Geocacher in the News

I was reading today's Letters to the Editor in the Commercial Appeal and recognized a familiar name (5 letters down). GOWT and JAG member Titansfan, who likes to carry a gun, apparently feels defenseless against panhandlers without one. His letter was in response to a controversy about the possibility of allowing citizens with carry permits to bring guns into parks in Tennessee.

I have no problem with guns or people with carry permits, however I don't think the licensing process can possibly do enough to weed out the people who shouldn't be carrying a gun. Some of these people even make it into the military. Yeehaw!

The only response I saw to his letter was from a guy who jokingly criticized his choice of a Kel-Tec.

5th Annual GOWT Gathering

Normally I might say that this picture says it all, but...

GOWT is having its 5th Annual Gathering on February 21, and they may want to take this opportunity to figure out why they even bother existing as a group.

They decided a couple of months ago to stop charging membership dues, saying that they had collected enough money to fund them for a while. Since their only real expense involves paying an annual fee for the website domain, one might consider this a reasonable course of action. However, the truth of the matter is that they (the leadership committee) realized that they were incapable of providing a service that was worth even a small yearly membership fee.

Over the past year, the quality of the newsletter has deteriorated both in content as well as the language skills of the editor. Having someone actually proofread the newsletter before it goes online would help immensely. The most recent editor of the newsletter was Titansfan and judging by the quality of the writing on his blog, he doesn't bother to proofread his own work.

My advice to GOWT: Get a real editor.

One of the benefits to being a paid member was the ability to see a list of members and their find counts, which is neat if you like comparing your find/hide numbers to those of your peers. Of course, that requires somebody to keep the list up to date. This list was updated once in late June 2008 and most recently on October 8, 2008. Oh, well...at least there is another website where that information is freely available.

My advice to GOWT: Remove this page.

They have what they call a Database of Geocaches, which apparently was designed with the intent that members submit geocache reviews that can help people figure out what caches are interesting to hunt. This database was created in November 2007 and last updated in February of 2008. Only three different people posted reviews.

My advice to GOWT: Solicit more entries from the Advisory Committee (at the very least). It would give them a purpose.

The discussion forums have basically become a place where 4 or 5 regulars chat about their caching adventures. Yawn.

On the rare occasion that someone might post useful information specific to a particular region on GOWT, they tend to post it under "General" with a vague thread title. They should try using the regional sections of the forums. That is why they were created.

Example:
Instead of starting a thread under "General" entitled "LBL Closed", create a thread in the Northeast GOWT regional section and title it "Sections of LBL temporarily closed due to ice storm".

My advice to GOWT: Find yourselves a moderator with actual moderating experience. Moderators do more than just ban members for inappropriate content.

As the picture above shows, the GOWT website crashes on occasion. In this case, it was a problem with the "news" section. This shouldn't crash, since there is rarely any news posted.

My advice to GOWT: Get a REAL webmaster. Also, when you post "news" about upcoming events (usually cut and pasted straight from the cache page), put in an appropriate HYPERLINK !!!

Rivercrest Nature Park - February 8, 2009

It was an unusually warm weekend for the beginning of February and I was headed north to attend a birthday party for my sister-in-law. This area, which is just to the south of the Bartlett Animal Shelter, was on the way and was in an area that jbgreer and I have hunted a number of caches.

This particular area - referred to by one cache description as Rivercrest Nature Park had two fairly recent caches in it and I figured I would take this opportunity to hunt them.

I parked at the Animal Shelter and looked for a way into the woods. There is no park entrance on the north side of the area where the Shelter and nearby Wastewater Treatment plant are. It wasn't difficult, however, to find the paved path that basically passes by both caches. I started by heading southwest to Rivercrest by weberus3 (GC1AFXK). I got to within 20 feet and saw a huge gulley that I might have to cross. At this point, I looked at the cache logs on my PDA and saw that this cache was missing. Someone had muggled it and the last visitor took what was left of it with him. I cursed myself for not reading the logs ahead of time and headed east to see if I could find the other cache in the park - Dixie's Prize by Dixie's Pal (GC1KMR2). This cache had been placed barely a month ago, and was in good shape when I found it. I thought about exploring this park further, but I was running low on time. This park currently has more room for caches, so I'll probably wait until GC1AFXK is replaced, and another cache or two is added before I come back. I took a few pictures of the area that I will post here later.

Havre, MT - January 4, 2009

As I was traveling east via Amtrak from Pasco, WA to Chicago, IL, we made a service stop at Havre, MT. I was carrying my GPSr with me, but I had no waypoints for any of the stops. I had heard a guy a few rows behing me talking about geocaching, and I talked with him for a minute after we got off the train at this spot for a short break.

After seeing this little park, I knew there had to be a geocache close by so I looked around with no luck. After returning to Memphis, I looked up this spot on geocaching.com and found out that Steaming away by Rainnstar (GC1C627) is located somewhere between the park sign and the train.

It turns out that Havre is a hotspot for caching in the area with approximately 28 caches within the town limits.

This park is dedicated to the close relationship of the Border Patrol with the Royal Canadian Mounted Police and is located a few yards west of the train station. Havre is located roughly 40 miles south of the Montana border with Canada.

You can't see it in this picture, but behind the trees is an old locomotive on exhibition.