At Harrington Beach it continues to be a win-win situation. The Ranger is aware of many cachers that specifically come to the park because of the 10 caches there … he gets positive feedback on the park in general and the caches … he gets that feedback directly because I have the caches setup to email him the log entries.

But lately, it’s the caches that have been benefiting … as the park’s campgrounds opened a couple months back … causing about 4x the amount of finds. Many cacher/campers are finding the caches as a great night-time hunt, now that people in the park at night is not such a rare occurance (due to the camping).

The ranger is even getting into the fun of it by “giving hints” but I suspect he’s being a bit evil about it: http://www.geocaching.com/seek/log.aspx?LUID=05cd1e30-0c6b-47c5-84bb-6168eb5fd7e0

@greyhounder wrote:

To coin a famous phrase, “Working on it!”

Bec

If you don’t mind me asking… what are you working on? Can you tell us what you have in mind?

I can’t speak for any doings by the official WGA board, but I can speak to the positive things I am seeing that have happened at High Cliff State park since the campout earlier in the year.

The state park worked with us to place many new caches in the park where they were not welcomed in the past.

One of the caches I placed there has been found 100 plus times since May. That’s many more times than most other caches I have placed.

I cant say that geocaching has brought more people to this park but I can say based on reading logs, that having caches there is adding geocaching to the agenda of park visitors and campers. Even introducing new cachers to the activity.

In theory that’s 100+ state park admission fees 🙂

I would have never expected those caches to be found that many times. It’s a pleasant surprise.

@-cheeto- wrote:

In theory that’s 100+ state park admission fees 🙂

This is a great point to be made to the PTB, along with all the other positives.

@lostby7 wrote:

I know I for one pay for my stickers every year…did I do that pre-Geocaching…nope. We can definitely show that geocaching IS a tourist draw. The state should be paying attention….and we should continue to point it out when possible.

I bought my first annual state park sticker this year and plan to continue each year from now on. I know I wouldn’t without geocaching. What this also does is it also makes me research camping at state parks as well. This year we camped at 2 State Parks and plan to add more to that list next year.

The past two years that we know of, WGA members made presentations to groups of DNR/parks naturalists/staff members–Bec (greyhounder) and Ralph (zuma) in 2008, and Jim (Gramps) and us this summer. Most properties should be aware of geocaching and it potential by now, and most have sets of GPS receivers (8 per property?) that they can sign out to park users to find caches in their parks. Some properties (managers) are more receptive than others.

If there was a unified program that all the properties could participate in, I would think that less visited parks would see more activity, and maybe more reluctant personnel would see the benefits of having geocaches in their parks.

There are now fourteen caches in Roche-A-Cri State Park near us (5 traditional, 1 multi, 3 virtual, 3 earth, 2 puzzle), and we see all kinds of logs from there. Many are by the campers, many are by area cachers, but quite a few are from cachers who like the fact that they could find so many in one concentrated spot. And that park isn’t very big, with quite a bit of its acreage designated state natural area.

And look how many caches Lake Wissota SP has in it now! We only hit the tip of that iceberg at the WGA picnic, and we’re going back to find some more.

@-cheeto- wrote:

I bought my first annual state park sticker this year and plan to continue each year from now on. I know I wouldn’t without geocaching.

Ditto.