10 Years of Geocaching - 11/30/2014

Ten years ago, on 11/26/2004 a friend of mine convinced me to get out and try geocaching for the first time.

Ten years later, while I don't have quite the same exuberance I once had, still wanted to get out and hunt some caches this Thanksgiving weekend.

On 11/27, Thanksgiving Day, I hunted two caches, including Bridge over River Dry by hikerRon | GC4RHQ7 in Millington, TN.  I was a cool cache near a Veterans Memorial.  I'd been caching around the Wal-Mart across the street, but had never noticed this monument and "bridge."

On 11/29, I decided to make a geocache run into Arkansas, making stops at Marked Tree, Trumann, and Jonesboro.

Marked Tree was a great place to avenge some earlier DNFs.

This empty cotton field struck me as picture-worthy after hunting a cache in the Arkansas Hwy 463 Series across the road.

 There can never be too many Veterans Memorials.  The cache was nearby.

Stumped? by RememberingTree | GC5D1VW in Jonesboro was my favorite hide of the trip.

Along with a cache, the Jonesboro Farmer's Market had their Christmas trees out.

On 11/30, I visited the western end of the Vollintine/Evergreen Greenline to hunt Blue Man
by shottsy | GC5H0JA in Midtown Memphis.

The last time I was here, the "Blue Men" had been vandalized.  Today all appeared to be in good shape.

Hot Dogs by the River - 11/1/2014

I hated to break my 68 day streak of not geocaching, but the prospect of free hot dogs was too great to pass up.  Saturday's event cache was called Hot Dogs -n- Not Dogs  by Team Synchronicity | GC5F591.  I made it down to Tom Lee Park just as the event was starting.  I was greeted by one of the hosts, shottsy, who it turns out knows my caching buddy jbgreer.

Plenty of people showed up both for the food and the free swag provided by Groundspeak.  It was a fun gathering in spite the chilly temperature.

International Geocaching Day 2014 - 8/16/2014

International Geocaching Day kind of just popped up on me this year.  I didn't really want to get outside in the heat (91 degrees), but I had a couple of nearby easy caches saved to do, so I got out and quickly did them.

I had never been on this particular street before and was surprised to find lots of activity going on at the first cache - located near Wiseacre Brewery.

Ananda means Bliss by cdhundley | GC59B75

Just as I found the cache, a bunch of people walked by and most likely saw me, although they didn't say anything.

The second cache was just a little further down the same road and had nobody around to observe me make the easy find.

Tiny B. means Tiny B.by cdhundley | GC59B8N 

10 minutes for two caches and I was back in my car headed for air conditioning.

7 Souvenirs of August Challenge

Like last year, Groundspeak decided to stimulate caching activity in the hottest month of the year by initiating another geocaching challenge.  Unlike last year's challenge that require cachers to find at least one cache a day for the 31 days in August, this years challenge was relatively simple.

This year's challenge involved finding 6 different types of caches.  You get a souvenir for each type plus a 7th souvenir if you manage to get all 6 cache types.  Some categories only had one type of cache like traditional or multicache, where other categories had more than one qualifying type, allowing you to choose betwee, for instance, letterbox and webcam caches.

I started the challenge on August 1st (Friday), finding a traditional cache and attending an event cache.

7 Souvenirs of August Meet and Greet by txgo4fan | GC58M41 earned me a "Socialzer" souvenir.

Mmm Chicken by moose16285 | GC4XT25 earned me an "Explorer" souvenir.

On Sunday, I set out to get and Earthcache, a Letterbox cache, a Puzzle cache, and possibly a Multicache.  If I had been successful, I would have finished the challenge relatively quickly.  But it was a hot, miserable day with plenty of mishaps.  I struck out on the Letterbox cache in Shelby Farms.  Of course it was there somewhere since it was found a few days later.

Next, I went after a puzzle cache from my list of several I had pre-solved.  I went after three of the "Office Space" caches in Germantown and struck out for various reasons.  Mishaps included dropping my phone at one and having to backtrack to find out.  I did manage to hit paydirt on the fourth puzzle cache I went after.


Nothing Up My Sleeve   by tinksdad01 | GC4N6MH - earned me the "Puzzler" souvenir.

Finally, I attempted to get one of the two earthcaches that were within a twenty mile drive.  I skipped over the one in Chucalissa in South Memphis to get an isolated one in North Mississippi.

The Mississippi Delta by dameetro | GC3NFQA - earned me the "Nature Lover" souvenir.  I had found a traditional cache at this same spot, so I at least knew where I had to go.

Four down, two to go.  I thought about taking off of work on Wednesday to get the final caches needed to complete the challenge because of rain predicted for the weekend (and the next weekend).  I did some research and found a virtual cache, a letterbox cache and several easy looking multicaches in Tupelo, MS that didn't appear to involve going into the woods.  I then took a chance that the weather would be good enough for me to make a trip to Tupelo on Saturday, August 8.

Saturday came and I overslept a bit, but I didn't really need to rush.  It was about 100 miles to Tupelo and I made it there by 10:30am.  I headed to the Elvis Presley birthplace museum and got the letterbox cache on my list as well as a nearby multicache.

Elvis Presley's Birthplace by Gyrocacher | GC48EFY - earned me the "Collector" souvenir.


Elvis Presley: Assembly of God by Gyrocacher | GC59Q4D - earned me the final souvenir I needed - the "Sightseer" souvenir

 On my way out of town, I diverted north to the Natchez Trace Parkway to get a virtual cache event though I no longer needed to.

Twentymile Bottom by Salvo | GC8F1D - was an alternate qualifier for the "Collector" souvenir.

On the way back out I stopped at the Natchez Trace Parkway Visitor's Center and found one more cache - 

Visitors Welcome by Natchez Trace Pkwy | GC3T7CJ 

When I got back to my computer, I saw that I had earned the "Achiever" souvenir, making me the 6,350th person to do so.  Now I can relax. 

Summer Road Trip 2014

I attempted to complete my attempt to find caches in all contiguous counties on my way to and from Oregon (from Tennessee).  I only needed one county (in Oklahoma) on my usual route out west, so I had made tentative plans to cut north into Kansas to make progress on an alternate route.  I was effectively prevented from doing this by strong storms in Kansas predicted for the day I was to arrive so I stayed to the south and found a few random caches on that route.

On the way back east, I only needed caches in Missouri counties.  I found a few caches along the route before hitting Missouri.  Somewhere along the vacation, I lost the list of counties in Missouri I needed to hit, so after I found caches in the northwest corner of Missouri, I simply tried to get as many counties along I-70 as I could.  As you can tell by looking closely at the Missouri map, I only appear to have missed one county (near St. Louis).  Pretty good considering I got there around the morning rush hour.

I added 10 counties to my list:  1 in Oklahoma to close my southern (east to west) route.  1 in Colorado, and 9 in Missouri to almost close my northern (west to east) route.  If I get another chance to make this trip, I'll try to hunt more counties in Kansas, Oklahoma, and Colorado to try and close that route.

Geocaching Maker Madness Event - 3/30/2014

I decided to take some time off from doing nothing to attend an event in Germantown, TN's Cameron Brown Park.  This event, which awarded a souvenir, was designed to honor the people who take the time and effort to place great geocaches.  The host was wrath557 and the guest speakers were magicrock and abiectio.  We learned about camo caches and puzzle caches.  A good time was had by all.

Afterwards, I teamed up with Ham-R-Hed, bitbrain, and bevofan to tackle At The End Of My Rope by tinksdad01 | GC4QA8T.  I almost found the cache by myself, but ended up missing the mark.  This cache earned one of my "coveted" favorite points amd I wish I could describe the experience without spoiling it for others who haven't found it.  As we were about to leave the cache site, another cacher came along so we entertained ourselves by watching here struggle to find it.

On the way out of the park, I got one more find - Where Young Folks Play by ProntoPup | GC4VVQY to end my day.  There was another event nearby, but I'd had enough fun for one day.

W. C. Johnson Park - 12/28/2013

It's hard to believe we are at the end of another year. It's even harder to believe that it has been an entire month since I hunted a geocache.  On this day, I was fortunate to be able to get together with my geocaching buddy jbgreer for a nice hunt in a nice Collierville park.  Almost all of the caches we hunted on this trip were placed this year and I had been waiting for cold weather to hunt them.

After enjoying a nice breakfast, we headed to Collierville, TN and made it to W. C. Johnson Park by 10:30am.  We headed out on the boardwalk into the woods and it started to sprinkle almost immediately.  We had also made the decision not to wear waterproof boots, which on this day turned out to be an excellent decision.

We found ten caches in the woods - nine were by peanutpapa and one was by tiger130.  All were great caches and easily findable.  After leaving the woods we decided to tackle one more cache - Johnson Park Pavilion by rebeldawg | GC47KDY.  This one had evaded me over the summer and on this day as well.  Fortunately, jbgreer did a better job of searching the hiding spot than I did.  We were done by 2pm or so and headed back to Memphis.

[I'll flesh this out a little more - maybe tomorrow.]