I feel the same as you do about this permit system. I am in the process of placing 3 caches, and hope to have them in place this week. Fortunately, I will have no problems with caches being nearby. Not if they are legally placed that is. (Nor did I find any while searching geocaching online.) I will be working with the local ranger too, which to me provides the benefit of having someone familiar with the park, knowing where local kids cause the most vandelism, ie the safest place to locate the caches, and a more constant eye on them. That and making it harder for “absent cache ownership”, I think is an advantage of the permit system. As for leaving the permit and information inside the cache, I think there are some ways around that. Later on, I plan on spending a little more time with the Parks supervisor, and County Board if necessary, explaining what Geocaching is all about, what our reviewers look at, and try to get them to at least make this a more workable deal for all of us. I think the permit process came up due to some earlier issues with park caches. Geocaching is a fun recreational activity, but we could probably police our own a little better. I suspect that if one has to pay to place their cache, they may take a little better care of it.
