Since they haven’t posted any caches in Minnesota, Iowa, or Illinois, I’m guessing this contest won’t hold much appeal to Wisconsin cachers unless they are planning a major trip to the South.
This is one of those things that started out as a fantastic idea, but then ended up being executed quite poorly, so I am not planning on doing it.
If they wanted to do it right, they should have had more than a handful of caches in half of the states, and selected locations with meaningful history and scenery, which are not hard to find along the Great River Road.
I agree with von zuma meister. This was an interesting idea that never got off the ground. They should have enlisted local, experienced geocachers to place the geocaches. I reviewed a number of Iowa caches submitted back in June that mentioned they were part of this series. Several of them could not be published for one reason or another. One because of a 528ft guideline violation. Others were placed in the Upper Mississippi River Wildlife Sanctuary, which is off limits to geocaches. One was actually in Illinois instead of its namesake Louisa County, Iowa. One violated the vacation cache guideline. The caches had different owner names and location listed but they all used the same ID — IA Mississippi River Parkway Com — which led me to believe a group of people is sharing an ID for this series. I wrote to the ID owner, saying I noticed there were problems with several of the caches and I offered to help answer any questions they might have or to get them in touch with local geocachers who could help them place geocaches for their series. I never heard back. The only one I published in Iowa is GC1D3C6 – Scott County. There was no mention on the cache page that it was part of this series, but a reviewer note said: “All 10 State Parkway Commissions are sponsoring a cache.”
Congratulations! We’d hoped to enter this one, but our road trips this past summer went north rather than along the river, and with only a handful in Wisconsin, plus one or two MN State Park ones made available in MN, it just wasn’t to be. It does seem as if these organizations hop on the geocaching train, but aren’t always able to get experienced help when they do so. I do recall early on that flooding was an issue in getting some put out in a timely manner, and perhaps the folks in those areas ended up having more important things to deal with than placing a geocache.
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