Today's Rant

I've been reading the GOWT regional forums and am a bit disheartened by the lack of generally useful information currently there.

Information on a person's experiences at a cache may make for interesting reading, but in no way guarantees a reader that they might have a similar experience. At best, it merely gives an ego boost to the cache placer, which in turn may promote further placing of new caches.

An example of what I would like to see is:
If I want to go caching at Shelby Farms park (or any big park), I would like to know if there are any activities scheduled at the park that could interfere with my plans. Most big parks, like Shelby Farms, have webpages that list activities and events at the park that I may or may not be interested in. Bigger state parks also usually have webpages that describe scheduled events. Some of these pages also have maps of hiking trails. Links to the websites for major city and state parks would be a tremendous asset to the regional forums.

One good source of information for Tennesse State parks is:

http://www.stateparks.com/tn.html

The source I use most frequently is:

http://www.state.tn.us/environment/parks/

Of course there are many other links to city and state parks out there that can provide useful information to cachers whether they are planning a caching trip or just a fun time outdoors.

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Outside of the forums...

Meanwhile, GOWT's resident philosopher in a recent blog entry tries to wrap her coffee can shaped head around the question: "Why are some people so mean?"

Unlike JAG's philosopher, who is just plain nuts - and now thankfully silent on public forums, GOWT's philosopher continuously and deliberately tries to bait people into confrontations in order to feed her need for "drama". She should focus instead on more introspective questions like: "Why can't I accept personal responsibility for the damage I did to GOWT over the last two years?"

Update: 8:14pm: The GOWT webmaster posted my parks links under "Important Information". I would have added links to the bigger parks under the "Regional Forums" so that people don't have go to looking all over for the information, but hey, whatever. The members will find the information useful, I think.