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I think that those of us regularly using state land for caches should probably be a little more aware of the placement rules to avoid a lot of “false starts”. The approvers can chime in, but I would assume that rejected caches on state land mostly fall in to two categories: SNAs and cache saturation.
If you are anywhere close to an SNA, it is worth the effort to talk to the rangers before starting to get their interpretation of where the SNA begins and ends. Don’t be surprised if you get something like “Ya know, with that fancy GPS of yours, you and I could do a bang up job of mapping this SNA.”
With cache proximity, like others have said in the past, you really need to try to solve all the multis and mystery caches in a particular park before attempting to place a cache in said park. If you really can’t solve it, you can always call the owner for the coords. Admittedly, sometimes people will put the “fake” coordinates a long way from the final, but that is pretty rare. Once you know where everything is, you can obviously check this before submitting either form.
Yes, it takes some effort to make sure your placement is OK before submitting it, but it sure saves time in the long run for everyone.
If you need to, you can amend the location on the form by calling the DNR contact. Of course, if you think there is a problem, you could always get an opinion from an approver before submitting the cache/form.
Here’s a thought that maybe nobody would agree with. Maybe they should require a pass for all trail users, not just bikers/skiers/equestrians. I’ve never understood why a skier/biker would put any more wear on those crushed limestone trails than a hiker. (Horses and snowmobiles obviously do more damage, IMHO.) I believe these fees were originally put in place to maintain mountain bike trails (like the Muir system in SKMSF) where bikers do add more wear to the trails and skiers get grooming. The rec trails somehow got lumped in with those systems. If the state needs more money to maintain these traFor me, the only problem would be the inconvenience of needing to buy a pass every year, just like the state parks pass.
While I understand that nobody wants to spend money, if we want to play our game on their land, we have to be willing to share in the cost of the upkeep.
In the interest of being more centrally located, I would suggest either Hwy 36 from S Wind Lake Road to the N county line (51-036-14) or Hwy 83 from Loland Drive to the W County Line. Remember that our region includes Washington, Waukesha, and Ozaukee Counties. I just think that the Hwy 20 suggestion is too far South and East. The 36 section is pretty much near the center of the region geographically, although something in Western Milwaukee county/Eastern Waukesha County would be closer to the true center.
Ya know, I didn’t think of it before, but the REQUEST of an open record is also subject to the open records law. Get the name of the guy, post it here, someone will surely know their geocaching handle, and then we can shame the nitwit into submission. Alternatively, I could call my cousins Vinny and Nico from Brooklyn and have them fly over to Eau Claire to pay the guy a friendly visit….
Jay, if you found it in Oak Creek, its probably a Wood Tick. Basically, wood ticks are usually about 1/8 inch in diameter (or in geocacher speak, you could fit four of them on one side of a nano.) The deer ticks are much smaller. If you see a bug crawling on you, that is a wood tick. If you think you see a speck crawling on you, that is a deer tick.
Uh, the problem is that DNR (or at least one of their employees) doesn’t like going through the trouble of making a copy. I seriously doubt that they would be interested in editing the content released for our benefit. And since there no commerce involved in placing or finding a cache, no way would any of this be considered a trade secret.
That said, I can’t imagine anyone going this route to solve a puzzle cache. The rest of the information on the form is pretty much available out there if you know where to look. Sorry, but the days of keeping your phone number or address completely private are gone. If you have a phone, receive mail at your home, own real estate, vote, or other interact with the government, people can find your address and phone number. The email address might be a little harder to come by (if you don’t use AOL, Yahoo, or MSN, all of these databases have been hacked), but you could just leave that off of the form.
I guess the answer is that if you are worried about your information being available to the public, don’t place your cache on DNR (or Dane County Park) land.
Yuppers, you did it, Jason. Great job!
I would guess that this cannot be avoided. The Freedom of Information act requires that official documents be available to the public.
Personally, I wouldn’t worry about it. If someone wants to cheat, they will cheat. The DNR knew about the FoA act before they made the requirements, and they surely fulfill these requests all the time.
I may be making an incorrect assumption, but I don’t believe there will be internet connectivity at either of these events. Connectivity is really necessary to look at this feature.
notmuch was also asking me about training for macros the other day. Maybe we could get together somewhere that has WIFI in the Milwaukee area? A library community room?
We have a 76Cx (it happened to be cheaper than the 60Cx when we bought it). I can echo everyone’s comments. Our old GPSr was a yellow Etrex. We have used it in heavily forested areas, both with and without leaves, and never lose a signal. More impressively, I used it in Buenos Aries, where my etrex wouldn’t hold a signal at all. The problem there is very tall buildings combined with very limited sattelite exposure (I think the most I saw active was 6 birds). My etrex could only hold a signal if I stood in the middle of an intersection.
If you want to go cheaper, you could try a Legend Cx. It still has the lousy etrex antennna, so I am not sure you will get the complete benefit with this model. Maybe combine the Legend Cx with an external antenna?
Unfortunately, you may still be 50 feet off on some caches. Just because you have the right coordinates doesn’t mean the people placing the cache did.
We have a 76Cx (it happened to be cheaper than the 60Cx when we bought it). I can echo everyone’s comments. Our old GPSr was a yellow Etrex. We have used it in heavily forested areas, both with and without leaves, and never lose a signal. More impressively, I used it in Buenos Aries, where my etrex wouldn’t hold a signal at all. The problem there is very tall buildings combined with very limited sattelite exposure (I think the most I saw active was 6 birds). My etrex could only hold a signal if I stood in the middle of an intersection.
If you want to go cheaper, you could try a Legend Cx. It still has the lousy etrex antennna, so I am not sure you will get the complete benefit with this model. Maybe combine the Legend Cx with an external antenna?
The problem with the bookmark strategy is that only “premium members” will be able to get the list. If your goal is to reach the general public, this might not be acceptable. Now I don’t know how many non-premium members would be interested in a GPX file, but you have to decide this set of people is an important customer group.
Can we log an extra find for every seagull that we shoot?
No problem. That means that we would need to run two pocket queries to get them all (except the 25), maybe traditional caches for one and everything else for the other.
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