Geocaching with Capt. TailWagger

Trackables and trolls

A fun part of geocaching is discovering and moving trackables along. Each trackable has a unique code and mission. The mission is decided by the trackable’s owner. Stardustzzz gets a Cachekinz trackable in the mail every month and posts a video of her opening the envelope. She then puts up a Twitter poll asking her followers what kind of hitchhiker she should attach to the Cachekinz. She makes something out of pearler beads and attaches to the Cachekinz and sends it on its way.

I’ve never been part of a subscription program like the Cachekinz Club from Cache Advance. I do send out trackables though. Just a few weeks ago, I got word from Geocaching HQ that I had been selected to receive a Teenage Ninja Mutant Turtle trackable as part of promo Nickelodeon and Geocaching HQ are doing together. I activated the trackable and attached it to a troll. The troll is here in my house right now. I have a TB hotel I plan to put it in soon. I’m just waiting to see which way this whole coronavirus pandemic is going to go.

Leo is the fifth troll I’ve attached a trackable to. Orange River Troll was the first. The troll went missing almost immediately after I set it loose in the wild. It reappeared at an event here in Fort Wayne last year and is now in Washington state. Orange River Troll has traveled 2,116.2 miles.

The next troll I sent out into the world is Iolana Holo-Kai. The troll’s name means: Iolana ( “soaring bird”) Holo-Kai (“seafaring person, traveler”). Iolana’s mission was to go to Hawaii and then to other South Pacific islands. I left Iolana in a cache in Michigan City, Indiana. Iolana was picked up, went an event and went to Hawaii. Iolana is now sitting in a geocache somewhere in South Dakota. Iolana has traveled 10,655.6 miles.

In June of last year, I released Fireman Phil (in honor of my late father-in-law who was a volunteer photographer for the fire department in Montrose, Colorado) and Geo Friend. Fireman Phil’s tag, like that of Orange River Troll and Iolana Holo-Kai, is a travel bug dog tag. Geo Friend’s trackable tag has two faces on it and it says “The best finds are other geocachers.” Geo Friend is sitting in a geocache in Michigan and has traveled just 339.4 miles. Fireman Phil was retrieved the from the travel bug cache in Waterloo, Indiana, in August and was placed in a cache in Michigan in October. That is where Fireman Phil is today. Fireman Phil has traveled just 67.9 miles.

Honestly, I don’t know if any of these trolls are in the geocaches they’re supposed to be in. The two in Michigan where Fireman Phil and Geo Friend were last placed are not terribly far from me. I’ve thought about finding those caches and retrieving the trolls and putting them in new caches. Maybe when some of the COVID-19 restrictions are eased I’ll do that. For the time being, I wait and wonder.

Things are moving fast

How are you coping during these trying times? My mom is moving in with my sister. My dad died in 2011, and my mom has lived alone since. My sister lives in central Indiana just west of Indianapolis in Hendricks County. My mom needs to be with people. I think that’s best for her. I pray it’s what’s best for her.

Today, Gov. Eric Holcomb issued a stay-in-place order for Indiana residents, so I guess geocaching is out. And a new cache was just published in DeKalb County. If I take my dog out for a walk, am I violating the order? I believe regular exercise is vital to good health.

Last week, our Indiana reviewer announced he would stop publishing new event caches for the time being and would archive any event scheduled for March. I had already archived my March event, which was scheduled for tomorrow, March 24, at the library in Grabill, Indiana.

On Sunday, my son and I went to a three-year lonely cache. It was last found March 22, 2017. It’s a puzzle cache and we decided after solving the puzzle to go find it, but we had a lot of cold, rainy days last week. Sunday was cold but sunny (until it snowed in the evening), so we decided to look for it. The most recent picture from the cache shows a film canister, and we found a film canister at GZ. No log. No lid. I took a photo and asked the CO in my log if we can count the find. I’ll delete the find if the CO says no.

Mingo Madness will announce by April 1 whether it will still go off as planned on May 2. I am doubtful. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has put a moratorium on gatherings of more than 50 people, and a mega event is a gathering of at least 500 people.

On March 15, we went out to Roush Lake in Huntington County and found a pair of geocaches then on the way back to Fort Wayne found one in a cemetery.

Geoff May, whose YouTube channel is Cache the Line, gave my permission to use this graphic.

Be safe, dear readers. If you live in an area where it’s safe to geocache, go for it. Have fun. And practice social distancing.

COVID-19 and geocaching

I am not a medical expert, nor do I play on TV. I’m just a guy trying to make the best of things. Friday I decided to archive a geocaching event for later this month after our local library system announced it is closing for a month. The event was to be inside a library branch.

Also Friday I received this email from Geocaching HQ:

Geocaching HQ is posting this Announcement on all Community Celebration Events.

As the Coronavirus 2019 (COVID-19) situation is evolving rapidly around the world, Geocaching HQ urges all Event hosts and attendees to prioritize the safety of themselves and their attendees.

At this time, we advise Event hosts to consult their regional health authorities to understand the guidance regarding gatherings of people. Generally, Geocaching HQ leaves the decision to Event hosts on whether to continue hosting the Event and to attendees on whether they will participate. In some regions, community volunteer reviewers may suspend publishing new Events and/or may disable, retract, or archive already published Events, in accordance with guidance from health authorities.

We want to allow flexibility for hosts who need to reschedule their published Community Celebration Events due to COVID-19 concerns. If hosts wish to reschedule their Community Celebration Event:

Create an Announcement log to notify users that the Event is cancelled and may be rescheduled.
Disable the Community Celebration Event.
Contact the publishing reviewer to retract the Event.
Update the Event date.
Submit listing for publication.

I don’t want to be an alarmist, but I think all of the cancellations here in the US and around the world are the right thing to do. COVID-19 is a novel virus. It is new to the human population. We don’t have immunity to it, so it is best to avoid large crowds where the virus can spread more rapidly, and it is best to practice social distance, roughly 3-6 feet between people.

For now, I am not committing to go to any event as much as I like them and enjoy meeting other geocachers. I will, however, continue to look for geocaches. I generally cache alone or with a family member and I can probably count on one hand (outside of Midwest Geobash, Geowoodstock XIV or after other events) the number of times I’ve met other geocachers while out geocaching. We met a couple two years ago in Iceland. They were from the UK and heading to Germany. And on Fourth of July in 2018, I met a mother and her sons who were geocaching at the Indiana Dunes. Other than those two times, I don’t recall ever meeting another geocacher while looking for a cache.

Speaking of finding caches. I picked another FTF on Tuesday (on Twitter I said Wednesday) when I found a cache in Williams County, Ohio. It was my third Ohio FTF and first in Williams County.

Getting outdoors and getting exercise, health experts say, can boost your immune system. Also, eat lots of fruits and vegetables. Getting outdoors and getting exercise are what I do when I geocache. So I plan to still go out. Maybe not as often. Maybe more. I don’t know. We are in uncharted territory right now. I’ll keep you posted.

Mingo Madness

Sunday night on the Geocache Talk podcast, Gary, Memfis and the Mingo Madness organizing committee made several announcements regarding the event, which celebrates 20 years of geocaching just up the road from the world’s oldest active geocache — Mingo GC30.

Before I get into some of the announcements from the podcast, I want to share that on Saturday, I attended CritterSitter’s event, which just so happened to be my 1,600th find. During the event three caches went live, and a group of us all got first to finds on those caches. So now I’m up to 1,603 finds and I have at least one first first find in 10 straight months.

Mingo Madness is a mega event scheduled for 8 a.m. to noon May 2 at the Community Center in Colby Kansas. Mingo itself is south of Colby just off Interstate 70 Exit 62 in Kansas.

Much of the announcement had to do with SWAG and the SWAG packages, which start at $30 for a T-shirt and geocoin and $80 for the T-shirt, geocoin, five pathtags, 10 trackables and a patch. They also announced that camping will be available at the Fairgrounds.

One set of trackables depicts the early history of geoaching. It’s a set I’d like to own. The artist who designed them was on the program and he said they are meant to be in the style of comicbooks. As an a la carte purchase, the set is $20.

In addition to the SWAG items, the sales of which help defray the cost of the event, the committee announced a new virtual cache will go live on May 1 with an event at Mingo itself. The Mingo Madness organizers worked local state and county officials to to get a historic marker put up at Mingo signifying its place in the history of geocaching. (It’s not the first; it’s just the oldest active cache, hidden in May 2000.) An event is planned that day when the historic marker is unveiled. The event’s page does not yet show up on the geocaching map.

On Saturday evening, at the fairgrounds in Colby, a community event is planned. The Travel Bugs, a pop band that records geocaching-themed songs, will perform. Community events are a special category of events that will start worldwide in May and continue through the end of the year as another way to celebrate 20 years of geocaching. I know of two such events planned for May 2 here in Indiana.

In addition to Mingo Madness and the community event, the GPS Adventure Maze will be in Colby, and people completing the adventure maze get a special icon. It was at the Geowoodstock event last year in Fort Worth, Texas. The Adventure Maze will be at Midwest Geobash in Wauseon, Ohio, this year in July.

Derrick Baker at Behind the Cache did a real nice video on the maze. It is the one event at Midwest Geobash I really want to do.

All in all, I think Mingo Madness and the other activities surrounding it will make for an awesome weekend of geocaching. I hope to go out there. It’s still up in the air at this time. If I do go, it will give me at least one new state — Kansas. (I have a few caches in Oklahoma, Texas and New Mexico on the list.)

Challenge caches

Last summer on our way home from New Hampshire, as we were driving on Interstate 80 in Pennsylvania, we crossed into Jefferson County. I immediately started to looking to see where there might be a cache close to the highway. We were running low on gas and we were hoping to get back to Indiana that night. I needed Jefferson County to complete GC53G0K MaxB’s All the Presidents Men – County Challenge.

The challenge was simple: Find a cache in 10 counties that share the last name of a president. We’ve had 45 presidents, though I doubt there is an Obama or Trump County anywhere in the United States.

I had found caches in Monroe County, Michigan; Adams County, Indiana; Grant County, Indiana; Clinton County, Indiana; Johnson County, Iowa and Johnson County, Indiana (two President Johnsons — Andrew and Lyndon); Madison County, Indiana; Van Buren County, Michigan; and Polk County, Florida. That’s nine counties representing nine presidents. I needed one more. And there at a truck stop where we could get some gas, I found a cache in Jefferson County, Pennsylvania. Ten counties, 10 presidents. Challenge complete.

I found the cache signed the challenge near Niles, Michigan, on Aug. 26, 2019. Challenge accepted, challenge complete. Ever since I first heard of challenge caches and saw that one on the map, I have spent time working on it. In July, I had planned to drive to Ford County, Illinois, but I got a late start on the day and went out of my way to find an EarthCache that didn’t meet my goals for that day, so I skipped driving an extra 30 miles one way to Ford County, Illinois. That left me still one county short.

I’ve got a list of more than 100 challenge caches I’m working on or have already completed and I just need to find and sign the cache. I recently completed the necessary requirements for two tri-state challenges near where Indiana, Ohio and Michigan come together. All I need to do is go find and sign the caches.

In July, the day I did not go to Ford County, Illinois, I found and signed a number challenge caches in White County, Indiana, including a 366 days a year challenge. The beauty of challenge caches is that you can sign them ahead of time, you just can’t log it as a find until you complete the challenge. I signed that log in July. In October, I completed the challenge and recorded a find. Other challenges I signed and logged as finds that day included three states in a single (which I’ve done several times), 1,000 traditional finds and 15 souvenirs. One challenge I wanted to find and sign that day but missed it somehow was finding a cache in each of the states that border Indiana. I have just two Kentucky finds and just four finds in Illinois, but they’re finds and they count.

Other challenges I’ve completed but haven’t found are 10 nontraditional caches in a day; two countries in one day; 31 day streak.

Challenges I’m working but haven’t completed include the Ada to Zion Great Lakes Cities Challenge. I still need a J, an X and a Y. I hope to get to Xenia and Yellow Springs, Ohio, on the same day. Jackson, Michigan, is my target J. Another is A Capital Idea. That involves finding caches in 10 capital cities. I have seven — Indianapolis, Salt Lake City, Concord and Boston in the US and Reykjavik, Amsterdam and Paris in Europe. Neither Columbus nor Lansing is very far away.

Some challenges are a little more difficult. Find so many different cache types in a day; elect Signal the Frog president (my recent trip west in which I found a cache in the Electoral College-heavy state of California pushed Signal over the top); connect 20 states with contiguous counties. I’m working on them.

In December I got a first to find on a challenge cache. It was find 100 or more caches with the restroom attribute. When I saw the cache in my email that morning, I ran the challenge checker, saw I had qualified, so I high-tailed it to New Haven, Indiana, to sign the cache.

FTF on GC8HBC I Gots to Go Wee Challenge

What about you? What challenges do you chase when geocaching? Or do you not chase challenges?

Palindrome day

Last Sunday, Groundhog Day, was worldwide Palindrome Day. It was 02/02/2020. As a result, Geocaching HQ put out a special souvenir to all who found a geocache on that day or attended an event. No events were scheduled locally, so I went out and found a pair of caches.

Souvenir for finding a geocache on 2 February 2020 (02/02/2020)

Before caching, Capt TailWagger and the rest of the family drove up from Fort Wayne to Leo-Cedarville to explore Riverside Gardens, a decent size park on the east side of the St. Joseph River. Most of Leo-Cedarville is on the west side of the river. There are a couple of geocaches in the park that I’ve already found. While we were at Riverside Gardens, we saw a bald eagle fly overhead.

A bald eagle flies over Shoaff Park in Fort Wayne on 3 February 2020.

Sunday turned out to be a springlike day. Temperatures were in the 50s and the sun was shining. Supposedly, the groundhog in Pennsylvania predicted an early spring. Locally, winter returned Wednesday.

I digress. After exploring Riverside Park, we drove over to Harlan, a small, unincorporated town on the east side of Allen County on Indiana 37. It has a park with three caches in it. I had already found one of the caches in the park, so my targets were GC8GED8 @nother 1 for Harlan Park and GC8GED2 &&& Another Harlan Park Cache.

Both of those caches have a D/T rating of 2/2, so I found 2 2/2 caches on 2/2. When I mentioned that on Twitter, someone asked if I would find a 3/3 on March 3, a 4/4 on April 4 and a 5/5 on May 5. I have a 3/3 cache picked out to look for next month.

In anticipation of the Geocaching HQ souvenir and Groundhog Day, I hid a cache that went live last Sunday. It’s a nano near the St. Joseph River not far from where it meets the St. Marys River to form the Maumee River. I called it The Groundhog is Hibernating. It’s near an area where I frequently see groundhogs during the summer. It’s GC number is: GC8JQKB.

By the way, a palindrome is a word that is spelled the same forward and backward. Some examples are kayak, racecar and tacocat.

One goal reached

Wednesday afternoon, I had some free time, so Capt TailWagger and I decided to drive up to Michigan to do a little geocaching. I had last been to Michigan for a Festivus event a few days before Christmas. (You can watch a video from the event here.) In addition to the event, I found one cache, leaving my at 97 finds in the state.

In October, I joined Kneel More, the creator of the YouTube channel Cache Tales, and we did a geo-art on the Kal-Haven Trail. (You can watch a video here.)

I’ve made other trips to Michigan, including a trip to Holland with Capt TailWagger and the rest of our family last spring.

We found a virtual cache at the Holland lighthouse.

Wednesday I drove up to Kinderhook, Michigan. I put seven caches on my list. Kinderhook is about an hour’s drive from Fort Wayne. I picked a couple of caches that have more than 10 favorite points. In one of my logs, I said more than 20. My mistake. In addition, I looked for a couple of cemetery caches and a couple in Coldwater Lake State Park, one of which is part of the geotrail celebrating Michigan state park’s centennial. Plus I found a couple of park and grab caches. In all, we found all seven caches on our list.

There was a bit more snow on the ground there than is down here. The snow helped me make one of the finds because there was a trail left behind in the snow from previous finders. I did not take many photos, two in fact.

Mundy Cemetery in Branch County, Michigan

When the day was over, my number of Michigan finds is now at 104, which qualifies me for a couple of tri-state challenges near where Indiana, Ohio and Michigan come together. To qualify for all three of these challenges, you need 100 finds each in Indiana, Ohio and Michigan. I have 1,167 finds in Indiana, 194 in Ohio and 104 in Michigan. My next highest state is Florida with 22. Utah with 15 is the only other state in double digits.

Geocaching HQ is offering a souvenir Sunday for anyone who finds a cache or attends an event that day. It’s a palindrome day — 02/02/2020. HQ announced the souvenir too late for create an event specific for then. Sunday’s usually a tough day for me to find a cache, but I’ll see what I can do. Hopefully there will an FTF available.

HQ is offering another souvenir on Leap Day, February 29. Four years ago when I was fairly new geocacher, I was fortunate to find a cache — two actually — on Leap Day. I’ve heard from several cachers who have waited four years to complete their 366 grid because they either missed caching that day or they started caching shortly after Leap Day 2016.

Burros, London Bridge

London Bridge is falling down, falling down, falling down, my fair lady.

Remember that playground ditty? I do but not the rest. London Bridge was falling down, so it went to … Arizona. Yes, Arizona. I recall that as a kid hearing that London Bridge went to Arizona but never quite believed it. That was until last Tuesday night, when my wife said that we could go see it. We were in Kingman, Arizona, in Mohave County, the same county as Lake Havasu City. Lake Havasu City is where London Bridge now sits. And as it happens, there is a geocache there too.

As my wife and I walked around Lake Havasu City, we thought it reminded us of Florida. There was water and palm trees. The only thing missing were pelicans. We found it hard to believe we were in the Arizona desert.

Before arriving in Lake Havasu City, we started our day in Kingman and found a couple caches there — a puzzle cache I solved weeks ago — and a cool traditional outside the county museum. I left a few trackables in that cache and picked up one.

From Kingman, we hopped on Histroic Route 66 and drove over to Oatman. Along the way, we found a cache that has a “Cars” theme. If you’ve ever seen “Cars,” you know that Lightning McQueen gets stuck in a sleepy little town that got bypassed by the interstate highway. Many of the sites in Radiator Springs are based on sites from across Route 66. So we stopped and found a cache just off the highway that was based on the movie.

Then it was onto Oatman, but first we had to cross Sitgreaves Pass. We found a pullout as the top of the pass, and I got out of the car and found a cache some 400 feet from where we parked. I saw burro scat and burro hoofprints but no actual animals.

Oatman is a town that, like Radiator Springs, was bypassed when the interstate was built. It was a mining town and when the miners abandonded the mines, they also abandonded their burros, so the area has semiwild burros. To make up for loss of traffic from the interstate, Oatman decided to become a tourist stop. Every day at high noon, there is a gunfight in the street.

The day we were there, two guys decide to rob a bank. Guy A talks Guy B into robbing the bank. He robs and then they argue over what to do with the loot. The shoot at each other. One says the other hit him in bum, the other the leg. Then they decide that at the count of 3 they’ll draw and shoot. Guy B starts to count. 1, 2, … 4. Guy A wants to know what happened to 3. Guy B shoots him. It’s all done humorously and they collect money for the Shriners’ Children Hospitals.

After the gunfight, we walked around town. I found two geocaches. One is inside a local business, the other is at the other end of the two- or three-block long town. After I found the second cache, a store clerk sitting outside asked if I found the geocache. I had.

We didn’t spend a lot of time in Oatman. It was off to Lake Havasu City.

What about your caching trips? What have you found that you were unaware was there beforehand? I really like the tiny sliver of Arizona we visited and I’d like to go back and explore more and find more caches.

Happy New Year

Today as I write, it’s 2 January 2020. I am setting a goal for the new year to write and post a blog entry at least twice a week. I haven’t posted anything since October, and that’s way too long to go.

Before I dive into 2020, I want to look back on 2019. I found 369 caches in 2019, including three on New Year’s Eve to earn the Goodbye 2019 souvenir from Geocaching HQ.

In addition, I cached on 147 days, not quite every other day. My best months were July (69 finds), October (68 finds), August (50 finds). My worst months were January (5 finds), February (12 finds) and November (13 finds). I found 70 Blue ? puzzle/unknown/mystery caches for a total of 99. I found 4 multis, 11 virtuals, 3 letterbox hybrids and 7 EarthCaches. I attended 1 mega — Midwest Geobash.

I think earned all of the souvenirs Geoching HQ put out last year except the second season of CITO. There was none in my area, and I guess I was too lazy to set up one myself.

I picked up seven new states (Pennsylvania, New York, Vermont, New Hampshire, Maine, Massachsetts and New Jersey) on a camping trip my family took in August.

On to 2020

This year, Geocaching turns 20. It was in May 2000 that the Clinton administration removed the blocks that were on GPS satellites, which allowed civilian GPS devices to get within 20 feet of accuracy rather than 300. Shortly thereafter, a man named Dave Ulmer hid the first geo stash somewhere in Oregon and posted the coordinates on a message board. Soon, others were hiding similar stashes. And from that Geocaching.com was born.

Geocaching HQ has big plans for 2020. They are planning community events throughout the world in addition to a big party in Seattle in August. People attending those community events will get a special icon on their profile page. Plus, Geocaching HQ is releasing one locationless cache that is tied to Signal the Frog, geocaching’s mascot.

In Colby, Kansas, an event is planned called Mingo Madness that will celebrate GC30 Mingo, the oldest active geocache in the world. It was hidden in May 2000. In the Chicago area is GC28 Beverly, which was also hidden in May 2000. The Mingo Madness event is May 2.

On the Geocaching Podcast last night, it was announced that the GPS Maze will be at Midwest Geobash in July. The GPS Maze returned to the US last year for the Geowoodstock Mega event in Fort Worth, Texas. I was unaware of the GPS Maze before the announcement that it would be in Texas. I’ve seen different vloggers’ videos of the maze. I’ve never seen anything like it. The maze included a history of geocaching along with examples of different kinds of caches and cache containers. I’m looking forward to going to Wauseon, Ohio, to do the maze.

I would like to go out to Seattle in August for the HQ event and then to British Columbia the following week for Geowoodstock. Cash — yes, that kind of cash — could be a problem. So I might just organize my own non-Geowoodstock event here in Indiana. Don’t know yet. It’s months away and yet it will be upon us before we realize it.

It’s early January, and I already have more finds this month than I did all of last January 2019. I co-hosted a New Year’s Day event here in Fort Wayne and then a bunch of us went into a nearby wooded area at the park and did a bit of geocaching. I found five in the park and had a couple of DNFs. Several new caches were published on New Year’s Day. I did not get any FTFs. I hope more are published this month so that I have a shot at an FTF. I have an FTF streak going. I have at least one FTF in every month since June.