Geocaching Home Run

A local cacher's hides just put a smile on your face.

Snowy Cache Alternative

When the snow is coming down, a library cache is perfect.

It's even better when the container is this well done. The images have been altered to remove spoilers.

Geocaching 2018 In Photos

Geocaching for us is about being together and enjoying the amazing world around us. 2018 was filled with finds at amazing places. These were bits of the most memorable from our year.

Before a late January visit to Florida, we made a late afternoon visit to Geneva State Park to give Liz and Phin a big walk before they headed to camp. This icy inlet was hosting a number of woodpeckers on a bright afternoon.

The dogs were at camp, and we were in Florida for adventure. From Lover's Key and Myakka State Parks to Fakahatchee Swamp, it was a memorable week as January rolled into February.

We came home and spent a spring-like afternoon with the dogs in a PA State Gamelands finding our 16,000th cache.

We ended March on Easter weekend with a super hike for some Hatch Run Acorn Series caches on Collins Pine property in Pennsylvania.

With time running short for the virtual reward deadline, we made an annual April visit to Sheldon Marsh and identified possible parts for our Virtual Reward cache. It's a favorite location for us and a great place for a virtual.

In May, I was on a trip to North Carolina when I was able to avenge a dnf from many years ago with a return visit to the falls at Fancy Gap and a find.

Back in New York, we spent a fun day with friends on the trail at the ASP Geobash.

June was a month of mostly business travel for me. I made one of my frequent Spokane trips during the month and used the long dats as an opportunity to visit Pend Oreille County for a long hike in the heat.

We took advantage of my return flights to complete the second Lorain County GeoTrail.

In July we made certain Liz and Phineas hit the trail in Elk for a nice, long gamelands hike and enjoyed a walk along the rail trail in Spartansburg before we dropped them at doggie camp and headed to SW Ohio to finish the last of the Ohio Great 880 Challenge.

Our July adventures set up a wet trip to Delaware County Ohio in August where we made a find on the lightly visited Ohio State Park Challenge.

For September, we finally returned to one of our longer dnf's as we completed the Trail of the Turtles. We also enjoyed a long hike on the Tanbark with Lizzie and Phin.

October was our big vacation for the year. We headed south to revisit favorite places and explore new ones.

Quebec Run

Swallow Falls

Ohiopyle State Park

On the way home we stopped at the virtual celebrating the Night of the Living Dead and the start of zombies in culture.

They're Coming to Get You Ali...

The Fall in Allegany State Park has given us some great memories. We made another visit in early November with Liz and Phin.

Novembers in Ohio can often be quite grey, but we were able to enjoy a bright blue afternoon caching in Bath Nature Preserve.

I revisited the Bath area on a more typical November day while Ali was visiting family and avenged a prior DNF at Camp Hilaka by a super waterfall cache.

Short December days often limit our caching options, but a few vacation days to spend gave us the opportunity to spend one last 2018 day at Allegany State Park with Liz and Phin.

Hopefully 2019 will give us new geocaching adventures as memorable as 2018.

"Solved, Need to Find"

Who cares? One of the geocaching's more annoying posts. People post in places they never cache to puzzle cache listings they will never find. Why? I don't get it. We found caches in this series today. The puzzles required at most a bit of internet searching if you can't guess the subject of the puzzle immediately. What's to gain?

These three ego-massaging notes appear on the same cache page. Two of the cachers will most likely never cache in the area of the hide.

Perfect Gift for a Cacher

For Christmas I received the perfect gift for a geocacher, an Anker power core. When time allows and I am traveling for business, I spend a lot of time off trail in remote areas after work. In Spokane, it's not unusual to be on a mountain trail with the temps near 100 degrees in areas with mountain lions in the vicinity. This power core gives me sufficient spare power to recharge my iPhone twice or once if I also need a charge for my LED. It gives an added level of security when out having fun while being small enough to easily fit in my backpack.

Thirty a Day

We're both engineers so playing with silly goals are a fun part of our geocaching adventure. Years ago we wanted to place a cache called the Ironcacher Challenge which required cachers to have at least ten finds on each of the 366 calendar days. There was no year or time requirement, just ten finds a day. We had planned to place the Ironcacher Baker's Dozen challenge for thirteen finds a day near our home in Pennsylvania. That plan went by the way with the stricter challenge guidelines.

We finished 2017 with 25 finds on each calendar day. For 2018 we were hoping for a stretch to 30 finds each day. We made it!

Going from 25 a day to 30 a day meant multiple days where we had to find five in a day. For 2019 the next goal is a more modest 42 finds per day.It means we will need to cache on a modest 42 days next year to meet the goal. Of course we will cache on many more days. What we've found is this goal gets us outdoors on days where we might not bother. Everyone enjoys caching on warm, sunny days. Getting some exercise on less than perfect days is often easy to put off.

So, what's the end point? We are hoping to work our way to at least fifty finds on each calendar day. We've still a ways to go. ;)