+PoledraDog Posted October 23, 2006 Share Posted October 23, 2006 There is a small park near my house where I'd like to place a cache. It is a pretty standard city park, but I think it's always nice to have a cache to hit where you can also sit and have lunch, play with the dog, etc. Plus, this park has special meaning, as it is the park where my husband proposed to me. Anyway, I know I need to ask <whoever it is; still need to find out, but I'm sure it's someone from the city> permission to place a cache. My question is, what do you say to people when you're asking permission for cache placement? How do you describe geocaching in a nutshell? I've found that when I describe it to friends, I feel like I haven't explained it adequately. Maybe it's just because you don't really "get" it until you try it (although I was pretty excited about it when I first read about it). I can see that for certain areas, you could "sell" it as a way to promote traffic, i.e., near a business or something. That doesn't really apply for this park, though. Thoughts/suggestions? Quote Link to comment
+The VanDucks Posted October 23, 2006 Share Posted October 23, 2006 There is a small park near my house where I'd like to place a cache. . My question is, what do you say to people when you're asking permission for cache placement? We just started placing some caches of our own in some parks in the town where we live. I first called the town to see who would make the decision about allowing caches. I finally got in touch with the correct person, who is the manager of the Dept. of Parks and Recreation. She didn't really know anything about geocaching, but seemed interested in finding out about it. I prepared a file folder of basic info., most of which I copied off the geocaching.com website; the section entitled "Geocaching U." has some great material. I also found a local newspaper story about families going geocaching in our area and copied that off the newspaper's web site. I printed out a brief (one-page) description of the five geocaches I wanted to put in five neighborhood parks. Also, I printed out the cache pages of two caches in a nearby area so she see how they appear on the web site. Then I went to her office to introduce myself and leave the file for her to review. I followed up with a phone message about a week later asking her to call me if she had any questions or wanted to go around to the parks to see exactly how I would place the caches. I didn't hear back, so about two weeks later I sent an e-mail asking how it was going, and, very politely, mentioning that we hoped to put the caches in place while we still had some pleasant fall weather. It was almost a month after my first contact with the town that I got an answer; apparently she had been out of town for a conference for several days, and also had to meet with her boss, the Director of the Department, to get his approval too. They gave the go-ahead for three caches and had some questions about the other two, which I responded to with more information; I'm still waiting on those. The basic question you need to answer for approval, is how will your cache impact the park? You must show that there are benefits; and that if any problems occur you'll take care of them. You need to be patient, polite, and very appreciative of their help. They have a lot of other things going on, and your request for placing geocaches won't be their main activity. After we got the e-mail from the town approving the caches, we placed our caches and sent them in for approval on the geocaching review site. One was not approved by the geo website, because there is another cache in that park; which we had no way of knowing about, because it's the final stage of a multi-cache located somewhere else. But the others are up and running, and we've gotten lots of favorable log comments on them - so it was well worth the effort and the time involved! Good luck - I hope you'll be successful with your town approval too! Quote Link to comment
+Renegade Knight Posted October 23, 2006 Share Posted October 23, 2006 Generally for a public park, you only need to get permission if they have a specific policy on geocaching. Quote Link to comment
+Kacky Posted October 27, 2006 Share Posted October 27, 2006 I call it "GPS HUNTING" and people seem to understand what that means. Quote Link to comment
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