Mine on the Mead Wildlife Area were all approved and returned to me within 2 weeks. One was approved and returned to me within 2 minutes, but that was because I hand-delivered it to the project manager at a Friends of Mead Wildife Area board meeting. It doesn’t hurt to be on the board of directors. 😀

I had to fill out 56 forms for another cacher that can not write yet. Of those 40 were mailed and the other 16 were hand delivered. I ran into the reviewer about a month ago on the trail and asked him about them. He said that they are very busy and dont have the money to mail them all back. I even had to make a topo map of the trail with a little X on them as to where the caches are becouse they cant afford a GPS. As of today over 4 months later I still have not received a single one back. Dont fret if you dont get a copy back they told me you would hear from them if there is a problem.

I did a geocaching presentation for Perrot State Park this past August, and learned that about 30% of the positions within the DNR (can’t remember if it was the agency as a whole or just the parks division) are going unfilled now due to budget. As attrition occurs, other people are doubling up, and of course, many things go to the “later” piles. The naturalist told me her position is actually funded now by the park’s “Friends” group.

Although the people in the DNR know that geocaching brings more people out, they have to do the stuff on the top of their lists first. Probably, taking care of notification forms is not at that part of the list. This is also part of the problem in trying to get a state park geocaching program off the ground. They are indeed interested, but they don’t have a staff person with the time available to monitor their side of the program.

We don’t submit a whole bunch of cache notifications at once, but when we mail them in, we always include a self-adressed stamped envelope for the return of the forms or copies thereof. Only one batch never got returned, and those had gotten rerouted to another department.

Three forms plus the SASE in the original envelope are under the one ounce limit, and you might get away with four. No skin off our teeth to cover the cost of a stamp every now and then.

So what your all saying is submit the form and hide the cache without waiting for the approval?

There is a reason why it is called a Notification Form and not a permit. In the more popular parks, the rangers might actually look at the form in a timely fashion. When we placed a bunch of caches in Bong for the campout, they called Renee the next day to tell her that the payphone shell she used was being removed. On the other hand, my cache in Honey Creek got returned to me 40 months after I submitted it. The point of the form is for them to have a point of contact should there be any kind of a problem with the cache. That’s it!