Jump to content

Caching Duluth GeoTour


City of Duluth

Recommended Posts

Hello Cachers,

ee1ddff9-0a89-405a-b374-665cd27780eb.jpg

The City of Duluth is excited to have recently launched the Caching Duluth GeoTour. Voted one of the "Most Beautiful Towns" in Georgia; Duluth has a lot to offer with historic buildings, dining delights, award winning parks, entertainment and shopping venues. The GeoTour highlights the city's landmarks, historic sites, and stellar scenery that cover 10 square miles.

 

Our intention with the GeoTour is to embrace the geocaching community, invite more cachers to beautiful Duluth from distant places and to attract newbies to the world of geocaching. We created this GeoTour as a way to give residents & visitors a tour of our beautiful City in a fun and exciting new way.

 

We would like to open a line of communication with those of you in the community who have been kind enough to reach out to us via cache logs, Message Center, email etc. We have been told that cache pages are not the right place for back-and-forth conversation so we decided to go this route.

 

Since our launch, we have learned a few things and have adjusted our caches for the better. Thanks so much for your feedback. A few action steps:

 

● We would like to delete the logs on cache pages that are more of a conversation about the GeoTour at large rather than a cache log. Rest assured that we have heard your messages. :-)

● The caches are now better described.

● We have done cache maintenance on a few locations that needed it.

● We are in the midst of communicating with affected Cache Owners, aka neighbors. We would like to work together as this GeoTour evolves.

 

Additionally, it seems some of our new caches caused existing caches to become archived. As newcomers to the game, we didn't realize how this step affects all of you. We would like to work with existing cache owners here in Duluth if the partnership is compatible with our GeoTour.

 

Our Requests from You:

 

● Would you like to work with us on this GeoTour? We would be open to your suggestions, especially since we hope to expand this GeoTour in future years.

● Coordinates: We were using a Garmin when we placed the caches. Our coordinates seem right to us. Would any of you be willing to meet us on location to double-check? It might be instructive to compare what you see on your device and what we see on our GPS.

● The best way to contact us is mwaddell@duluthga.net

 

Thank you,

 

The City of Duluth

Link to comment

RE: the archivals of some caches

 

I had shared with the City of Duluth that geocachers hide caches once they have the landowners' or land managers' permission to hide the cache.

 

The information they had at the time was this, from the guidelines:

 

You assure us that you have the landowner's and/or land manager's permission before you hide any geocache, whether placed on private or public property. Even if you are certain that geocaching is permitted on particular public property, ensure that you have followed any and all requirements established by the land owner or land management agency before placing the cache. There may be locations in which cache hides are inappropriate, even though not prohibited by local laws.

 

The City of Duluth fully supports this GeoTour and they wanted to place their own caches on the properties that they manage. Some of the locations which they felt worthy of highlighting had already been selected by earlier geocachers, but those appeared to have been hidden without proper permission. Geocaching HQ and the City are under the impression that permission from the City had not been granted for these caches. If you have additional info, please contact me directly with specific GC codes and we'll see about the best course of action.

 

Happy geocaching!

Link to comment

I would like to know when / if the "City of Duluth" plans to meet with the local cachers to listen to the current vibe concerning your "geo tour." At the mega event in Rome I personally was witness to some disappointment in the way the local cachers have been treated. I would encourage you to make time to hear what the actual community has to say otherwise the work you put into it may just backfire on you and there won't be any benefit to the city in which I love.

Link to comment

Hi GeauxTeam - Thank you for your message. We have been diligently working to update our Geotour and make it the best we can with information given to us by local cachers. We have meet and are still meeting with local cachers to hear their thoughts and opinions as they are very welcomed. The City will be hosting a face-to-face forum in the next few weeks and the dates for this forum will be advertised very soon. I hope that you will be able to attend.

 

Happy Caching!!

Link to comment

You might want to read the post on the "geotour costs" forums...

 

"There's a bit of a controversy about one that just got published near Atlanta. City of Duluth, Georgia decided to put one together and it's been a royal disaster. First, they managed to get numerous valid caches involuntarily archived...even some that were not within the city (or even the same COUNTY). Then they published them without even having PLACED many of them. The locations of many of them were questionable (I hear one was a fake beer can outside a convenience store, another on an active construction site). Coordinates were off by a huge amount on several. No kick-off event was ever organized. No hints posted on any of the poorly written cache pages. No marketing materials were put together to promote it, no reward (coin, certificate, etc) available for those who complete it. And apparently the lady to set it up isn't available for people trying to contact the city about it.

 

Frankly, I was quite shocked to hear that basically GS could be bought to archive other peoples' caches with no apparent recourse and the end result be such a total failure. Quite disappointing and I hope the information I've seen about it is inaccurate...but several folks I talked to at an event last night were directly affected and live in the area, so I tend to believe their story about it."

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...