Sunday, April 23, 2017

Six Years of Geocaching.

Six years ago today I logged my first Geocache. My sister started taking me out with her when she went caching as a way to get me out of the house after my marriage ended. Since then I have far exceeded her in the amount of time I spend caching and the number of caches that I have found. It gets me out of the house, it takes me to places that I'd likely never see otherwise, and it has allowed me to meet some great people. I honestly do not know where I would be right now if I hadn't discovered the game.

*You've found 842 cache(s) since your first cache find on 04/23/2011.
*You find the most caches in June and usually on Saturday.
Find Rate
0.3838 caches/day
Longest Streak
18 consecutive days with finds from 08/01/2013 to 08/18/2013
Longest Slump
115 consecutive days without a find from 10/31/2011 to 02/23/2012
Best Day
63 caches in one day on 09/04/2016
Best Month
72 caches in September of 2016
Best Year
276 caches in 2013
There are many challenges that one can try to complete within the Geocaching realm. All of these challenges are optional, of course, but they bring me joy to attempt.

Some of my challenges that I have started (and some I have finished):

Find a cache in every county in the state of Wyoming.


Find a cache on every page of the DeLorme map book for the state of Wyoming.
Find a cache on every single day of the year. This is a major work in progress, and finding caches in Wyoming in winter can really be a challenge.
 

Find a cache that was placed in every month since since Geocaching started, and one that was placed on every day of the year. I'm not exactly trying to do this challenge, but it would be cool if I accidentally completed them.

Find a cache in every difficulty/terrain rating. This one I'm not trying to complete, because I know that I won't be scuba diving or rappelling to get the most difficult caches that are out there. 

Find a cache in every state/county/country, etc. This one is obviously more involved, and I have been gradually marking off states as I plan trips. When I took the children to Washington DC, we popped into Maryland and West Virginia for a cache in each. When I visited Jenny in Idaho we popped over to Oregon just for a cache. When I drove to Wyoming, I planned my trip to get a cache in Ohio, Kentucky, Indiana, Illinois, Missouri, Iowa, Kansas, and Nebraska. One weekend I drove to Utah for a cache, and another I drove to South Dakota, North Dakota, and Montana for a cache. One crazy weekend I drove to New Mexico, Texas, and Oklahoma for a cache in each.

I've been to almost every state on the East coast, but will have to get back to them to find caches, and I'll knock out California, Nevada, and Arizona this fall on a trip I have planned. I'll eventually get them all, and I'll get back to Tijuana one day to add Mexico. In a few years I'll be back in the UK, and am already planning which countries I can get on that trip.



Last week I went to Seattle and Vancouver Island, adding a Washington state and Canada to my tally.
Seattle is the birthplace of Groundspeak, the company that started Geocaching. I ultimately decided on Seattle for a vacation for that reason, and because it was a quick jump across the water to Canada.

I arrived in Seattle on Wednesday evening and took a train and a bus to my hotel. The airport is quite a ways South of the downtown area and my hotel was North, but the public transportation is good, and very inexpensive. I checked into my hotel and walked to a little Mediterranean restaurant for dinner. It was an early to bed night.

Thursday morning I was up at 5am, and had already packed my bag for the day. I took a bus as close to the dock where I was to catch my ferry as I could. With no traffic I got dropped off earlier than I had thought I would, so I took a detour to the Space Needle, which is where I was when the sun started to light the sky. From there I unsuccessfully tried to find a geocache on my way to the dock, but did find my first amazing cup of coffee. I am a relative coffee newbie, but boy, coffee really is better in Seattle. I got a window seat for the three hour ride, with a table between myself and a lovely couple from Australia. 

My plan for Victoria, B.C. was to wander around the downtown area all day. I had mapped out caches and there is a castle and several museums. At the last minute I decided to rent a bicycle. Now, I am an insecure bike rider, made all the worse after having broken my arm during a tumble I took in Leicester. I was able to get this bike fitted just right for me, and the town is extremely bike friendly, and after a little while I was fairly confident in my skill. I rode close to 20 miles, first along the coast, then back through a busier commercial area. One of the caches I got was a webcam cache that I was lucky was on the Eastern portion of Victoria, as I was able to access the webcam on my phone to get the required screenshot (no cellular service in the downtown area). I got to Chinatown (oldest Chinatown in Canada and second oldest in North America - San Fransisco's is oldest) right as the rain started, and I took a break and got a takeaway for the ferry ride back to Seattle. I also walked down Fan Tan Alley, the narrowest street in Canada, which at it's narrowest it only 35 inches across.

I did manage to visit the mammoth at the Royal B.C. Museum before I had to be back to check into customs. There is a lot that I would like to see one day on a trip back to Victoria. I don't regret that I took the bike ride, but I do wish that I'd been able to see more in the downtown area. I got back to Seattle at almost 10pm, and took an Uber back to my hotel. The Uber rates are so much less than I've experienced in Colorado, which is fantastic for when you're just too tired to walk and walk and take buses. 







Friday morning I did not like the route the buses took to get to Geocaching HQ, so I took an Uber there. I spent about half an hour exploring the lobby/gift shop. By finding the cache hidden in the room, I got a souvenir for visiting HQ, and I picked up a passport for the GeoTour. I also got to take photos in the photo booth. It printed two copies, one to put in the HQ cache, and one to keep for a souvenir. I left there and headed to find the nine caches in the Tour. I tried to group the caches by farthest away first, but should have done the two mystery caches first, as they had me backtracking quite a bit to places I'd already been. The weather was good, though it was a bit chilly with the wind coming off the water. The Fremont neighborhood is a cool place. I visited a troll and ended my Tour with a phone booth cache at the front door to a Turkish cafe, so I had lunch there before hiking to the bus that would take me downtown.


It was on the bus that a man asked me, "do you geocache?" I thought I had forgotten to take my GPSr that I wear around my neck off, but when I looked down I realized I was wearing my Geocaching HQ hoodie that I'd bought that morning when it was chillier than I'd planned for. We talked for a few minutes until the bus got too busy to do so. He works in PR at Geocaching HQ. He'd been an avid cacher, and took a job at Geocaching HQ to be more involved. I regretted not asking his name, but later on the Wyoming associating FB page, a conversation was started about the GeoTour and I mentioned I'd met someone from the company, and it turns out that I met Chris, aka Rock Chalk (he'd given me a travel bug that said Rock Chalk, which at the time didn't mean anything to me).


When I got to Pike Place Market it was early afternoon. I walked all around, and there are some cool shops on the many floors. I saw the fish throw and wished there was a way to transport the some of amazing tulips back to Wyoming. I really wanted fish and chips from a place I found, but I wasn't really hungry yet. I debated getting it to go, but the restaurant had three stories of water views, so I went ahead and ate there, looking out of the third floor windows. On my way out of downtown I visited the Gum Wall (there is a cache hidden there but I did not try for it). I passed the original Starbucks, and could not help but laugh at the line half way down the block of people waiting to get in. The bus took me back to the hotel, and I crashed hard after my two days of walking in the fresh air.

Saturday morning I got packed up and walked a really long way to a bus that would take me to the Woodland Park Zoo. I did not have time to go there and back to the hotel, so I had my suitcase carry-on on my back, and my day pack on my front. The zoo isn't too large, so I was able to see everything in about an hour. I waited in line for 55 minutes to feed the penguins, when they got full and turned us away with only one person left in front of me. I was so tired at that point that I left and got an Uber to the airport. I got back to Denver on time, and picked up Georgia at her boarding facility in Fort Collins at 9pm. By the time I got home an hour and a half later, I was exhausted, but happy to have gotten so much done and explored so many cool places.
I couldn't go on my trips if I didn't know Georgia was well taken care of. She does so well at Four Paws Pet Hotel in Fort Collins. She gets her own toddler bed, and four 20 minute potty breaks/play sessions. I love that they have webcams so I can check on her while I'm away, though I only ever see her sleeping, since that's really all she ever does. They posted a few photos of her on their FB page, and surprise, surprise, she's being lazy! I love this silly girl.