Ideas for a Series of Caches Along a Trail System

[+Super_Nate]

I am working with landowners of a maze of trails in my area that equal as much as 8 miles put all-together, and the landowners are wanting more and more cachers to tread along in our neck of the woods.

 

I need ideas for a unique series of caches in which you must find all of them to complete the series. The containers will be placed on the extreme corners of the trails so that people will have to get the "full-experience" of what our area has to offer. I just want a cool idea of how to set these up in a creative manner.

 

Any suggestions welcome......

[+TheAlabamaRambler]

I am working with landowners of a maze of trails in my area that equal as much as 8 miles put all-together, and the landowners are wanting more and more cachers to tread along in our neck of the woods.

 

I need ideas for a unique series of caches in which you must find all of them to complete the series. The containers will be placed on the extreme corners of the trails so that people will have to get the "full-experience" of what our area has to offer. I just want a cool idea of how to set these up in a creative manner.

 

Any suggestions welcome......

 

"the landowners are wanting more and more cachers to tread along in our neck of the woods." Now there are some unusual landowners! Why do they want more strangers on their land?

 

As far as suggestions, you will have to talk to your Reviewer about the concept of Power Trails, a series along a trail that excludes other cachers from hiding in that area, a concept so ill-defined that most Reviewers use their own discretion. Basically I think you will be asked to leave room for others.

 

If the landowners want more geocachers, a long series that you have to complete to log is counter-productive, as relatively few will want to do an eight-mile anything.

 

Consider making it a series, but comprised of several 2-3 part multis. Folks can get any one or more of the multis any time and log them, then when they have them all they can log the series.

 

You could specify one trailhead as the start point for the entire series and one for each of the multis.

 

Then you will have say four listings, one for each multi and one for the series.

 

Heve parts of the series cache coordinates in each multi so that cachers have to do all of them before they can find the series cache.

 

This will get many more cachers attention, as they can take their time, do the parts that interest them when they want, or do it all at once - but you've given them choices!

 

Have fun,

Ed

[+calkan]

I am working with landowners of a maze of trails in my area that equal as much as 8 miles put all-together, and the landowners are wanting more and more cachers to tread along in our neck of the woods.

 

I need ideas for a unique series of caches in which you must find all of them to complete the series. The containers will be placed on the extreme corners of the trails so that people will have to get the "full-experience" of what our area has to offer. I just want a cool idea of how to set these up in a creative manner.

 

Any suggestions welcome......

 

I put together a multicache in which you search for markers, rather than cache boxes. The markers contain partial coordinates which when put in the correct order, gives the geocacher the coordinates for the cache. Done this twice with great results.

 

http://www.geocaching.com/seek/cache_detai...0c-3f7291b4395e

 

http://www.geocaching.com/seek/cache_detai...91-4e699d92fea0

[+Lasagna]

There's a local cache here that is done with a series of about 10 individually loggable and unique caches (in this case named after birds). Each cache contains a single digit number which needs to be recorded. Once you find all ten, you can then solve the coordinates for a final bonus "mystery" cache. The final cache is only logable if you've done all the rest, but each cache is logable individually for those that don't want to do the whole thing.

 

I've also seen a local them using a "train" theme (cars on a train with information needed to solve the final coords for the "engine" cache), branches of the military (using various types of hardware, ranks, etc.) to solve the location of a final, and the old tried and true "solar system" cache with placement of the caches to scale relative to the planet locations to each other.

[+Super_Nate]

I am working with landowners of a maze of trails in my area that equal as much as 8 miles put all-together, and the landowners are wanting more and more cachers to tread along in our neck of the woods.

 

I need ideas for a unique series of caches in which you must find all of them to complete the series. The containers will be placed on the extreme corners of the trails so that people will have to get the "full-experience" of what our area has to offer. I just want a cool idea of how to set these up in a creative manner.

 

Any suggestions welcome......

 

"the landowners are wanting more and more cachers to tread along in our neck of the woods." Now there are some unusual landowners! Why do they want more strangers on their land?

 

 

I haven't had time to look through everyones suggestion sofar, but this comment struck me as interesting. The trail system is a public trail owned by a university in my area. With a new series of caches in the area, and the guy that I am working with is the head of this trail system....that is what I meant by landowners. My bad, didn't word my post as I should of.

[+SG-MIN]

I am working on a neat cache idea here. I will call it "Choose your own adventure." It will be a multi. When you get to the first stage you will have two sets of coords to choose from. After you choose one, you will find 2 more sets. All in all there will be 6 unique locations. If you are on the ball and lucky it could take you 3 trips. Unlucky it could take 5. Cool way to get people moving around - if they will put up with it that is.

[+michigansnorkelers]

You need an incentive to complete all the caches.

 

Here's something to think about.

 

We have a series of 13 Metroparks, spread throughout the Metro Detroit area. Each has a primary cache. Each primary cache contains the coordinates to what are essentially micro caches. About three per park. Each micro contains the answer to part of a crossword puzzle.

 

The crossword puzzle has no questions. The "answers" are on the micros.

 

Each micro is a surprize. You do not know ahead of time what part of the puzzle is on any micro.

 

For example, one micro might contain "7 Across: Great Blue Heron". (There is a central theme)

 

Some of the Metropark micros are easy to find. Others are fiendish. They are all fun to search for, but to complete the crossword puzzle, you must find them all.

 

Completed puzzles are mailed in for an annual drawing. Twenty winners are randomly drawn from all correctly completed puzzles.

 

Without the crossword puzzle incentive, I never would have searched for all the micros. In fact, I broke my leg doing this in July, and completed the series last week.

 

What's nice about this idea is that it's more fun than merely collecting the coordinates to a final cache!

 

-------------------------------------------------- idea -------------------------------------------------------------

 

One variation on this might be to hide pieces of a "treasure map" in each cache? Maybe the first cache could be the map itself. The map would have to be interesting enough on its own that people would want to keep it. Then, each of the subsequent caches could have stickers with clues to attach to the map. These could be colorful, witty, or whatever. Maybe one sticker would be a picture of a pirate ship and the clue would be in the name of the ship somehow. You wouldn't have to collect these clues in any specific order, but you would need all of them to solve the puzzle of the map.

 

Just an idea, but I would enjoy hunting this down myself!

[+Kit Fox]

Here is the method I used for this geocache. Fox Den Mystery Multi

 

STEP ONE You will find one number in each of the caches listed below. Substitute the number you find in each cache for it's respective letter. This will give you the coordinates for the starting point. You will need to complete Step Two to find the cache from there.

 

N 34° 34.ABC W 117° 59.DEF

A= Park It! GCJWBC

B= Driftwood GCQ7KJ

C= Watered Down GCJWJ1

D= Joshua View GCJWP6

E= Boxed In GCJYK1

F= High Tower GCJWPA

Edited November 13, 2006 by Kit Fox

[+sbell111]

Going somewhat against the grain, may I suggest that you limit the number of multis that you place and make several 'regular' caches, instead.

 

Many people would put off finding a long multi, but would come back to the trails several times to knock out several traditional caches. If they want more new people to enjoy this area, traditional caches of varying difficulty is the way to go.

[+horsegeeks]

Going somewhat against the grain, may I suggest that you limit the number of multis that you place and make several 'regular' caches, instead.

 

Many people would put off finding a long multi, but would come back to the trails several times to knock out several traditional caches. If they want more new people to enjoy this area, traditional caches of varying difficulty is the way to go.

 

I agree wholeheartedly.

[+Wile E. Dragonfly]

I am working on a neat cache idea here. I will call it "Choose your own adventure." It will be a multi. When you get to the first stage you will have two sets of coords to choose from. After you choose one, you will find 2 more sets. All in all there will be 6 unique locations. If you are on the ball and lucky it could take you 3 trips. Unlucky it could take 5. Cool way to get people moving around - if they will put up with it that is.

 

My sister and I were talking about a cache series kinda along these lines. Back when we were kids, the junior high level books with multiple endings were popular. They were - read the first 10 pages, then you have a choice, go to page 54 for option A or page 78 for option B... and after a bit of reading on chossen option, there are more options... So the story changed depending on what you choose. I LOVED those books as a kid...

 

To adapt it to a trail system, you could have a starting point cache. Have 3 options in it, one being a dead end (with a pretty view? and a micro saying dead end or whatever...) and the other two leading to real caches. In the real caches, another set of options... Each cache could be a "real" cache and not part of a multi and could have parts of a story in it (to go along with the book theme).

 

There is a place near me that has only one cache and lots of trails that would be a good place to put one, but with an impending move in our future and the high maintance probability of the cache... It will have to wait for the next home town. Still, it's enough for my creative juices to be mulling on for a while...

 

All this said... what I consider moderatly difficult caches seem to be more than most people are willing to do on an afternoon. I personally like caches that are challening but not impossible, but I think I'm wierd. As there aren't many caches like what I really enjoy out there, it tends to be what I put out... I have a cache on a tiny nature trail area owned by the university... It has been well recieved, but not found as often as I would have thought, considering the walk is flat and less than 1 mile long total (and inside of a moderate sized town). I think that the small puzzle component scares people away... even though that is easy too. So, I agree with previous posters, it depends on what you're looking for in cachers. People like me who enjoy a bit of creativity and a hike or people who like to get easier hides.

 

I'd like to hear what you finally decide on doing... Good luck!

[+Super_Nate]

Going somewhat against the grain, may I suggest that you limit the number of multis that you place and make several 'regular' caches, instead.

 

Many people would put off finding a long multi, but would come back to the trails several times to knock out several traditional caches. If they want more new people to enjoy this area, traditional caches of varying difficulty is the way to go.

 

That was my intent....want to come up with a creative way to set up a series of traditionals rather than having a bunch of useless traditionals set up in random places to boost ones numbers. The idea is to boost the numbers with a purpose, and make it cool enough where people will want to go out of their way to complete the series.

[Enchanted Blue Heron]

You might try doing a search of some of the caches around Niagra Falls. They are set up as tours of the area. One can pick and choose which tour on would like.