your smartphone

Tuesday, 17 July 2012

Tuesday, 29 May 2012

Wednesday, 16 May 2012

Monday, 14 May 2012

Sunday, 6 May 2012

Wednesday, 2 May 2012

Saturday, 28 April 2012

Friday, 27 April 2012

Thursday, 12 April 2012

Wednesday, 11 April 2012

Sunday, 8 April 2012

Monday, 2 April 2012

Thursday, 15 March 2012

Thursday, 8 March 2012

Tuesday, 6 March 2012

Forum topic: Power trails vs other types of caches

Amberel

Thursday, 1 March 2012

Saturday, 25 February 2012

Wednesday, 22 February 2012

Friday, 17 February 2012

Thursday, 16 February 2012

Munzee TOO SMALL To Scan

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