I’m not sure that a temp-less picnic is needed, but a less temps picnic wouldn’t be all bad. In other words why have 30 hides out there when doing all of them would mean you’d have no time for socializing. Personally I’d rather see half as many (or less) at the next event. That being said, I’d love to see each of them being unique as well.

The question is, should the picnic be a social event? This does NOT include the Camping event with in the question, correct?

When I started to attend events, I went with the intention of finding as many event placed geocaches as I could within the alloted time. I counted all of the finds. Then, I re-thought the purpose of attending an event. It was to socialize and maybe, find one or two event placed geocaches. At this point, the event took on a whole new feeling. I left the event with a renewed sense of accomplishment. I didn’t find a container with a little stamp in it. Instead, I found new friendships. I renewed friendships from before. Finding these, turned out to be more valuable than a quickly concealed container.

I completely support having the templess event! I think that this idea came over me at the last two WGA events…when the idea that “it is not about the numbers” became realized. We have decided that we would only log the event rather than the temps. Since doing this we have fully enjoyed the events more. We were able to stop and smell the roses and actually catch up with geocaching friends. As a past BOD member as well as chair person in the planning of the event I can say that not having temps at the events would eliminate A LOT of work in the planning and actually make it easier to manage!

I know that there may be less interest in attending for those people that are more numbers driven, but since the WGA and BOD have not supportted or stressed the numbers buffering that takes place from finding and logging temps it would be a show that in fact the WGA are not all about the numbers.

As far as having fewer temps at the event I can say from chairing the MacKenzie Picnic that I tried that. Most people found all of the temps and had time for socialization…HOWEVER….the area was terribly torn apart from so many people visiting a place in a short period of time.

I can share that although I may be in the minority that I would appreciate temp free events. Not that I care what others may think, but Wisconsin has been bashed in the GC forums over and over for allowing the logging of temps (and I know we are not the only ones). This would just make this a non topic.

ok..I am done-
Ms. WISearcher

I would also be in favor of “templess” WGA events, but I think the tradition of full strength events with enough temp caches to occupy most people for the whole day should also continue… maybe just at the Geo-Picnic, and remove temps from the Geo-Campout (except the night caching of course)? As Rhonda said, removing the temps from an event would make it much easier to plan and execute, so maybe we could add a couple extra socialization only (templess) events to what we are currently doing? These templess events would be good for the winter months when a lot of people are in geo-hibernation and the weather is poor…

I don’t think reducing the number of temp caches to encourage socialization is a good solution. (In fact I was pushing for more temps and the use of more trail systems at the last Geo-Picnic.) Either there are no temp caches or there are sufficient temps for the number expected to hunt them. If there is a small number of temp caches grouped close together near the “base” and 200+ people hunt them, we are going to have congestion problems (people crossing paths while hunting the same cache), damage to the environment, and the formation of volunteer trails… it would likely not be pleasant experience for the participants or Mother Nature. We could drop the number of temp caches if they were more spread out than we normally have them, but a lot of people are not interested in hiking a mile just for one temp find.

In my opinion (which I know means nothing), if an event is going to have caches, it should have a relatively large number of them. I know that I personally do not log temporary caches, but it is a bit disheartening when you go to an event with the anticipation of finding some fun caches in unusual containers and cleverly hidden and then to find that there are so few caches that whenever you approach the coordinates you find a group of 20 or so people just passing the stamp around. What fun is that? There is no challenge in passing the stamp. Where was it hidden? What type of container was it? You can say “play the finders tree”, but that doesn’t work when there is such a large number of people. At the last even, I made sure that the caches I placed were far enough apart and that you could not see one location from the next. I figured it would give people enough time to retrieve the cache and replace it before the next group came along… I know there were problems with one cache, but I can’t control when the rangers decide to cut a tree down. Maybe the solution would be to have different sets of caches and alternate which set gets handed out. So if there were 30 temporaries set up, break it into three sets of 10 caches and let people choose which of the three sets they would like to do or just hand them out randomly. Then there would be more time for socializing and yet people would not be grouped together. Just some food for though.

What is the intention of an event?
1. to bring geocaches to geocachers?
2. to bring geocachers to geocachers?
3. to bring geocachers to geocaches?

We (T&tb) have attended events of each of these persuasions. Truthfully I see the temporary caches eroding the effectiveness of an event that is intended to be social (don’t talk to me while I am playing chess), but if temps were removed from the events, I see attendance plummeting.

I believe that one attends a geocaching event because they are a geocacher at heart or in fact. Finding a plethora of temps at an event, did not make me a geocacher or even a better geocacher. I can find plenty of great caches without events. The temps have proven to be no more than entertainment, a diversion while at these events. I find my fellow geocachers are entertaining enough. I don’t need the hunt to occupy my time. I come to events to share tales from the trails, to get to know my fellow cachers better. I can see having a few temps (not loggable) to demonstrate techniques to neophytes. Take away the temps and we would be able to use much smaller facilities for our events; we would not need a thousand acres to spread our activity for the day.

To answer the original question on intent, I believe that our WGA events have had some of each of the intentions. I believe we have put too much emphasis on (1) bringing the geocaches to the geocachers, and we need to put a lot more emphasis on (2) bringing the geocachers to the geocachers. There are some damned interesting folks in our midst and I want to get to know them.

JMHO ~tb

We have never attended a WGA event but to follow up Timberline Echoes post the Rib Mountain Rendezvous ended up with 28 teams/names signing the log (paddle) and approximately 55 geocachers. We had no temps other than three that my kids put together with stuff for kids to find. People went out and did the Three Bad Ribs, or other local caches during the morning and afternoon and then all gathered for a great picnic in the evening. Quite a few stayed to camp and we gathered around the campfire to end the day.

This was a first-ever event and we had no temps. If you read the logs it would seem it was a success in getting geocachers together to meet one another.

Rib Mountain Rendezvous 2006