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bumblingbs

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I hid a cache in Fort Flagler State Park on April 25th. The ranger has a rep for being cache friendly, and he was very nice to me. He has my paperwork, and the permit is supposed to come in the mail. Well, it IS May 7th, so I called today to ask if everything was OK, did he need anything more from me? He said, oh, no, everything was fine, it was approved, but that the paperwork had gone to the regional office. He thought that I would probably get my permit in a week or so.

Um, is this the norm, now? There are three State Parks in my area, and I'm the first to hide a cache since the new guidelines were established. So, I just don't know.

Thanks.

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Well, I've had park permits in hand before, before the new agreement was reached. But then, I had them in hand the same day.

I have four caches in mind for Fort Worden, and if each is going to take 3 weeks or so to get permitted, I'd better hop to it to be done by the WSGA campout. What worries me is the cache I was thinking I would have the most fun with might not be do-able. It's open to interpretation of the new guidelines as to whether it's acceptable or not. I think I could get it through the park supervisor, but I don't know who regional or district is. Never had to deal with them before.

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Oh, I just wanted to add this about the process, because I didn't know, and the ranger told me I'd done it wrong.

 

What I did do was go for a walk with my family, hide a cache, and then go over to the ranger's office to fill out the permit to make it "legal."

 

What I was supposed to do, was bring the cache with me, go find the spot where I wanted to hide it, get the coordinates, and bring the cache with me to the office so that they could eyeball it and discuss the location. Then, take the cache home with me, wait for the permit, and make another trip out to hide the cache once I had the permit in hand.

 

I was gently scolded, but my cache has been sitting in the park since the day I hid it.

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Nothing is sent to the cache owner, in my experience.
That has been my experience. I have 2 at Wallace Falls State Park.

 

I described in a phone call where I wanted to place 2 caches, and the chief ranger knew EXACTLY where I meant. I would assume many (all?) of the rangers know the cool bits of their park that well.

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Oh, I just wanted to add this about the process, because I didn't know, and the ranger told me I'd done it wrong.

 

What I did do was go for a walk with my family, hide a cache, and then go over to the ranger's office to fill out the permit to make it "legal."

 

What I was supposed to do, was bring the cache with me, go find the spot where I wanted to hide it, get the coordinates, and bring the cache with me to the office so that they could eyeball it and discuss the location. Then, take the cache home with me, wait for the permit, and make another trip out to hide the cache once I had the permit in hand.

 

I was gently scolded, but my cache has been sitting in the park since the day I hid it.

Good lord that sounds like way too much work to me.

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I have caches in Illahee and Manchester State Parks. Here's how it went...

 

I called the Manager, told him/her what I was looking to do. I made an appointment to see them. I got to the park(s) early, with the cache ready to go, and scouted locations. I then went to my appointment.

 

I showed them the cache I wanted to hide in the park, and told themwhere I had looked. At each park, I had 4 different spots picked. I then aked them to choose one of them, which they both did.

 

I had my permits in 30 minutes, caches were hidden, and that was that.

 

Total time, including the inital phone call--2-3 hours per cache.

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For the two we have at Millersylvania we brought filled out permits to the park to retroactively permit the existing caches. The ranger was familiar with the location of one of the caches but wasn't sure about the other one. We took a walk out to that cache site, he inspected the location and gave it his okay.

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Well, it doesn't matter to me if I get a verbal OK or get mailed a permit, I'm only repeating what I was told.

 

I guess the part that surprised me was the amount of time it would take, which is directly tied to the fact that the permit has to go to some regional office that I didn't even know existed.

 

I mis-spoke, or mis-wrote earlier about there being three area State Parks, there are actually five, only three of them have rangers on property. The ranger I gave my paperwork to is titled "area manager", he is responsible for Fort Flagler, Anderson Lake and Mystery Bay. I was really just surprised that he couldn't sign off on a little lock-n-lock, that it had to go to higher management. The guy knows his park, knows exactly where the cache is.

 

If this is the way they want to process caches here, I'll do it. Our local State Parks are beautiful, and haven't had any new caches for a long time. I was just curious, because this ranger used to OK caches with a handshake and an instant permit.

 

Fort Worden here I come.....

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I was really just surprised that he couldn't sign off on a little lock-n-lock, that it had to go to higher management. The guy knows his park, knows exactly where the cache is.

 

 

And that is why in most cases the paperwork sails through district with out any questions. Many of the people I've spoken to inside the parks department share your feelings. This is the system that we have currently and we need to work with it.

 

As far as geocaching.com goes as long as you have the park managers verbal indication that the permit has been approved at district you can proceed with submitting the cache.

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I'm really not in a hurry, and it's actually getting easy to not care. I wish I had placed a spectacular cache, one that was worth fighting for, and I didn't. I placed a "nice" cache, nothing more. Green trail, cache near an overlook. That's about it.

 

I have verbal approval from the State Park area manager. But, I don't have proper approval to submit the cache. It has now been 24 days. Is there something broken that I can help to fix?

 

Edited to say State Park, not State Perk. That would be something, no?

Edited by bumblingbs
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I'm really not in a hurry, and it's actually getting easy to not care. I wish I had placed a spectacular cache, one that was worth fighting for, and I didn't. I placed a "nice" cache, nothing more. Green trail, cache near an overlook. That's about it.

 

I have verbal approval from the State Park area manager. But, I don't have proper approval to submit the cache. It has now been 24 days. Is there something broken that I can help to fix?

 

Edited to say State Park, not State Perk. That would be something, no?

 

You will not get anything physical from the parks. The only thing you can do is verify with the Park manager that the permit was approved by district. If it was then submit your cache, if not find out why not and work with the park manager to make changes so it will be approved.

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I'm really not in a hurry, and it's actually getting easy to not care. I wish I had placed a spectacular cache, one that was worth fighting for, and I didn't. I placed a "nice" cache, nothing more. Green trail, cache near an overlook. That's about it.

 

I have verbal approval from the State Park area manager. But, I don't have proper approval to submit the cache. It has now been 24 days. Is there something broken that I can help to fix?

 

Edited to say State Park, not State Perk. That would be something, no?

 

You will not get anything physical from the parks. The only thing you can do is verify with the Park manager that the permit was approved by district. If it was then submit your cache, if not find out why not and work with the park manager to make changes so it will be approved.

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Ah, well, at this point I am definitely hoping for a written permit. I gave them a SASE, and well...it's been long enough that I'm not 100% certain which waypoint on my GPSr is the cache. I'd sure like to see it in my own handwriting on the permit, otherwise I'll have to drive out there to make sure. Yes, my stupidity.

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I finally got the paperwork for this cache, so that's good.

 

I'm going to wait a few days to submit it, so that it's new (ish) next Saturday. There's not much rush here for FTF, so it might still be fresh.

 

There's a small group of us going that day to Shunra's 'Wading For Eraseek', which leaves from Fort Flagler. It's a minus tide kind of walk to Rat Island, which has seals, not rats. If anyone is in the neighborhood and wants to join, it's not an event cache but anyone is welcome. E-mail me for details.

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