Jump to content

Indiana 200th Anniversary


CycleSeekers

Recommended Posts

Hello fellow Hoosiers!

It's been a long time since I have been geocaching due to work, but now I am getting back into the fun! I have been asked to help put together a state wide geocaching event for Indiana's 200th birthday. What I had in mind, was for each county to have a geocache set out with information on the history of their county and anything of historical interest. I would like to have input from fellow geocachers on this and once this gets rolling, I will need a rep from each county who will be the actual contact person for the county and responsible for the cache itself.

My first question is of course.. Does this sound do-able, and do you think there would be an interest in going forward with this?

Thanks for any and all suggestions and input!

 

Brenda Windell

"CycleSeekers"

Link to comment

Hello fellow Hoosiers!

It's been a long time since I have been geocaching due to work, but now I am getting back into the fun! I have been asked to help put together a state wide geocaching event for Indiana's 200th birthday. What I had in mind, was for each county to have a geocache set out with information on the history of their county and anything of historical interest. I would like to have input from fellow geocachers on this and once this gets rolling, I will need a rep from each county who will be the actual contact person for the county and responsible for the cache itself.

My first question is of course.. Does this sound do-able, and do you think there would be an interest in going forward with this?

Thanks for any and all suggestions and input!

 

Brenda Windell

"CycleSeekers"

 

Cycle,

 

Sounds like a winner to me! Count me in for Posey, Vanderburgh, Warrick or Gibson which ever need covered.

 

God bless & see ya on the trail,

 

Hoosier Guy

Link to comment

Cycle,

 

Sounds like a winner to me! Count me in for Posey, Vanderburgh, Warrick or Gibson which ever need covered.

 

God bless & see ya on the trail,

 

Hoosier Guy

 

Thanks Hoosier Guy!

I will be keeping a spreadsheet on who can cover what counties. We have plenty of time to get this all organized so I will keep updating as I update the file. I am also working on trying to get the committee to buy a commemorative geo coin for the event.One for each county to put in their geocaches... keeping my fingers crossed there..

 

Namaste!

Brenda

"Cycleseekers"

Link to comment

Hello fellow Hoosiers!

It's been a long time since I have been geocaching due to work, but now I am getting back into the fun! I have been asked to help put together a state wide geocaching event for Indiana's 200th birthday. What I had in mind, was for each county to have a geocache set out with information on the history of their county and anything of historical interest. I would like to have input from fellow geocachers on this and once this gets rolling, I will need a rep from each county who will be the actual contact person for the county and responsible for the cache itself.

My first question is of course.. Does this sound do-able, and do you think there would be an interest in going forward with this?

Thanks for any and all suggestions and input!

 

Brenda Windell

"CycleSeekers"

 

This is very exciting and doable!!

 

We'll take care of Wayne County (we can also do Fayette, Henry and Union if no one else steps up to claim them).

 

Wayne County actually has a series of eight caches called the Wayne County Hidden Treasure Series that we placed in 2009. They take you to historic and special places around the county and if you find all eight (and provide the code words) you can get a special pathtag for completing the series. We worked with our County Tourism folks on that series. Pretty sure they would be willing to help with this project as well.

 

Actually you might be able to get several of the county tourism bureaus to work together on reward coins much like what Pennsylvania has done on their Allegheny GeoTrail series and the Great Lakes Seaway Trail series. Both of these programs are fantastic and have generated a significant amount of tourism for their respective regions.

 

Don't know if you are active on Facebook or not, but if you would like I can post your information/request on the Indiana Geocaching groups that we are part of on Facebook. Much of the GC.com forum activity has moved over to Facebook. Pretty certain that within hours of posting it on Facebook, many of the counties would be claimed.

 

Are you also aware of the Indiana Epic 92 County Challenge? It is a special cache that you can claim after you've found at least one cache in each of Indiana's counties. It might be a good thing to tie into all of this.

Edited by Keystone
Link to comment
This is very exciting and doable!!

 

We'll take care of Wayne County (we can also do Fayette, Henry and Union if no one else steps up to claim them).

 

Wayne County actually has a series of eight caches called the Wayne County Hidden Treasure Series that we placed in 2009. They take you to historic and special places around the county and if you find all eight (and provide the code words) you can get a special pathtag for completing the series. We worked with our County Tourism folks on that series. Pretty sure they would be willing to help with this project as well.

 

Actually you might be able to get several of the county tourism bureaus to work together on reward coins much like what Pennsylvania has done on their Allegheny GeoTrail series and the Great Lakes Seaway Trail series. Both of these programs are fantastic and have generated a significant amount of tourism for their respective regions.

 

Don't know if you are active on Facebook or not, but if you would like I can post your information/request on the Indiana Geocaching groups that we are part of on Facebook. Much of the GC.com forum activity has moved over to Facebook. Pretty certain that within hours of posting it on Facebook, many of the counties would be claimed.

 

Are you also aware of the Indiana Epic 92 County Challenge? It is a special cache that you can claim after you've found at least one cache in each of Indiana's counties. It might be a good thing to tie into all of this.

 

Hello Itchy & Scratchy!

Thank you for the input! Those are great ideas! I am very active on FB, so post away! I will check on the information you have listed and I think it's a great idea to get the county tourism offices involved as well. I will put you down for the counties you listed until I get more volunteers. Is there are particular county you prefer if it came down to picking one? Same for you Hoosier Guy... do you have one you prefer?

 

Thanks all!

 

Brenda Windell

"CycleSeekers"

Edited by Keystone
Link to comment

Our first pick is Wayne County. Let us know how we can help as this project moves forward. We have worked extensively with the Wayne County Tourism Bureau both professionally and personally, plus have contacts with the east regional group as well. If there is a plan, we can see about getting them to budget some things for us.

 

Team Itchy & Scratchy

Greg & Aleesa

Link to comment

Rather than just putting one coin in each county cache, you may want to consider having a special stamp in each cache and awarding the coin to people who get all–or at least a certain percentage–of the special caches (proven by having the respective stamps on a form or passport). That way you can limit the coins to one per person. Otherwise there will likely be a mad rush by people racing from county to county trying to collect as many of the 92 coins as they can.

Link to comment

Count me in. I will be glad to help with Clark County. If you need help in any of surrounding counties, I don't mind taking a couple if no one steps up.

 

Like Itchy and Scratchy, we did a nice challenge put on by the tourism bureau in Pennsylvania. There are several others across the country that you can look at for ideas. Most people working with these challenges are willing to share information.

 

Give me a shout if you need additional help in planning.

 

Daggy

Link to comment

I can take Hamilton county. I also second Team I&S' idea about a stamp or code in each cache rather than having one for each separate county. Each county could possibly provide some sort of county swag (get in touch with the county tourism bureaus) for each cache. The coin would then be the reward for finding all 92 counties' caches to celebrate the 200th birthday of the state.

Edited by Keystone
Link to comment

Wow! Thank you guys for the ideas and stepping up to help out!

 

I have each of you down for your preferred county plus a note on extra counties if you provided that info.

 

I like the stamp idea, but not sure of being able to come up with 92 unique stamps. I will have to look into that a little more. I'm sure it would be cheaper to go that route, than 92 unique geocoins. I am open to suggestions from some of you with experience in this area.

 

I also want these to be larger caches. Something big enough to hold historical info on the county they are in. When I first started Geocaching, I located one in Vincennes, IN that held a notebook covering the history of Vincennes and also had items of historical nature. I thought it was a really cool cache and one of the more memorable ones I've ever found. I don't expect anyone to put together an elaborate notebook, but pamphlets on some of the local history attractions, or anything that would tie the cache to the county would be great. The local tourism boards would be a help in that area I'm sure.

 

Thank again guys!

 

Cycle Seekers

Link to comment

Not sure I was clear on the stamp idea. You can have mini-self inking stamps made fairly easily and inexpensively. Some cachers are using those to sign the logs with these days.

 

The stamps would remain in their respective caches. Geocachers would pick up passport books and would need to collect as many of the 92 county stamps as they could by finding the designated caches and stamping their passports. You could use a rubber stamp and a stamp pad, but that can get a little messy. Another alternative is using the special shaped hole punches you can buy at craft stores. But since there are only a limited number of designs of those, it makes it much easier for someone to cheat and find out what shaped punch they need for which counties.

 

You would also need to have a few replacement stamps or hole punches on hand, because it is a given that some of them will grow legs and walk off. :huh::lol:

 

There could be lots of ways to set up the coin reward. Having to find all 92 counties just for one coin might be a little extreme. And while 92 coins sounds awesome, it is probably not doable financially. You could designate regions and have a different coin for each region. If you had 4 regions made up of 23 counties in each region, you might require cachers to get 15 out of the 23 county stamps to earn the regional coin. Having the backs of the coins all be the same, with the region side being a custom design would help reduce the cost of the program.

 

Here's a photo of a stamp journal that has a few examples of what the micro stamps could look like.JournalPage106.jpg

 

Here's an image of the Seaway Trail geocoin set. The top center shows the common back used for each of the coins.

GeoTrailCoins.jpg

Edited by Team Itchy & Scratchy
Link to comment

Count me in for Wabash Co.

 

Hello fellow Hoosiers!

It's been a long time since I have been geocaching due to work, but now I am getting back into the fun! I have been asked to help put together a state wide geocaching event for Indiana's 200th birthday. What I had in mind, was for each county to have a geocache set out with information on the history of their county and anything of historical interest. I would like to have input from fellow geocachers on this and once this gets rolling, I will need a rep from each county who will be the actual contact person for the county and responsible for the cache itself.

My first question is of course.. Does this sound do-able, and do you think there would be an interest in going forward with this?

Thanks for any and all suggestions and input!

 

Brenda Windell

"CycleSeekers"

Link to comment

You could have tiered levels of rewards. I like the idea of varying levels of rewards, particularly the zones/regions TI&S have mentioned and then having percentages in order to complete a region. 4 is the only # I can think of that divides evenly into 92, meaning 23 counties for each zone. 18 counties is roughly 75% of 23. Each zone/region would have a "reward" of some sort and then something for completing all 4 areas. I think there should be something out there, though, for those that go the extra distance to achieve all 92. Although there's already a county challenge for the state courtesy of indylovelace, I think the ultimate goal is to have cachers visit EVERY county in our state (what better way to celebrate our bicentennial than to visit every corner of the state!).

Edited by Keystone
Link to comment

Hello fellow Hoosiers!

It's been a long time since I have been geocaching due to work, but now I am getting back into the fun! I have been asked to help put together a state wide geocaching event for Indiana's 200th birthday. What I had in mind, was for each county to have a geocache set out with information on the history of their county and anything of historical interest. I would like to have input from fellow geocachers on this and once this gets rolling, I will need a rep from each county who will be the actual contact person for the county and responsible for the cache itself.

My first question is of course.. Does this sound do-able, and do you think there would be an interest in going forward with this?

Thanks for any and all suggestions and input!

 

Brenda Windell

"CycleSeekers"

 

Cycle,

 

Sounds like a winner to me! Count me in for Posey, Vanderburgh, Warrick or Gibson which ever need covered.

 

God bless & see ya on the trail,

 

Hoosier Guy

 

This is a great idea! :) I would love to take Warrick County if Hoosier Guy is willing to let me have it.

 

- RedjackRyan

Link to comment

Sounds like a great idea. We can do Spencer county for sure. We can also do Perry county as there are no regular active cachers in that county that we are aware of. Many cachers do not read the forums often. Do you want the word spread for this endeavor? We could put the word out on a couple Indiana geocaching groups we belong to on Facebook if that will help. Just a link to this forum post so people know of it. Just let us know.

Link to comment

Hello fellow Hoosiers!

It's been a long time since I have been geocaching due to work, but now I am getting back into the fun! I have been asked to help put together a state wide geocaching event for Indiana's 200th birthday. What I had in mind, was for each county to have a geocache set out with information on the history of their county and anything of historical interest. I would like to have input from fellow geocachers on this and once this gets rolling, I will need a rep from each county who will be the actual contact person for the county and responsible for the cache itself.

My first question is of course.. Does this sound do-able, and do you think there would be an interest in going forward with this?

Thanks for any and all suggestions and input!

 

Brenda Windell

"CycleSeekers"

Link to comment

Join the conversation

You can post now and register later. If you have an account, sign in now to post with your account.
Note: Your post will require moderator approval before it will be visible.

Guest
Reply to this topic...

×   Pasted as rich text.   Paste as plain text instead

  Only 75 emoji are allowed.

×   Your link has been automatically embedded.   Display as a link instead

×   Your previous content has been restored.   Clear editor

×   You cannot paste images directly. Upload or insert images from URL.

Loading...
×
×
  • Create New...