Georgia State Parks kick in to support geocaching!

Hats off to the Georgia State Parks System. If not to the entire system, to the several parks in that state that not only permit the hiding of geocaches in their parks but seem to be going out of the way to promote geocaching and to attract geocachers to the park. If only the state of North Carolina would follow their lead.

We visited the General Coffee State Park near Douglas, GA recently. On any trip I check out the geocaches in the area. In this particular case I saw a large concentration of geocaches at this state park. Upon arrival at the park I paid for my day pass ($5 per vehicle, not individual). At that time the park ranger saw that I had my GPSr and was a geocacher so she handed my wife a park map where all the geocaches were marked. The top of the map had "geocache map" written on it. It was a temporary map marked with magic marker. They had only made the decision to fill the park with caches about a week earlier. The vast majority of the caches were placed on Valentine's Day. I told them that I was grateful for that decision and that I hoped North Carolina would get the vision to do the same someday. 

Geocaching Map provided by the park

Later as we were touring a cultural museum downtown I found a booklet describing each of the state parks in Georgia. At least one other, A.H. Stephens State Park west of Augusta, Georgia, also invites the public to come and geocache in their park. According to the park ranger some of the state parks are doing it and others might in the near future. 

Who hid the caches in General Coffee State Park? The director of the park campground, pitty patty is responsible for this blessing. I appreciate her work and hope that these state parks with geocaches prosper due to the numerous geocaches who come and play the game there. 

We as geocachers must be careful not to destroy anything as we search for caches. All it takes is one or two careless cachers to ruin it for the rest. We need to keep the trails clean, not tear up the landscape as we rake away pine straw in search of caches. Just a small amount of attention to what we are doing will likely preserve geocaching in the state parks for us. Cache on!