Parks playing high-tech game of hide-and-seek with visitors
Posted on Monday, July 21, 2008
All 52 of Arkansas’ state parks want to play a game with you and your GPS device. The game is ParkCache.
Before you can play, you first must set up a free account on the Web site geo caching. com; then you log onto www. ArkansasStateParks. com and look under “Things to do” for “geocaching.” Or you could start on the state parks site, but eventually it will kick you over to geocaching. com, which will demand that account. Park employees have hidden a geocache — a little treasure box — in each state park and posted location coordinates on a list managed by geocaching. com. You’ll find latitude and longitude for each park’s plastic snap-box or ammo locker or whatever the ParkCache might be, a rating of how difficult it should be to spot and how big it is. You then log the coordinates into your GPS (Global Positioning System ) device and sally forth to seek and find.
In a press release announcing the program, State Parks Director Greg Butts said, “The real adventure is actually visiting all 52 state parks.” Each cache contains a clue to the location of a 53 rd cache hidden somewhere in the state. To find that grand finale box, you have to add up all of the clues from the 52 parks. Really add them, as in arithmetic addition.
So this game could also involve a calculator.
Could someone who doesn’t have computer access play the game ? No. But you could, in theory, find the ParkCaches without using a GPS device, if you can plot latitude and longitude on a map and orienteer using that map.
“It’s not quite as easy,” says Joe Jacobs, manager of marketing and revenue for the parks. He posted the ParkCaches on geocaching. com, working with the site’s Arkansas reviewer, Chuck Walla, to ensure that they were all 528 feet away from existing caches and complied with other rules.
Each waterproof cache contains a logbook so geocachers can document finding it. Some also contain children’s treasures, trinkets finders might keep. If the cache is large enough, you might also leave a trinket for the next searcher.
Some of the ParkCaches also include trackable items — geocoins or travel bugs. These are inexpensive doodads bearing codes; you take the coin or bug home, report its code on geocaching. com and learn how you can pass it along to another geocache elsewhere in the state or on the planet.
Each ParkCache listing rates how difficult the cache might be to find and also how difficult the terrain could be. None are on terribly difficult terrain. The easiestrated cache is at Jacksonport State Park; caches with the highest difficulty ratings are at Mount Nebo, Village Creek, Queen Wilhelmina, Cossatot River, Lake Frierson and Herman Davis state parks.
Petit Jean State Park’s is rated harder to find but on easy terrain; Lake Fort Smith’s is easy to spot but on harder terrain.
After visiting a park you can post a note about your experience or a photograph on the parks message board. Go to ArkansasState-Parks. com, look under “History Timeline” and click “Share your story.” Although many state parks have quite a few caches planted by park interpreters and (only with permits ) by civilian geocachers, the ParkCache boxes are new. So you might assume you have a great chance to score an “FTF” or “first to find” credit by locating one.
Not so much.
“In two days, on a Monday and a Tuesday, 44 of them have been grabbed,” Jacobs said Wednesday. The first ParkCache found was at Withrow Springs State Park. “And two people went to Mississippi River State Park, which isn’t even really a park yet,” Jacobs said. All those caches were found in advance of Butts’ official announcement because as each was posted on geocaching. com, the site sent e-mail alerts to certain account holders who’d asked for automatic notification whenever a new geocache is placed within a given radius of their ZIP code. These first responders spotted some coding errors, Jacobs said. “They’re really helping me out a lot.” As he was speaking, he noticed two more caches had been claimed by FTF’ers. But as this section went to the press Friday, no geocacher had yet claimed FTF for the 53 rd cache. ActiveStyle’s GPS rubes will play ParkCache this summer. We’re looking for experienced geocachers to help plan our progress to minimize gasoline expenditure. E-mail cstorey@arkansasonline. com
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