Those are sensible thoughts and observations... but, at the moment when you discover that your box has been "geotrashed", it's very hard to be calm and sensible. The people who were with me at that time heard some very vile and colorful language pouring out from my mouth.

For me, I get more disturbed by the fact that the box is missing for current hunters, rather than wail and moan over the work I put into carving the stamp and assembling the box (besides, repetition is great practice and refines stamp carving skills). Yes, it is a big pain in the derriere to replace it, but as far as I'm concerned, planting boxes is an act of giving. So you either give again, or give something else.

In my case, I haven't gotten a response to my polite request to work out a common solution from the geocacher with a cache in the same location where "Nepenthe" used to reside. That's very irritating. I'm hesitant to replace "Nepenthe" at the moment. The box can't be placed very far away from where it was -- it would lose much of its intent. And, in this case, I want to give again. So I wait... maybe their box will go MIA. (Don't look at me! I'd like to think I'm above that kind of retaliation.)

So... now I've added a check for nearby geocaches to my many other concerns that I try to consider when planting urban letterboxes: disguises, weatherproofing, the right clues and directions, aesthetics, animals, and so on...

What's a parent to do?!! When it's 10:00 (and the streetlights have come on), do you know where your letterbox is?

;-) Paul in SF
----- Original Message -----
From: funhog1
To: LbNCA@yahoogroups.com
Sent: Thursday, September 16, 2004 2:41 PM
Subject: [LbNCA] Letterboxes vs. Geocaches


I don't know if you are aware of any of the history of the
interactions between LbNA and Geocaching.com but let's
say that they have been less than amiable. Jeremy (Geo-dude)
threatened to sue Randy (Lb-dude) over the amusing April
Fool's hoax last spring. There have been several other incidents
where Jeremy has shown to be way too serious about his hobby
when it comes to letterboxing.

However, l don't think there is any concerted effort by "them"
to subterfuge our boxes. I think that their newbies are just
as green as ours. Both can make mistakes
unknowingly. Some of them head out on the hunt without a
clue that letterboxes even exist. Some of them mistakenly
find our boxes and think that's what a geocache is. Some
of them plant caches not knowing that there is a letterbox
nearby. How many of us check to see if there is a nearby
cache before we hide our boxes? I know I never do.

I have had an account at geocaching.com for a couple of years.
I have had more than one stamp take a hike with a geocacher.
In the cases where this has happened, I have made the effort to
contact the owners of nearby caches and ask if they wouldn't
mind adding a note to their listing informing their audience
not to mistake my box for theirs. In most cases, the folks have
been more than happy to cooperate. I have also started
threads about letterboxing in their Getting Started forum.

For the most part, I find these folks to be just as nice as your
average letterboxer. I have been amused to read some of
their criticisms of us. I have read the exact same negative
comments posted about us as some of us have said about them.
In fact, I have picked up some great ideas about hiding
boxes from their discussions! I think that the friendly
interchange needs to come from all of us, not just the
moderators. Funhog

> We definitely have to make some sort of peace with the geocachers. I
> was upset when I hiked up into the Santa Monica Mountains to find the
> Phoebe's Cabin LB, planted by Funhog (no less), had previously been
> visited by geocachers who removed the (beautiful) stamp and left a
> stupid little toy, but they can hurt us more than we can them if we
> piss them off. I think the moderators of the Letterbox-USA site
> should talk with the moderators of the major geocaching sites to help
> spread the word that these are two very different activities. Maybe
> education is our best bet.
> --Buzzard
>
>
> > We just moved one of our letterboxes"Unal Trail" that was placed on
> >4/19/2002. On 6/26/2004 some geocachers had the cajones to put their
> >cache right next to our letterbox. Since we have had bad experiences
> >with geocachers in the past we decided to let them have the spot and
> >find another location. We then posted a fairly tactful message on
> >their cache/log page to reflect the intrusion. I am not suggesting
> >that you do the same, but I made sure that the geocachers had
> >several caches in the area. Hopefully they will take my note
> >properly and not start vandalizing letterboxes.
> >
> > Don


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[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]

Paul,
The longer you are in letterboxing the more you are going to have some sort of a interchange with geocachers. Unfortunately we have had our share of negative contacts from a geocacher taking over our letterboxes and putting GPS cords in the logs for a 6 box/cache series to placing their cache next to our letterbox. I too have joined the geocache group so that I might add a report to their cache page. I do( I know this might be hard for some folks to believe) write fairly tactful notes on their pages as creating a LB/Cache war serves no one. If you would like to view a sample check the geocache area zip 93238, and the title is Tubatulabal. In this case I opted to let them have the location as our letterbox worked well in another spot.

Don
----- Original Message -----
From: Paul Gonyea
To: LbNCA@yahoogroups.com
Sent: Thursday, September 16, 2004 3:03 PM
Subject: Re: [LbNCA] Letterboxes vs. Geocaches


Those are sensible thoughts and observations... but, at the moment when you discover that your box has been "geotrashed", it's very hard to be calm and sensible. The people who were with me at that time heard some very vile and colorful language pouring out from my mouth.



[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]

We have been on a 3 week road trip, letterboxing while visiting
family around the country. We recently found a geocache/letterbox
in Tennessee that had a nice twist. It had two logbooks, each
packaged separately and clearly marked. It also had instructions
for the geocachers that they were to log in but not take from nor
leave any item in the box. The letterbox stamp was packaged with
its log. Each logbook was marked appropriately and no "stuff" was
within. It was a refreshing find. And I guess the grown-up
geocachers were satisfied with their find and log - no need for
trinkets.

GrumpyGrinch