Geocaching Ambassadors?

[+galdrin]

This will be a longer post than normal as I’m still trying to gather my thoughts in the subject.

 

I’m a father of a severely autistic son that loves following me out on a drive or a hike in the woods and this made us pick up geocaching a few years ago as our hobby. This also made me make an promise to show my son as much as possible of the world while my body is fit enough to handle the adventures so lately I’ve started planning on a few weeks of travel a year with geocaching (quality not quantity) as the main objective. Traveling with my son requires quite a bit of planning to keep the trip within his comfort-zone and as I’m less interested in the typical tourist places I started to look after Geocaching Ambassadors or “Travel Agency for Geocachers” but I’m not having any luck finding what I’m looking for.

 

One other community I’m member of has “break-down” lists with people spread nationwide with access to tools, garage or knowledge incase others in the community would have an break-down when running around in our vehicles. Another community has Ambassadors world-wide that I can take contact with if I wish to have a guided tour of their “neighborhood”.

 

So I was thinking about Geocaching Ambassadors (sorry if this has been trademarked for something else) that you could find by sorting on language spoken (eng, fra, spa) – continent – county / state and then “home coordinates” with a “operational range” who has volunteered to provide simple help to out of town people. I’m thinking about services like (but not limited to) recommending “must visit” caches / places, coordinates to grocery store, coordinates to suitable camping / RV parking, links to webpage about busses and trains in the area and in worst case help with local authorities if needed.

 

I know there probably is this kind of lists in local / national geocaching communities but I really have a hard time finding them and when I find them they are likely to be in a language I don’t understand. It would be easy to put up a forum with ambassadors if people seem to like the concept but would be worthless if people don’t use it.

 

I know my need of planning is a bit too much for most people but am I the only one that would use that kind of service? Or have I just missed one that is available online? Comments?

[+KBfamily]

This will be a longer post than normal as I’m still trying to gather my thoughts in the subject.

 

I’m a father of a severely autistic son that loves following me out on a drive or a hike in the woods and this made us pick up geocaching a few years ago as our hobby. This also made me make an promise to show my son as much as possible of the world while my body is fit enough to handle the adventures so lately I’ve started planning on a few weeks of travel a year with geocaching (quality not quantity) as the main objective. Traveling with my son requires quite a bit of planning to keep the trip within his comfort-zone and as I’m less interested in the typical tourist places I started to look after Geocaching Ambassadors or “Travel Agency for Geocachers” but I’m not having any luck finding what I’m looking for.

 

One other community I’m member of has “break-down” lists with people spread nationwide with access to tools, garage or knowledge incase others in the community would have an break-down when running around in our vehicles. Another community has Ambassadors world-wide that I can take contact with if I wish to have a guided tour of their “neighborhood”.

 

So I was thinking about Geocaching Ambassadors (sorry if this has been trademarked for something else) that you could find by sorting on language spoken (eng, fra, spa) – continent – county / state and then “home coordinates” with a “operational range” who has volunteered to provide simple help to out of town people. I’m thinking about services like (but not limited to) recommending “must visit” caches / places, coordinates to grocery store, coordinates to suitable camping / RV parking, links to webpage about busses and trains in the area and in worst case help with local authorities if needed.

 

I know there probably is this kind of lists in local / national geocaching communities but I really have a hard time finding them and when I find them they are likely to be in a language I don’t understand. It would be easy to put up a forum with ambassadors if people seem to like the concept but would be worthless if people don’t use it.

 

I know my need of planning is a bit too much for most people but am I the only one that would use that kind of service? Or have I just missed one that is available online? Comments?

 

I LOVE this idea. I am traveling this summer and would be grateful for this kind of help. I also helped out a Georgia cacher who was in my area last week....let's make this happen! Count me in to help in any way possible.

[+ALAUNOS]

I think that's a great idea. I would totally be an ambassador for my county and A couple surrounding counties. Would gladly help anyone I could at anytime. Possibly make it like contacting the reviewer buy make it county specific so folks could contact is with any questions. So definitely count me in if it ever happens.

[+galdrin]

I'm at the moment looking at different ways of making this happen. First "beta" solution would be a free forum hosting service where ambassadors may post under appropriate category and other users may contact them through pm, that way there is no need to give out the e-mail address of ambassadors unless they want to do it themselves. Keeping it simple in the beginning is a must.

Is Travel Agency for Geocachers a good forum name?

[+Panther&Pine]

You might want to look at those caches with Favorites points assigned to them.

Currently you can't make a PQ based on Favorites, but it will probably happen soon.

[+galdrin]

Geocaches with assigned favorite points has of course higher possibility to be a “must visit” cache but I see in my town how caches close to tourist attractions get a lot of favorite points from tourists but non from locals.

[Keystone]

What you've described matches the stated purpose of the Geocaching Tour Guides category at Waymarking.com. There you will find tour guide volunteers around the world, and the site is searchable geographically. Hope this helps!

[+galdrin]

Thanks Keystone. That was more or less what I was looking for.