A dozen locations to showcase, how would you do it?

[+nekom]

I have about a full dozen locations, almost all old coke works, marked, all related to a single branch of an abandoned railroad. All of these sites are within about a 5 mile radius as the crow flies, and could probably all be visited in a day with about 10-15 miles of driving.

 

Now I haven't visited them all yet to see if they are even suitable for geocaches, but I suspect that most if not all of them will be. I know there are many ways to go about this, so what I'm looking for here are just your opinions. Both which you would hide if you wanted to do it, and which you would rather find.

 

I figure my options are this:

1. 12 Traditional caches. Bit of a hit in the pocketbook, but they would probably be workable in all locations.

2. One huge multicache. 11 micros and a final, something like that. Would be a pretty serious multi!

3. A puzzle cache involving information collected from all of the locations. Same concern as #2, sans the micros.

4. Traditional caches for all of them, and one `series final' cache that requires finding them all. Same concerns as #1, plus an extra cache.

5. Other? Any better ideas out there?

6. Don't do this. Hey, maybe it's just not a good idea at all, I'm willing to accept that possibility.

 

Just fishing for opinions here, I realize that any of those options could posibly work.

[+carleenp]

If you have to drive to all of them, and they are too far apart to hike between, or not in an area conducive to hiking, I would likely do all traditional caches.

 

If they were all within a long hike (e.g. 10-15 miles) of one another and in a good hiking area, then I would set up some sort of epic multi-cache and make people hike it to get them all.

[+The Leprechauns]

1. I would enjoy finding a coke oven series of caches. I don't need a bonus smiley at the end, because each location is likely to be its own reward. It's a pain to remember that B=9 when you find a cache in the series. I often ignore the final puzzle caches. This is probably a minority view.

 

2. Not every place can support a cache. For those which can't, consider featuring the location in the Ovens and Kilns Category at Waymarking.com. (I am the founder of a closely related category, "Iron Furnace Ruins.") You can combine the waymarked spots to also make them virtual clue gathering points in a multicache. You can have a cache and a waymark at the same spot.

 

3. An alternative design is three or four multicaches. If there's four coke ovens all along the Route 51 corridor, combine those spots into a logical multicache. Do the same for the three ovens accessed from US 40, and so forth.

[+nekom]

1. I would enjoy finding a coke oven series of caches. I don't need a bonus smiley at the end, because each location is likely to be its own reward. It's a pain to remember that B=9 when you find a cache in the series. I often ignore the final puzzle caches. This is probably a minority view.

 

2. Not every place can support a cache. For those which can't, consider featuring the location in the Ovens and Kilns Category at Waymarking.com. (I am the founder of a closely related category, "Iron Furnace Ruins.") You can combine the waymarked spots to also make them virtual clue gathering points in a multicache. You can have a cache and a waymark at the same spot.

 

3. An alternative design is three or four multicaches. If there's four coke ovens all along the Route 51 corridor, combine those spots into a logical multicache. Do the same for the three ovens accessed from US 40, and so forth.

 

I hadn't thought of several multicaches, but that's certainly another possibility to consider. They're really all very close together, though, but I guess that's no reason they couldn't be lumped together into a few multis. Actually there are few that are named townname #1 and townname #2 works, those might be good to group together. And the bonus with that would be that it wouldn't need to be set up in one fell swoop.

[+Prime Suspect]

Cache with 10 locations to visit.

[+Annie & PB]

Do you have enough local cachers who are likely to do it as an epic multi???? Or do you want it/them to be accessible to tourist cachers???

 

We do most of our caching in areas we travel to or through (because we live in a smallish remote area and have done all the caches here!) and we often have to skip long multis because we aren't sure how long they will take, or what direction the end of them is in. We would do something like you suggest as option 4 of your given options, because we could do a few of them at a time on different trips if needed. Mind you - we also have multis that we are half way through and may finish in a few months time or a few years time or never, because we will sometimes do the first one or two WPs and figure on gettting the rest on another trip or when we are going in the direction it seems to lead or whatever.

 

Annie

[+Elde]

Are they each different enough (from the others) to rate being showcased? What's the value in seeing more than one abandoned factory?

[+Kiwi Nomad]

My suggestion would be do a variety.

Some traditional, a couple of multis and a puzzle.

eg 5 trads, 2 multis of 3 stages each and then 1 final that you get half of the cords from each of the multis or spread clues out over all the trads.

You might just want to make the puzzle one where you have to answer questions at the location to find the cache.

By having a variety of types people get to choose what they want to find if they are passing through town.

[+joranda]

A variety would be good. That way they won't all be the same.

[+Isonzo Karst]

You might also consider an Earthcache, a mining site would likely support an Earthcache, and it would likely get more visits than any other cache type.

 

I'd probably write a Wherigo cartridge, which has the advantage of not requiring me to place anything on site, and has the option to create data input from the user - thus insuring that they actually visit. I'd visit all the locations first (which I assume you're going to do in any case) and probably highlight just 2 or 3 of them, assuming they appear interesting enough to highlight!

[+nekom]

Are they each different enough (from the others) to rate being showcased? What's the value in seeing more than one abandoned factory?

 

That's a good question to consider. My answer is sort of yes and no. All of the beehive cokeworks in the area are virtually the same, the only difference is exactly how much of what was there remains. The patch towns each have their own flavor, though. Some of them still have the company store building, for instance. Some of them have some equipment from the mines remaining. Any history buff would be thrilled to visit each location, but to be honest someone not all that interested in local history might find the theme a bit repetitive.

 

As for Isonzo Karst's comment, I hadn't thought of that either. I've only found two earthcaches (very much enjoyed them too) and I'm not really familiar with the process of placing them, though I understand it is a very different process. Do manmade geological features count?

[Neos2]

Are they each different enough (from the others) to rate being showcased? What's the value in seeing more than one abandoned factory?

 

That's a good question to consider. My answer is sort of yes and no. All of the beehive cokeworks in the area are virtually the same, the only difference is exactly how much of what was there remains. The patch towns each have their own flavor, though. Some of them still have the company store building, for instance. Some of them have some equipment from the mines remaining. Any history buff would be thrilled to visit each location, but to be honest someone not all that interested in local history might find the theme a bit repetitive.

 

As for Isonzo Karst's comment, I hadn't thought of that either. I've only found two earthcaches (very much enjoyed them too) and I'm not really familiar with the process of placing them, though I understand it is a very different process. Do manmade geological features count?

 

There is a category for earthcaches that show how the geology of an area can impact the interactions between humans and their environment--which allows you some leeway in how you approach the earthcache. I have an earthcache listed in that category...People in the area were building a train line to run to a town on a hilltop and ran into an area of rock so dense they couldn't work with it, so they had to tunnel through an underlying softer layer. I have another earthcache located in a place where human made road cuts expose various rock layers.

 

I love earthcaches--but lately I've seen a trend in them to create looooooonnnngggg earthcaches that require traveling hours around one area to get the earthcache. As much as I like them, if I am traveling with only a few days of vacation, I am not likely to devote even a few hours to just one cache. Not when there is so much I want to see and do, and so little time to do it.

 

Earthcaches like that may actually lend themselves to being made into several earthcaches that each focus on one specific aspect of geological importance--people tend to learn best in small blocks of highly focused content anyway. I teach high school Earth Science, and I assure you my students would be confused if they went to a beach area and saw a series of stops for one earthcache that showed ripple marks, and dune formation, and natural sandstone arches, and conglomerate formation etc--at the end they would be confused about what caused each of those separate features; they would retain more if they had to focus on one feature at a time.

 

I've noticed that some people just won't do earthcaches, even if they are just a few hundred feet from a regular cache. So you may want to offer some regular type of cache for those folks. If you only create multis, again some people avoid them (I usually do while traveling) and you enjoy fewer logs to your cache.

So I would recommend a variety of caches as well.

 

I wasn't sure what beehive coke ovens are..so I looked it up on Google, and saw this historical marker

 

What is actually left there to see is obviously geological in nature --even if altered by man--and would make a good earthcache, I think If I could help you in any way with developing your earthcache, feel free to drop me a line!

Edited May 17, 2008 by Neos2

[+Arndtwe]

I have about a full dozen locations, almost all old coke works, marked, all related to a single branch of an abandoned railroad. All of these sites are within about a 5 mile radius as the crow flies, and could probably all be visited in a day with about 10-15 miles of driving.

 

Now I haven't visited them all yet to see if they are even suitable for geocaches, but I suspect that most if not all of them will be. I know there are many ways to go about this, so what I'm looking for here are just your opinions. Both which you would hide if you wanted to do it, and which you would rather find.

 

I figure my options are this:

1. 12 Traditional caches. Bit of a hit in the pocketbook, but they would probably be workable in all locations.

2. One huge multicache. 11 micros and a final, something like that. Would be a pretty serious multi!

3. A puzzle cache involving information collected from all of the locations. Same concern as #2, sans the micros.

4. Traditional caches for all of them, and one `series final' cache that requires finding them all. Same concerns as #1, plus an extra cache.

5. Other? Any better ideas out there?

6. Don't do this. Hey, maybe it's just not a good idea at all, I'm willing to accept that possibility.

 

Just fishing for opinions here, I realize that any of those options could posibly work.

I like option #2! This would very enjoyable to me, I wish that something like this could be done around here.

[+Mother Wolf]

At the risk of repeating......I think several different types of caches. With all the sites being the same except for degree of remains it would I think get rather mundane.

An earth cache of sorts in the middle somewhere would still be an option with an assortment of other caches as well.

This way it can draw those that like C&D's, reg, multi's & EC. good luck. MW

[+The Leprechauns]

Are they each different enough (from the others) to rate being showcased? What's the value in seeing more than one abandoned factory?

By that logic, there ought to be only one fast food restaurant cache every 100 miles.

 

Me, I find industrial ruins to be fascinating places to visit and explore. Each location is just a bit different than the next. They have far greater historical and scenic value to me than many other sites.

 

Here are some pictures of coke ovens in the same area where nekom is thinking of placing these caches. The pictures are from Cokeburg Coke Ovens Cache, which I enjoyed finding last summer. It was fun exploring the insides of a coke oven while searching for the cache.

 

 

[+hukilaulau]

Another possibility is to just do as many good individual caches as you can, whether that is 2, 4, 8 or whatever. You don't necessarily HAVE to cover the whole area. At least not at one go...

[+briansnat]

Other? Any better ideas out there?

 

Mix it up. A multi, a puzzle cache or two and a few traditionals. Perhaps a bonus cache for someone who finds every one in the series.

[+Isonzo Karst]

.... earthcaches .... Do manmade geological features count?

 

Yes, go to the Earthcache site - then follow the links to the guidelines and submittal form. Among the EarthCache Classifications you'll find Mining Site, and Mineral Site.