Chasing Geotour Coins and Swag

 Back a few years ago, my mentor HoustonControl and I set forth to help launch the Baytown Texas Geotour GT7A. Our city has a very friendly tourism department and we are basically a tri-city area that consolidated years ago around the Goose Creek oil field. Our city has a lot of history the Geotour could exploit and the two of us archived our own caches in many cases to accommodate the history and the Geotour.

We were very excited about getting a Geotour and to this day, still support it. Often while the tourism department is away from the city, I maintain and repair the caches needing maintenance and/or restock the containers with city donated swag. In short, the Geotour is a wonderful addition to the +/-500 available caches in this town and surrounding area. We take pride on keeping our caches well maintained.

All of this was stated to bring to light an effect I did not see coming.

Experienced cachers only come to Baytown to do the Geotour, or lately a series of Lab caches whereby they get more swag. This has become so apparent in the last year that my 200+ active caches are almost completely ignored. Very close to one of the Geotour caches parking lot (400 feet) is a large container, letterbox hybrid, and Travel Bug hotel with (at the moment) 14 trackables - BB's HoustonControl Tribute Cache!  GC7Q27B. Very few make the short trek to log it.

The closest geotour cache has been logged 60+ times in 2018 and the TB motel 14 and 4 of those were Baytownians. Here is the crux of the biscuit, as Frank Zappa would say; are we becoming so obsessed with getting a geocoin that we rush past geocaches to earn one? If that is the case, think on this a bit. Where is our geocoin and trackable inventory stored? Mine is in a zippered bag in my closet and weighs about 10 pounds. Lately I’ve been thinking of dropping every single one of them in geocaches, as they have long lost their importance to me.

I spent 3 days in Brenham recently (Birthplace of Texas GeoTour (GT2F) )and concentrated on every geocache I encountered. Many were on the list of the geotour, but guess what? I still need a good number to get the coin. Maybe next year? Maybe not. I had fun and spent time with a number of the local cachers (SockMonkey69 & BlueStarsForever). I wanted to smell the roses in Washington County, not run myself into a Geocoin frenzy.

Am I trying to throw cold water on Geotours, lab caches, and trackable murals? No, I am not. What I am saying is maybe we are playing the game too fast. Maybe running a macro in GSAK to bypass everything to get to point A and B in the most efficient manner is a boo-boo. Should we pursue the Geotour? Yes, but is the coin really all that important to us? It’s not to me. I have a stack of unactivated trackables to give away at my events, but seeing there are so many events now in the Houston area (+/-30) a travel bug will hardly tempt anyone to attend an event 30 miles east of Houston.

I also understand that this appeal is less giggly happy of the usual fare for FTF Geocacher magazine and more food for thought than anything. If those of us who have played this game for many years stop and stare at why we are playing and remember how exciting it was in the beginning, I do believe we would be all be in agreement that chasing a geocoin doesn’t make all that much sense. Most of us when arriving at Geotour #1 are thinking only about #2, #3, #4 (etc) and not how cool the historic location is. Zipping through them like a chainsaw and getting the heck out of Dodge before the sun sets is our driving force. Our oft-published logs are evidence we thought the cache was quite unremarkable.

Am I right or am I wrong? In my city, the Geotour has almost stopped outsiders from hunting the local caches. Now with that said, I have changed tactics on my own cache hides. Right off the bat, I archived over 80 of my geocaches leaving me with 180+ active caches. I redid one series of 10 and another of 29 to kindle interest GC7ZM4V & GC2HQV6 – hopefully. One by one I need to figure out a way to lure people off the “hell bent for leather” attack on the Geotour and get them to look for one of mine or others while here in Baytown, Texas.

I’ve found that if I hide a cache like this one GC7KRVQ - BB's Zombie Head Trip cache! (truly unique and “evil”) – nobody will look for it. If I hide an easy multi, I get the same response. So, what I have to do is make my caches more accessible to newbie’s with low D/T ratings so they can see them with the free App and hope I will light a fire under them to step up. Once this happens, I can send them a note to look over my geocaching primer page: http://ourbaytown.com/baytownbert/geocache.htm

Am I saying I am going to place a slew of low quality LPC-type caches? Nope. I’ll hide them as best as possible, but I will include enough cryptic hints to spark excitement with new and old alike. Just like we did in the old days. No one has to look at the hint if they don’t want to, right?

If everything goes right, they just might become a geocaching powerhouse and I will have contributed to the game big time. Imagine the enjoyment both of us will experience!

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There’s never anything fun to do here or is there? 8-22-14

This is Baytown Bert in Baytown, Texas August 22^th, 2014 and this is Podcast 09.

How many times have you said or heard someone complain there isn’t anything to do around here?  Too many to count, right?  That’s right and wrong, because there is a lot to do right here in Baytown and with the help of a bunch of good people and the public relations group in Brenham, Texas, there is going to be even more.

Brenham?  What?  The ice cream and antique rose capital of Texas is going to do what for Baytown?

Baytown Bert visiting historic mansions as part of the Geotour.

Back in early 2013 the Brenham/Washington County Chamber set out to attract tourists to the county and Brenham specifically and tasked Website & Social Media Manager Jenny Mills with making it happen.  This delightful lady came to Houston and met with a number of us geocachers who were planning a strategy for our team to compete in Bastrop for the 2014 Texas Challenge and that is when we met her.

Geocaching.com had instituted a program called Geotours and Jenny wanted to bring Texas its first Geotour and use it to accelerate tourism in her county.  Geotours were so new, most of us veteran geocachers hadn’t heard much about it and this lady had all but had it up and running, which after spending 3 days this week in Washington county doing the tour, I realize is an amazing accomplishment.

Now before I go any further, let me once again explain what geocaching is.  For those of you yawning, please be patient, as it gets better and may just concern you.  In a nutshell, Geocaching is a nerdish game where people use a smartphone Ap of a GPSr receiver/device and look for hidden containers in parks, cemeteries, parking lots, wooded areas – and historic sites.

It is terrifically addictive and fun and on top of everything else – it is something to do.

When you find the container, you open it and sign your geocaching name and date on a logbook and then later record this online to your http://www.geocaching.com/ account and the number of finds and site locations are tracked for your personal statistics.  I have found over 4500 geocaches and am ranked 41st in South East Texas.  I am also the Southeast Texas Rep for the Texas Geocaching Association.

While on the Geotour in Washington County, my lovely bride and I traveled down beautiful country roads, saw old mansions, numerous wineries, a lavender farm, the little creamery in Brenham, the antique rose Emporium (spent $44 there), Los Cabos Mexican restaurant (had embarrassingly large portions of delicious Mexican food), many old cemeteries, and so many historic and interesting places that we plopped down in our motel room at the end of each night… happy and exhausted. 

Altogether we found about 75 caches on this trip.

The three day trip including food, lodging, gas, and shopping was well under $500 and I challenge anyone to see and do more on a mini-vacation for less.  We both feel like we “got away for a spell” and the drive to Brenham from Baytown is less than 2 hours and that includes stopping in Hempstead at the veggie stand to grab a melon or two. 

Now what in the world does this have to do with Baytown and your personal need to do something that will get the blood flowing and help all of us get off the couch you may ask?  Anna Enderli, our tourism director, along with Patti Jett, Baytown’s spokesperson, and our Mayor want to bring a Geotour to Baytown in 2015 and the local geocachers are going to help make it happen.

Now here is how it works, a person will go online, or go to the tourist kiosk at Bu-cees and obtain a Geotour Passport.  In and around Baytown will be a good number (20-30) of places the player will have to visit and find a geocache container.  Each container will also have a code letter or number in it and this will be recorded in the correct blank on the passport.  Each geocache will also be an official GC.com cache to be recorded to your personal account online.

There will most likely be 3 levels to satisfy for collectable and trackable geocaching prizes.  All participants will get extra points for dining inside a restaurant, sleeping in a motel over night, and making merchandise purchases of over $25 at one of our many stores.  If you find all of the Geotour caches, you will get an additional prize.

In the Baytown area, there are already close to 500 geocaches in place, so outsiders will flock to Baytown and not only learn about our history and do the tour, but to grab as many smileys (a geocache appears as a smiley on your account page after its found) as is possible while they are in the area, thus creating revenue for Baytown merchants and the city.

Bringing a Geotour to Baytown will cost something, as geocaching.com oversees it and the city will have to put it up for a vote on budget concerns, but Brenham has found out it is well worth the cost and our people are meeting with their people to get some numbers together.  In Mayor Don Carlos’ words though, “We are going to have the best Geotour in Texas with the best prizes,” and he said that to me after hearing about the program.

So, when you hear and see the word “Geotour” being tossed around in the future, nod your head that you are in the know and let’s bring people to beautiful Baytown for more than just work.

This is Baytown Bert in Baytown, Texas