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!

Caching Milestones and More

My first cache was without a geocaching account and without a GPS on July 29, 2010 with my friend Jon (ccccwu17), we went on a very long bike ride down the Chehalis Western. The cache was called Maple Lane (GC1JCCN).

Started officially caching on July 30, 2010.  I registered with a caching name that morning at work.

My first cache by myself was 8/2/2010 without a GPS.

I found my first 50 geocaches without a GPS.

I bought my first GPS for my 27th birthday.  It was a bright yellow Garmin Rhino 110.

I got my first 100 caches on December 31, 2010 up in Port Angeles, Wash.

My first event was Hey Sailor (Take Two) ( GC2MRC8 ) in Everett, Wash.  There was a freak snow storm on the way home.

My first cache machine was in Wenatchee (GC2NVH2).

My first virtual was Plains of Abraham on 8/19/10 when I hiked the Loowit Trail with Lindsay and Sean.

My first hide was Triangle (GC2EYYM) on September 10, 2010.

My first webcam was December 5, 2010 in Morton, The Morton Loggercam (GCKA5Q).

My first geocoin was a 250 achievement coin, 2.25.11 AC5Z21.

The first time I visited Groundspeak was 4/29/11.

I hit my 1000th cache milestone July 3, 2011.  I got 1000 before a year into geocaching.

I hit number 2000 on January 10, 2012 at GC3AFPC It's A Trap!

My 3000the milestone came on a visit to Port Angeles on May 26, 2012 at Super Series-Aquaman (GC26FW6).
The 4000th milestone was at Campsite Cache (GC18KK5) down in Vancouver on the Burnt Bridge Trail on 9/16/12.

Number 5000 and 6000 came during the epic trip down to Nevada to experience the ET Highway, this was April 1-4th.  We got all 2000 ET caches and then some.  We got our first California and Arizona caches as well on the trip.

When I got home from the trip, we went up to Kent for a meet and greet on 5.18.13 and I got my 7,000th cache at a really cool puzzle cache (GC200CM).

I was featured on the geocaching blog on 6/27/13

http://blog.geocaching.com/2013/06/a-geocache-made-in-hollywood-but-placed-in-washington-ring-of-fire-gcjyhz-geocache-of-the-week/

6/8/13 Washington State Parks GeoTour.  I took on the cache Millersylvania (GC4D5B9).

http://www.geocaching.com/adventures/geotours/washington-state-parks?utm_source=newsletter&utm_medium=referral&utm_campaign=7-1-13

Finished my silver coin on July 3, 2013 and recieved my coin in the mail about a week later.  I was the 25th person to complete it.

**This is an ongoing process and I will add to it as I go.**

Fox Island

I got a phone call from Bev the night before asking if I wanted to go with her and Bob to Fox Island.  I have never been there before.  I actually have never heard of it and had to look it up on the map.  It was the island west of Gig Harbor.  I tried to get everything ready the night before so I could sleep in as long as I could.  I made my food, did my query and set out the clothes I was gonna wear.

The alarm went off at 6:30.  I found out dad was taking the day off and Doug was going to come home later this afternoon.  Of course he gave me a bad time about going geocaching.  I remembered to grab my phone charger out of my car since my battery goes dead around the tail end of our caching trips.

They rolled up and I threw my stuff in the car and we were off to Fox Island via the back roads of Steilacoom and western Tacoma to Hwy 16 and the Narrows Bridge.  Bob and to pull over because he got dizzy so Bev drove us to the first few caches.

We got off at the airport exit and grabbed two we didn't get the first time we were over here...which was awhile ago.  One was new and the other one we DNF'd because I think it was missing.  We found it this time very quickly.  The next one was along East Bay Drive called Picnic Point.  It was a very nice view of the Harbor from the cache site.

And now a place called Harbor Family Park...a place you could actually lose your family inside of.  The first one was an ammo can stuck underneath a weird foam like rock creation.  I saw it right away because it didn't fit into the surroundings.

The next one was even cooler.  We all walked past it and on the way back out of the area I spotted something up in a tree and then looked around for a TOTT (tool of the trade) to get it down with.  There was a handle with a nail on it laying on the ground with stuff written on it with a marker.  I grabbed it and put it to some good use.

Next was a cryptex cipher cache that I found the code word to as we walked down the trail.  None of us have actually opened a decvice that looked that that before so it was kinda fun.  I put the magic word in and watched it open and inside was the log.

We picked up one more on our way to Fox Island inside a guardrail.  There was a lot of traffic on this road.  Next stop, Fox Island!

We stopped after we crossed the bridge for a very creative one.  I'm glad Bob found it.  There was a fisherman loading up his boat down below after a morning of fishing.

We rolled up to the next one, got out of the car and another vehicle drove down the hill and parked.  We saw the TB and knew she was a cacher.  In fact, it was the cache owner of the current cache we were looking for.  She came down to check on this one because of the recent DNF's.  She introduced herself as MorkIsle.  While chatting, I found the cache on the ground. We signed it and then returned it to its rightful place.  It was nice meeting her.  Most of the caches on the island belonged to her and she said none of them should be that hard.

The next ten or so were her caches along with a historical series we needed codes from for the final.  Of course there was the geocache in the local cemetery.  This one took us to some of the famous people's gravestones who either founded or lived on the island.  At first we had trouble finding the gravestones because the coords jumped around.  One of the waypoints took us to our first female governor of Washington State, Dixy Lee Ray.

One of the things I love about geocaching is the history you learn as you visit these unique places.

At I'm in a pickle, we hit our first DNF that we knew was there.  For some reason we really made this one harder than it actually was.  We read the logs and the same thing was happening to us.  It was listed as a 1.5/1.5.  It couldn't be that hard right?  We moved on and thought about coming to this one later.  We found a few more before running into a mom and daughter caching couple.  The daughter was living in Tacoma and the mom was from Eugene.  The island was small enough, you were bound to run into someone.  We chatted with them for a bit and then went down to the Fox Harbor pier.

We found the cache nearby and went to the next bunch of them.  We ran into the cachers again at the Fox Island Ferry dock II.  They had just found the Pickle one we could not find.  She showed us a picture of where to find it.  We also traded TB's. We went on to grab a few more before returning to the pickle one.

We drove back to it and sure enough a place we thought we checked a bunch of times, there it was smiling back at us like we were stupid.  Eff you pickle!  Haha.

We did our math to the final of the Fox Island historical series and made our way to the final.  For a while we had the wrong side of the road until we ventured to the other and read the hint some more.  Bob found it eventually.  We found one more on the island, went back over the bridge and found two more on the way home.  We were even honked at angrily by a butthole in a SUV who could clearly move into the other lane if he didn't want to follow us.

And then the phone went off.  A cache had just published in Steilacoom.  We had a somewhat semi good chance at getting FTF.  We went back over the Narrows and had to pay the lame toll fee, back along the west side of Tacoma and onto the back roads of Steilacoom.  We followed Nuvi to the parking lot and saw a silver Prius waiting.  Poo, they must have gotten it.  I walked over and Omnispirit and Kogcon had just walked back from signing the cache.  They said they were second to find and couldn't read the FTF signature.  He gave us some hints on where to find it.  We walked over there and found it within ten minutes of searching.  We got back in the car and headed towards home.

Bob wanted pizza so we called in our order and picked it up from Pizza Hunt and it was a nice day so we ate dinner in Cochran Park.  The bees wanted pizza too.  We wrapped it up and they took me home.  It was a nice day and we found 38 and DNF'd only 3.  Thus completes day 22 of the 31/31 in August streak.

Next Adventure: Round Mountain and Lake Wenatchee with Jacob (Shrek198)