Good morning everyone. Did you know that there are 3,101 active geocaches in North Dakota? That is good for 48th place in the U.S., ahead of Delaware (2,903), Hawaii (2,450), and District of Columbia (245). Meanwhile, Manitoba has 8,810 active geocaches, good for 9th in Canada. Newfoundland (8,171), Yukon (389), Northwest (383) and Nunavut (103) have fewer.
Saturday, June 22nd. The meat and potatoes of the camping and caching event. Everyone gathered at Pioneer Park for an 8am (mountain time) start. As we found out what the game was, the rules, plus signing in and registering, a buzz quickly swept through the picnic shelter. A brand new geocache was published. I tried to do a head count of all the first to find seekers. There may have been at least 18 of us. It's magnetic and somewhere on the caboose that's on display. The owner, gloworm77, sat back at the picnic shelter with Butterfly_77, having a good chuckle as it was taking us much longer to find the cache. I was very close to finding the cache, but decided to go look elsewhere. GeoJangie was the one that came up with the cache.
Saturday, June 22nd. The meat and potatoes of the camping and caching event. Everyone gathered at Pioneer Park for an 8am (mountain time) start. As we found out what the game was, the rules, plus signing in and registering, a buzz quickly swept through the picnic shelter. A brand new geocache was published. I tried to do a head count of all the first to find seekers. There may have been at least 18 of us. It's magnetic and somewhere on the caboose that's on display. The owner, gloworm77, sat back at the picnic shelter with Butterfly_77, having a good chuckle as it was taking us much longer to find the cache. I was very close to finding the cache, but decided to go look elsewhere. GeoJangie was the one that came up with the cache.
It took a lot of headscratching and even a suggestion that we flood gloworm77 with messages asking for a hint. Once that was done, it was off to play the X game. For this, we were given coordinates to various places around Dickinson. Once there, we needed to obtain a letter off of the plaque, sign, whatever was there. One detail I had forgotten about was that we needed to take a picture of the location as proof that we did visit the spot and we had to be in the picture as well, a selfie.
I wasn't really in the mood to take a bunch of selfies. On my way to the next location, I had looked down between the seats of my car where the cup holders are. In one cup holder is my identification tag for work. It has my picture on it. A picture of me in the picture. Next best thing to a selfie. That's what I did for the rest of the locations.
Once I had completed the X game, it was off to find the puzzles I had solved prior to the trip. I was successful in finding all of them, including the cute container pictured above. I even caught up with Winnipeg geocachers Quiltin' Annie and Mr. Quiltin' Annie at one of the finals. There was only six Winnipegers that came down for the weekend and we were all doing our own geocaching plans, and yet our paths would cross unbeknownst to each other. Kind of cool in a way.
Next up on my plans for the day, the Enchanted Highway. For those that are unaware of this road, it is the home of the world's largest scrap metal sculptures along a 32 mile stretch of highway starting at exit 72 on Interstate 94 (I-94) and ending in the small town of Regent. There is a cache hidden at each of the sculptures. I love discovering roadside attractions so I couldn't pass this one up. You can read more about it here > GeoJangie's blog.
This is the first sculpture you'll come across on I-94. 'Geese in Flight'. From here, you begin to travel South. There is a small amount of driving between each sculpture as they are spread out, covering the already mentioned 32 miles of road.
Next up is 'Deer Crossing'. There is a small maze located next to the sculpture. I also like mazes, as do a lot of other people as the correct path to get from one end to the other is well worn and sort of took the fun out of walking through the maze. It was still a fun experience.
'Grasshoppers' is next. Finding the cache wasn't too hard. As I was signing in, a van pulled up and I noticed the side door slide open with some youngsters looking in my direction. I went into tourist mode and pretended to be checking out the grasshopper. That's when I saw the three younger ones go into a mad dash in different directions. Something told me they were here for the same thing I was. I replaced the cache and made my way back to the car.
I made my way down the road to the next sculpture. 'Fisherman's Dream'. It didn't take long to locate the cache here. Signed, replaced and moved on to the next sculpture.
'Pheasants on the Prairie'. This one had me scratching my head. I searched and searched with no luck. I would soon be joined by the family in the van that I saw back at the grasshoppers. With five more sets of eyes to search, I figured it shouldn't be long before the cache was in someone's hand. During the search, I got to talking with the parents. I thought they were at the caching and camping event as well. Nope. Pure coincidence that they just happen to be passing by, heading home to Wisconsin from a family vacation to the West coast. Hoppers5 is their caching name. We all gave up on this one. A DNF.
Hoppers5 arrived at 'Teddy Roosevelt Rides Again' ahead of me. I was able to witness the three younger Hoppers go off in another mad dash, seeing who could find the cache first. I hung back and played tourist again, letting the younger ones search and find the cache, which they did.
Next up is 'Tin Family'. Once again Hoppers5 pulled in ahead of me. I was busy searching for one of GeoJangie's business cards that I knew I had, to give to the Hoppers family and tell them about my blog, GeoJangie's blog and of course, The Geocaching Guild FB page. They made quick work of this one as they were heading back to the van before I got out of the car. This is where we would part ways. I was able to locate and sign the cache. Someone else showed up that I assumed was another geocacher. Nope. Just a muggle, and that's who's walking into the picture as I took it. I made my way into the town of Regent. I knew ahead of time that the Enchanted Highway ends in a different county. With a couple of finds in Regent, I added another new county to my list. It was while I was in Regent that I took a chance and did the PAF (phone a friend). I messaged GeoJangie about the pheasants as I had seen her name on all the other caches. Jon and Angie were ahead of me somewhere, so I crossed my fingers and hoped that she would get the message before I started heading back. She did and got back to me. I was able to go back and make quick work of it the second time.
There was some newer caches to the East of the Enchanted Highway, so I decided to go for those before returning to Dickinson for the evening festivities. These were all very creative hides, with the one above being the best one of the bunch. I gave this one a favorite point.
The evening wrapped up with a potluck dinner, prizes, games, and lots of chatter about our day's adventure. As is the tradition every year, a group photo with everyone gathered around a sign with the amount of geocaches they have found in their geocaching career. This year I got to hold the 5,000 sign. The signs go in numerical order from left to right. I'm way over on the right hand side of the picture.
To wrap up day three of my weekend; I found 26 geocaches, giving me 201 North Dakota caches found. I can check off that challenge as complete. As mentioned, by finding caches in the town of Regent, that gave me another county for a total of nine new counties so far. Another goal complete. The event was my third for the weekend, completing another goal. For the month of June, I am up to 211 finds. Still some caching to do to reach 250.
Next week is my trip home as I add more counties to my list. Until then, be happy, be safe, hug your loved ones, enjoy life, and most of all, have fun.
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