How Field Trips Work

Information and Sign-up

We utilize our event/field trip website to manage all club memberships, registrations and wait lists for our field trip events.  You can always view the trips you're currently signed-up for under the Profile tab.  When you sign-up, please mark your personal calendar so if there becomes a conflict where you won't be able to make the trip you can unregister yourself ASAP.  Most the time there will be two ways to sign up for an event. 

The first opportunity for sign-up is at our monthly club meetings where we have sign-up sheets for upcoming events, it is highly recommended you sign-up at meetings as sometimes the trips fill up.  You can typically guess which trips will be at which monthly meeting by the "Available On" date being the following week.  You can also check the monthly newsletter for details on field trips. 

The second opportunity for sign-up occurs a few days after the monthly meeting on this website (FieldTrips.LGGMClub.org).  Web registration starts on the "Available On" date located on the registration button in each event, they open up at midnight on the date specified, so mark your calendar with a reminder for the trips you are interested in.  If the event is full, there is a waitlist and those tend to move especially in the week prior to the event.  Be patient and check your email (junk folder?) for notifications.  

Planning and Day-of

Field trips have a Google Maps navigation to the meeting place included at the botton of the event's page, USE IT!  In the days leading up to the trip, use the "Navigate" feature  in the map to determine the best route and time for the journey.  Plan extra time for traffic or issues and please be 15-minutes early.  Use the navigate feature again on your journey to the meeting location so you don't take wrong turns or get lost to ensure you are on time.  

We have included the field trip leader's cell phone number in each event, if you should have to cancel the evening before or the morning of the event, please place a courtesy-call or text message to the field trip leader.  

No-show Policly

Unfortunately there is not unlimited parking or space available on all trips, thus we typically have a limit of participants and each trip could have a waitlist.  We ask that when signing-up for a trip that you mark your personal calendar (TIP...we added a button for that on each event page).  If for whatever reason you decide you cannot make the trip, please remove yourself ASAP, even if on the waitlist.  That will allow someone else to participate instead.  Folks that are signed up but do not show up are the biggest bummer for club members because you reserved a spot that someone else could have used!  We track no-shows and can take disciplinary action for repeat offenders.  

Removing yourself is simple, log into this site, navigate to the event, and use the Unregister button.  

Join our Field Trip Team!

Field trips are one of the fun ways to participate in our club!  Our vision is to provide a rich program of events to prospect for minerals, fossils and lapidary material.  This requires volunteers.  We have many folks ready to assist you in coordinating and leading field trips.  If you ask someone that has done it before they will tell you how rewarding and easy it was to participate!  We have the following volunteer opportunities available to help with our field trip program:

Field Trip Program Leaders.  This position manages the entire program, providing vision and mentoring to other volunteers on our Field Trip Team.  This role does not require that you attend the field trips.  We currently have opportunities for co-leadership. 

Field Trip Coordinators.  Every trip requires a coordinator to ensure we can prospect and collect at the site, publish the event to our application and ensure member questions are answered, ensure we have a leader for the event (we have a growing pool of members that are experienced leaders), and coordinate any follow-up.  You can coordinate any number of events and this does not require that you attend the field trip, however often our field trip coordinator chooses to lead their field trip.  We currently need participants for this role!  

Field Trip Leaders.  Every trip requires one (or sometimes more) leaders to manage the day-of logistics.  Past leaders have stated that this responsibility is just a little more effort than just attending the field trip as a participant--being at the meeting point a little early, answering member questions about the trip, ensuring the sign-up sheet is passed around, planning the caravan to the prospecting/collecting location, and collecting pictures and working with the coordinator on publishing highlights after the event.  This is the only volunteer position that requires you attend the field trip.    We currently need participants for this role! 

Event Website Administrators.  We are using an amazing event registration/management application built specifically for us (and used by a growing number of clubs).  If you like tinkering with website applications or like publishing content to websites, this position is for you!  You will learn the administrative part of event registration and content management (which includes images, videos and other rich content to showcase each amazing adventure)!  We currently need multiple volunteers for this role!  

Please contact a club leader or Dave Alexander 303.641.5567 if you have interest or questions on participating on our Field Trip Team!!!