We have a black hole for trackables

[+mesillywoohoo]

So I'm preparing to free my new cachkinz and was looking at places. We have an awesome statepark with 15 caches. And I was thinking 'wow that might be a good place to drop' Nope not at all. In the past 2 year 14 T.B's and Geocoins have gone missing from those caches to never be heard from again so far!

 

I was wondering do people watch certain caches and then just swipe Travelers? It's just so strange that so many have gone missing from ONE area in a years time!

 

That's really rude and cruel. I mean I know you should never expect them to not be lost and such but the thought that someone is watching and taking them just to keep them is really mean

[+Chokecherry]

One of our local state parks will rent out GPS units to new folks to test drive geocaching. I suspect for that one and another nearby one that is where many of the travel bugs go. You get someone with absolutely minimal information about geocaching looking for this and they find a cool thing in the cache. In the end they might not feel this hobby is for them or too expensive and the traveler just languishes in some corner of their house.

[+mesillywoohoo]

One of our local state parks will rent out GPS units to new folks to test drive geocaching. I suspect for that one and another nearby one that is where many of the travel bugs go. You get someone with absolutely minimal information about geocaching looking for this and they find a cool thing in the cache. In the end they might not feel this hobby is for them or too expensive and the traveler just languishes in some corner of their house.

 

I didn't even think about that but sure enough I pulled up the itinerary for the park

 

Sunday June 20th

1:00 PM Geocaching!

Come on this hunt to find hidden treasure using a high-tech G.P.S.

Meet at the Nature Center!

 

*headsmack* so it's probably a bunch of muggles taking Trackables

[+Chokecherry]

I wouldn't call them muggles. Just people dipping their toe into geocaching who don't know any better about trackables.

[AZcachemeister]

 

*headsmack* so it's probably a bunch of muggles taking Trackables

 

Worse than that, the parks people are inviting them to come take stuff.

[+Eartha]

Could someone please go and offer to teach the geocaching to the muggles/newbies/toe-dippers, at least the part about logging trackables? Even if you only teach the park staff, someone should be learning this! Does the park staff have any geocachers on the payroll?

Even if you just send them a link on how to log, anything to stop this from happening.

Thank you. I always say, teach your newbies well.

[+ngrrfan]

Could someone please go and offer to teach the geocaching to the muggles/newbies/toe-dippers, at least the part about logging trackables? Even if you only teach the park staff, someone should be learning this! Does the park staff have any geocachers on the payroll?

Even if you just send them a link on how to log, anything to stop this from happening.

Thank you. I always say, teach your newbies well.

IMHO.... Since the park is lending out GPSrs to find caches, then they need to place their own caches there and not allow any others.

That way the park has their own caches for people to find but TBs and coins wouldn't go missing.

[+mesillywoohoo]

I'm going to try and find an email for someone at the park. I think at least they need to tell people to leave the Travelers alone and not pick them up if they are going to keep them

[+BlueDeuce]

Include some decent instructions with your bug and you won't have to worry so much about where it goes and who finds it.

 

If that comes across as snippy...good.

 

[+mesillywoohoo]

Just because someone includes instructions doesn't mean people who are only geocaching for 1 weekend will do it. About 6 of the bugs that vanished had tags that stated they were not to keep and how to log them. *shrugs*

[+BlueDeuce]

Dealing with this one park is a great idea, the more geo-education you can provide the better.

 

The problem is that you don't always know when some newbie or muggle is going to visit your bug. Reach them by putting the education in their hands when they pick it up. De-tails.

[+Chokecherry]

The ones in the parks by here are maintained by both the park employees and by geocachers in some massive statewide team effort. Park employees are educated about the various aspects of the game. In the parks here they don't lead trips. They give instructions and rent out the GPSr units to people. You can talk until you're blue in the face to people about travel bugs but when they're already overhwlemed about having to do a multi in the park with this unit they barely know how to use any/all information about something as trivial as a travel bug is in one ear and out the other.

[+mesillywoohoo]

The park nature center director got back in touch with me. He gave me an email for the guy who's in charge of the geocaching hikes. It's done in small groups, so I'll contact him and find out what's going on and educate him on travel bugs

[+mesillywoohoo]

The ones in the parks by here are maintained by both the park employees and by geocachers in some massive statewide team effort. Park employees are educated about the various aspects of the game. In the parks here they don't lead trips. They give instructions and rent out the GPSr units to people. You can talk until you're blue in the face to people about travel bugs but when they're already overhwlemed about having to do a multi in the park with this unit they barely know how to use any/all information about something as trivial as a travel bug is in one ear and out the other.

 

The caches in our park were put in by just other geocachers from how it looks. A Different name on each cache and some of them own a multitude of caches all over the state. And going from logs they maintain their own cache too