Today, October 9th, Ken Braband gave a talk on geocaching to the Wisconsin Parks and Recreation Association regional group which included many park managers and directors from mostly southern Wisconsin. His talk addressed many of the concerns and misconceptions that they might have toward geocaching in their parks and towns. It seemed to be a rousing success. I assisted Ken with part of the program and had placed two demonstration caches – WPRA #1 and WPRA #2 near the meeting site. After Kens talk we split up the group and they then found the caches using their own GPS’s and ours.
All of the managers that I talked with seemed to feel very positive about geocaching and its benefits to their communities.
Some comments they made that I will share:

The Madison Parks Director encouraged caches that feature environmental locations such as the oldest Oak tree in Madison, birthplace of certain environmentalists etc. These are just examples but he seemed very positive about having caches in Madison parks as long as the natural areas etc. are avoided.
Others wanted to know how to get educational programs on geocaching and use of GPS’s in their communities. Ken pointed out to them that the geocaching group is always there to help.
The biggest thing they wanted to know how to do was use GPS’s and what type would be best.
Overall I thought it was a great success and the right people for our group to be talking to about geocaching.
Many thanks to Ken for traveling quite a ways to share his time and geocaching with this group.

I bet some new members to our organization will come from this talk.