Managing Visits

I remember when I first started waymarking everyone was bitching that they didn't get any visits logged on their waymarks. Now I have times when my mailbox is completely flooded with visits. I suppose a lot of this is because I used to cross-post in every category that a spot would fit in. Now, in a less compulsive phase of my waymarking career, I stick to crossposting in just my very favorite categories. However, my past has caught up with me and I have several popular tourist spots that are stacked a mile high with waymarks and I regularly get people who post a log to every single one of them. Do any of you have these spots?

For me it is typically the Seattle Center and its famous Space Needle that cause my inbox to overflow. I think I have nearly 50 waymarks in the Seattle Center complex and there are likely over 50 more that others have waymarked. Anyone who is a tourist in Seattle stops to either visit or at least gaze up at the Needle so over the summer especially I will look to see 10 or so "'Space Needle - Seattle, WA' has been Visited" subject headings waiting there to be read. My waymarks in the Black Hills of South Dakota, Washington's Mt. St. Helens and Mt. Rainier National Park are other favorites with visitors, as well as my Chicago and more recently, my Washington, D.C. waymarks.

Now I'll admit something I'm not especially proud of. I don't read all of my visit E-mails. I mean, I try to read at least a few, but I don't have time for them all. I've posted almost 2,200 waymarks now and visit logs have almost gotten to the point of being a problem for me. What is going to happen when I reach 5,000? 10,000? So how do you guys manage the visits your waymarks receive? Is anyone else dealing with this? Has it caused you to slow your cross-posting habit? Just wondering.

To Visit or Not to Visit: That is the question

So, as usual things have been crazy busy thanks to work, two new foster puppies and my son's music lessons and concerts. I try to chip away at my waymarking backlog by attempting to find time to post 3-5 waymarks each day and typically, as the approvals come in, I log visits to the marks. There are mixed views on logging visits to your own marks, and different reasons to do so. Back when I started waymarking, I would log visits to everything and then do simple substraction of my total waymarks posted from total waymarks visited to figure out how many visits that I had posted to other folks' waymarks. Why I felt the need to know this at that time is beyond me. Other waymarkers who I looked to for mentoring did it and so I decided I should too.

Now though, with the awesome filtering functionality that the Website has, this visiting doesn't seem necessary any longer and it is growing increasingly cumbersome for me to get around to. I usually let the approvals sit in my E-mail inbox for several days, until there are so many that it becomes overwhelming. Why? It seems pointless. Can anyone think of another reason that I should keep this up? It's a total pain in the butt and now seems like a waste of time.

Although it's fun to reach milestones in total waymarks, I don't really care about the numbers and rarely could give you a guess within about 150 waymarks or so as to how many I've posted. The only reason I'm watching numbers at this point is that I want to see which waymark will be number 2000. Geocachers who are just starting out often will assume that the self-visits are all about pumping the numbers and that always pisses me off because they are looking at waymarking from the "I have more icons than you do" perspective that is oh so common over in geo-land. I mean, most hardcore waymarkers could care less about their visit numbers. They are focused on their "posted" count if they are into numbers.

The photo above is from the gallery of one of my recently posted waymarks that is in my backlog of waymarks needing "self-visits" posted, Coupeville Wharf and Warehous, Central Whidbey Island Historic District. It would be cool if the Waymarking site put the check mark next to the waymarks that you yourself posted instead of having to visit to see the check. It helps when you are doing searches to see those checks and quickly know which waymarks are yours.

Coal, Fossils and Graves: A reason to visit existing waymarks

I know that most waymarkers live for finding a new spot to waymark, but this weekend I went on a hike specifically to visit one. It was an old ghost town located near the town that I grew up in and I had heard stories about the town and mines of Franklin from my great uncles, both miners. Thanks to the new Franklin waymarks I finally knew where the town was and how to find the trail to get there. We hiked the short muddy 1 1/2 mile trail, knowing that pretty much whatever could be waymarked up there was already posted. Boy would we have missed out on a fun afternoon if we had decided to go off looking for new spots to mark.
The best thing about a ghost town hike is that if you keep your eyes open you will see things that others may have missed - the ruins of old buildings off under 75 years of moss and duff, a coal car trestle amongst the alders, old tangles of cables and rusty pipes, and for us, fossils!

The waymarks we visited where the Franklin Ghost Town, Franklin Mine, and the Franklin Cemetery, all waymarked by Prying Pandora. While at the mine, a covered 1300' deep hole in the ground (covered with grating) that you can drop rocks into, I mentioned to my son how many leaf fossils can be found in coal and the stone in coal mining areas. He gave me the "uh-huh mom" nod as he continued throwing things into the mine. So I wandered over to the sheer rock wall that was behind the mine opening. It was AMAZING! This rock wall, about 8 feet high and 10 feet wide, was covered with leaf and twig fossils. It was like an imprint of the forest floor - millions of years ago. Above you can see one of the photos that I took of it.

Then we hiked on to the abandoned cemetery that some boy scouts and school kids had dug out of the blackberry briars. Daffodils, which had been planted on graves over 75 years before, had naturalized and were blooming everywhere. Bleeding heart was sprouting up and soon their purple flowers would take over when the daffodils finish their show. It was beautiful and touching and so peaceful.

Anyhow, I just wanted to write this and remind you to check and see what other waymarkers in your area (or an area you are traveling to) are out marking. You may just discover a no longer hidden treasure. If you are in the area and decide to visit Franklin a word of caution: the area is riddled with mines and there have been many cave ins in the past, resulting in 1300 feet deep holes. Stay on the trail!

Below are some of the photos from our lovely Sunday hike.


A bolt on an old coal car


Exploring moss covered ruins; a bolt being camouflaged by nature


Another old building's foundation


The mine


A grave at the cemetery


Another grave; Berry blossoms


A coal car trestle near the cemetery

Let's see the visit logs!

Much talk has gone back and forth in the forums about how to entice people to visit existing waymarks, but people haven't really been talking about how the visit logs are used. Isn't that what they are for? Leaving information for people who might want to visit in the future? And yet how often do you come across an interesting waymark and actually read the visit logs? I almost never do, and yet it's not because I'm not interested in them. I just never think about them because they're hidden there at the bottom of the page and I have to click the link to read each log. It's tedious and it doesn't need to be.

I've always wondered why it is that the waymark logs aren't handled similarly to geocaching logs. It would be so great if the last 3 or 4 logs showed at the bottom with a link you could click to see them all. If logging waymarks is to become an integral part of the hobby of waymarking, they need to have a little more emphasis on the page. If it's likely that no one other than the original waymark poster will see the log, then I'm not going to spend as much energy as if it's going to be sitting there at the bottom of the page for all to see. Also, if the databases for the categories are going to be used as a referral system for things like restaurants and hotels, as some have suggested, then what a visitor thought about a spot is as important as the waymark itself.

It would be a simple change, one that might change the community's perspective on how worthwhile a waymark visit is. If a visit log is just to give the original waymark poster a pat on the back, I can't see that logging visits will ever catch on, gps photo or not.

A "Fast" Visit

I go on and on about how much I can't stand chain business categories, but I have to admit that as much as I hate them, I always try to post one waymark (or log one visit) to a category before I chuck the category over into my ignore list. A bit hypocritical, but I'm a slave to the grid. The thing is, I always assumed my fast food waymarks would sink into database oblivion, never to be heard from again. I was wrong.

Today I came home from a day full of sun, beach, and waymarking to see that I had visits to about 10 of my waymarks. I read through, and this guy really seemed to have enjoyed the waymarks - the fair, a BBQ restaurant, and a few more I can't remember. Then I see the last one - Wendy's. I was mortified. Someone actually logged a visit to my one and only Wendy's waymark. And here was the log - "Why?" I felt the need to email back and say thanks for visiting my waymarks and thanks for rating my Wendy's restaurant a 2, because I think it sucks too.

So the moral to this tale is - if you don't want to be associated with a waymark, don't post it folks. Will I learn my lesson and not post to the new KFC category if it's approved? Probably not. That could mess up a grid bingo! Hopefully you aren't as addicted to the grid as I am, though, and you can learn from my embarrassment. ;)