The 31 Days of Geocaching

After my 505 day streak I thought I was done with the streaking.  It really got to be hard...more like a job that I did every day.  There were times I drove over 40 miles round-trip to grab one.  In some cases it might be a little obsessed in a way.  Then I saw the email in my inbox.  Groundspeak had this idea of streaking every day in August and there were 31 days.  I thought to myself, this might be doable with all the recent caches that have published in the area the past few weeks.  I read on.  This time as an incentive that each cacher would receive a special souvenir for each day.  

It's on!

Here are a few stories and pictures from some of the days.  A few of the caches really weren't all that spectacular or memorable.  I will share the more memorable ones.

Day 2 brought me to one of the remaining close ones in my area.  It was called Down the Tracks and it was on the Yelm-Rainier-Tenino trail towards McKenna/Roy.  I had been out there once before grabbing a cache by the same cache owners.  They just added one more further down the tracks.  Since these tracks aren't in use anymore there are lots of great hidey holes.  Luckily for me this one was a regular size.  I walked past the canal and made my way down the tracks.  For some reason I had trouble pinpointing the location.  I read the hint and did not see anything remotely close.  I moved over to the other side of the tracks and started flipping over rocks.  I finally set my hands on the container.   On the way back to the car I took a picture of the graffiti I noticed on the way in.

On Day 4, I decided to drive into Hawks Prairie.  There were several I still had to grab inside the LOTT Wastewater area, which is also an informative nature walk.  The last time I came out here was at least over a year and a half ago when we grabbed several others in this system of trails.  I got out and followed the trail towards Lighten Up.  In my mind, I expected a light pole, a flashlight or one of those LED path lights.  I found the side trail and saw the creepy baby doll people have noted in their logs.

I got closer and closer and of course I looked at the ground first.  I looked up and saw this light.  this must be the cache.  And then I saw the geocaching sticker on it.  It took me less than a minute to figure out where the logbook was.  It was a pretty creative one and I gave it a favorite point.

Days 7-10 I spent picking up the rest of the CWT caches.  Each time I parked at 41st and rode my bike to the respectable caches.  Those included MR Geese, Bark of a Different Tree, Hot Dog and Train Off Track-PaSvede to the Rescue.  Luckily, the weather was decent for each bike ride excursion. 

I left some trackables inside Hot Dog for the next cachers.  I found a coin inside the train so I took it to move on.  Well, turns out DubyaDee, a local cacher, put a disclosure on it.  Apparently the next finder of the cache got to keep the coin.  He had already activated it.  What do I do?  I guess you can adopt coins...just like you can adopt caches.  I had no clue you could do that.  I have a new train coin to add to my collection.

I went to Whtewolfden's and Clay4's Meet and Greet in Issaquah on day 16.  I saw it on the WSGA website a few weeks back and had to go meet the guys who created the ET Highway I did with Geek&Gopher last April.  I got there earlier than I needed to be but better to be early than late.  I talked to a bunch of people, local and visiting for the Block Party/Ape event.  I got Gus and Clay to sign my ET Highway scrapbook...which totally made it cooler than it was originally.

August 17th was the annual Block Party hosted by Groundspeak in Fremont (north of downtown Seattle) and this year was suppose to be better than the previous.  On Wednesday a series of caches published.  They were the HQ GeoTour caches.  That, plus the GeoLabs tour were the two things we got done today in our group made up of Ray and Brenda, Kenny and Shari and Bev.  We were quite a team.  This year marked the first viewing of GIFF (Geocaching International Film Festival) and it was quite entertaining.  FTF by the Czech's and Addiction by the guy from Minnesota were my favorites.

I joined in the hike up to GCD on Sunday morning, day 18. GrnXnham, put together an unofficial event at the trail head of Mount Margaret.  Several people from other states, countries and even some locals set out on a beautiful sunny morning to go grab the oldest cache in Washington.

I later joined the Ape event down at the tunnel.  I met up with my mom and Bev and we went into the tunnel to do the earthcache.  Afterwards, I went and helped jcar, during my volunteer shift for the WSGA.  It got very hot.  I was tired and hungry but the weekend was so worth it.

On the last and final day of streaking, I went out to the CWT and grabbed one of the BigFoot series by TracyTom.  They were very creative and I really liked where the last one was hidden.

 On to the next set of challenges.  Bring 'em on!