Here's a thought:

I speculate that it may be because of the much higher percentage of
Mormons in Utah, who traditionally do alot together as a family, and
geocaching is a perfect family activity.

Along those same lines, maybe the UTAH cachers feel the obligation to
HIDE more caches as they find more. I have no stats or anything to
back that statement up, it is just an opinion/observation.

However, I still think that there are quite a few cachers in AZ, and
Phoenix in particular, who don't do their "share" (however you want to
define that) of hiding caches. Hundreds of finds and only a handful of
hides = not as many caches as .... Utah!

If you dislike the message, please don't harrass the messenger, Y'all
know it's true!

I do like quality over quantity, however, after my most recent caching
"expedition", I'd rather find less in better locations.

Just my 1/2 baht,

Trisha "Lightning"
Prescott


On Tue, 9 Sep 2003 12:02:18 -0700 (PDT), Ken Akerman wrote:

I've been looking at the list of new caches, and it appears that there
is very little new cache activity in Arizona during the past week.  
There have been only two new caches approved in Arizona since Sept. 2,
while in Utah there have been 19 new caches approved in the past seven
days.
 
There are many great places to put caches in the high elevations of
Arizona.  There are still many regions of the state of Arizona that
don't have many caches. I may make one or two new caches and hide them
this weekend, potentially near the Mogollon Rim.  Don't complain about
the heat in the Phoenix area - the high elevations are less than two
hours away and the gasoline is less expensive in towns like Payson and
Prescott than it is in Phoenix.
 
Why does Utah continue to outpace Arizona in cache activity?  Utah has
less than half the population of Arizona, yet Utah has 1,893 caches as
of today, while Arizona has 1,733 caches.  We really should have more
caches than our neighboring state to the north.  (This has always
irritated me that Utah has more caches than Arizona.  Why should Utah
be a better geocaching state than Arizona?  I would like to challenge
Arizona to become the best geocaching state in the USA).
 
Ken (a.k.a. Highpointer)