No Tresspassing

[+ZingerHead]

If you want me to look for your cache, please put parking coordinates in the description. No way this should be a listing requirement, but if I'm going to drive an hour away to hunt caches, I'm going to pick the ones that have parking coordinates. It is not my idea of "adventure" to drive around looking for a place to dump my car. That is my idea of "boring" and "tedious". The only exception I'd make is when the driving is actually part of the cache - where you have to figure out how to get from "here" to "there" in your car.

One point I didn't see discussed here is the impact of NOT putting parking coords on nearby landowners. Common sense is not infallible, and just because your chosen parking spot LOOKS OK does not mean that it IS OK. There's a cache in SW CT that is on public open space. There is a short, unposted, named dead-end road near the park entrance that is the most common place for cachers to park. Common sense would tell you that this is a fine place to leave your car. I mean why WOULDN'T you park on the side of what looks like a public street, next to public open space? Because the grouch who lives on the other side of the road will call the police, that's why. Now there are no parking coordinates given (or weren't when I visited the cache) so cachers from out of town would have absolutely no clue that they were upsetting anyone.

Another gripe I have with no parking coordinates is that I'm generally from "out of town" when I cache now. I don't know the roads, and if I'm looking at my GPS and trying to keep my bearings behind the wheel, I'm not concentrating on the road. That's dangerous. Perhaps that is the "adventure" part of this discussion that escaped me??

I don't think it's "holding my hand" to give me parking coordinates. I think its showing consideration for nearby landowners, for the other drivers who have to follow my pathetic lost self through traffic, and the cachers, like me, who would rather be out hiking than driving aimlessly around looking for a parking spot.

[+Kai Team]

Bottom line (imho)...  Make it fun. 

IMHO - much fun to try and find the best parking. All about Navigation.

The goal of hiding a cache is to provide someone else (the seeker) a fun experience, right? What's fun for one person (doing research and testing their navigation skills to find the best access/parking) is not fun for everyone.

 

If parking coordinates (or other helpful information) are provided, the person who wants to research, map and navigate their way to parking can ignore them (or try to find better access than noted by the hider). If the information is a spoiler, it can be encrypted, with a note about what the encrypted information is. However, if parking is not obvious and coordinates or directions are not provided, the cache will not be fun for people who don't enjoy researching and mapping and navigating to a parking spot.

 

The way to maximize the fun for the most number of people is to err on the side of providing information - doing so accomodates the variety of things people enjoy about geocaching. IMHO, withholding important information is just a power play.

[+Thot]

The distance to the park is irrelevant if you are native to the area.

And if you're not?

Then odds are you will get to see a lot of the town as you make wrong turns and can't find how to get there from here.

 

Most of the griping in this thread could be solved with a little pre-planning instead of caching blind. Even maps on the GPS help a lot.

Please don't confuse my comment with directions or parking coordinates. I'm talking about locations that are closed at certain times or days, or that charge fees for access.

 

Before you circle back to ‘you can find this out by research’ please see my earlier posts in this thread.

[+tls11823]

Even with the best intentions and an adventurous spirit, you don't always have the tools to find the parking place. I was recently caching in another country, and my base map didn't include the country. My mapping software didn't even know about that part of the world. It wasn't worth over $200 (I think) to buy map software for two days of caching. I probably could have bought some paper maps, but didn't know where to find them, and didn't think it was a good use of money anyway.

 

So I went caching armed with nothing better than the rental car company's map, which had all of Ireland on one page. Needless to say, I didn't get too much help with the back roads. I tried to find one cache and circled around the area twice. I was within less than two miles the whole time, and knew it was in the middle of my circuit somewhere, but I couldn't find a way to get there, besides private lanes. I knew the cache was along a canal, and even saw what I believe was the canal. If I had been given an idea of where to park, it would have been a tremendous help. As it was, I drove off and logged a DNF. When I checked the logs later, I saw that somebody from the area had the same problem. Even a little bit if guidance would have been very helpful, which the cache owner acknowledged after reading of my adventure, and said he'd post parking coordinates. Too late for me, but if it helps somebody in the future, that's great.

[+Greymane]

I have found that even in cases where you are told specifically where to park, it is not a tremendous help in finding the cache. Just keeping you out of trouble, usually.

[+Sputnik 57]

The Geocachers' Creed reminds cachers to be considerate of others. I think that placing hours, restrictions, parking coordinates, etc. on the cache page is a considerate thing to do, especially if they are not obvious.

 

I'm not sure we need to make politeness a "rule" (any more than I consider the Geocachers' Creed to be a set of "rules"). It's just a good idea.