Good morning everyone. This week's fun facts is all about Cache Canada. Did you know that Cache Canada has found caches in 18 different countries, nine out of thirteen regions in Canada (missing New Foundland and all three territories), 37 out of 51 States, completed a daily streak of 555 days and found 267 caches in a single day.
Recently I had the pleasure of interviewing a fellow Canadian geocacher and YouTuber londonwesty (Dave), better known as Cache Canada. Tagging along on londonwesty's adventures is his lovely wife, lyriclass (Karen). Together, they found their first geocache on October 6, 2012. 'Cross Roads' GC17V3D was the first of three they found that day. By the time the Canadian Thanksgiving weekend was done, they had ten finds. They're hooked. londonwesty ended 2012 with 35 finds. The following years would see his yearly find count increase from the previous year. topping out at 2,274 in 2017.
How did londonwesty and lyriclass discover geocaching? Around 2008, Dave was writing a book about the War of 1812. While doing research for his book, he stumbled on a website that talked about a small park in Ohio that contained a cairn for a skirmish that occurred at that location. The site also mentioned that there was a geocache hidden there. What the heck is a geocache? After a quick Google search, Dave found out what geocaching was. It sounded like fun, but he didn't think he could spare the time as he was busy writing his book and his other hobby, re-enacting (more on that in a couple of paragraphs).
Fast forward to 2012, Dave found out that a friend from re-enacting had started geocaching. Neither Dave or Karen had smartphones and the only GPS they owned was a Garmin Nuvi for the car. After finding a YouTube video that showed how to input coordinates into the Nuvi, they were off a few days later for their first find. Dave created his account first and londonwesty was born. A couple of years later, Karen created her own account and lyriclass was now officially part of the geocaching community.
Almost five years to the day (October 11, 2017) after londonwesty found his first cache, came another first. The debut of Cache Canada on YouTube. Debut of Cache Canada londonwesty wanted to do a short video showing what geocaching was all about. He was asked by many people he knew what geocaching was. After several attempts, londonwesty turned the camera around on himself as he told the story of what was happening. Along with creating videos of his adventures, there is also One Minute Wednesday, a fun one minute video that is published every Wednesday.
What is Cache Canada all about? It's about the journey, the fun times, the pitfalls, the tips, the laughter, the locations, and so much more. It's about showing the adventures you could experience when you get out of the house and go look for plastic containers using multi-billion dollar satellite systems. Where will Geocaching take you? https://youtu.be/W6Su2OYMvwI
Recently I had the pleasure of interviewing a fellow Canadian geocacher and YouTuber londonwesty (Dave), better known as Cache Canada. Tagging along on londonwesty's adventures is his lovely wife, lyriclass (Karen). Together, they found their first geocache on October 6, 2012. 'Cross Roads' GC17V3D was the first of three they found that day. By the time the Canadian Thanksgiving weekend was done, they had ten finds. They're hooked. londonwesty ended 2012 with 35 finds. The following years would see his yearly find count increase from the previous year. topping out at 2,274 in 2017.
How did londonwesty and lyriclass discover geocaching? Around 2008, Dave was writing a book about the War of 1812. While doing research for his book, he stumbled on a website that talked about a small park in Ohio that contained a cairn for a skirmish that occurred at that location. The site also mentioned that there was a geocache hidden there. What the heck is a geocache? After a quick Google search, Dave found out what geocaching was. It sounded like fun, but he didn't think he could spare the time as he was busy writing his book and his other hobby, re-enacting (more on that in a couple of paragraphs).
(londonwesty and lyriclass at a recent GIFF event)
Fast forward to 2012, Dave found out that a friend from re-enacting had started geocaching. Neither Dave or Karen had smartphones and the only GPS they owned was a Garmin Nuvi for the car. After finding a YouTube video that showed how to input coordinates into the Nuvi, they were off a few days later for their first find. Dave created his account first and londonwesty was born. A couple of years later, Karen created her own account and lyriclass was now officially part of the geocaching community.
Almost five years to the day (October 11, 2017) after londonwesty found his first cache, came another first. The debut of Cache Canada on YouTube. Debut of Cache Canada londonwesty wanted to do a short video showing what geocaching was all about. He was asked by many people he knew what geocaching was. After several attempts, londonwesty turned the camera around on himself as he told the story of what was happening. Along with creating videos of his adventures, there is also One Minute Wednesday, a fun one minute video that is published every Wednesday.
What is Cache Canada all about? It's about the journey, the fun times, the pitfalls, the tips, the laughter, the locations, and so much more. It's about showing the adventures you could experience when you get out of the house and go look for plastic containers using multi-billion dollar satellite systems. Where will Geocaching take you? https://youtu.be/W6Su2OYMvwI
(londonwesty, lyriclass with Bob Billy in the background)
As mentioned, Dave and Karen's other hobby is re-enacting. They were first introduced to re-enacting in 2001, but that hobby didn't seem financially possible at the time. By the Fall of 2002, they got their start. Dave and Karen focus on the War of 1812. This was the conflict between the United States and United Kingdom between the years 1812 and 1815. Dave started out as a private and has worked his way up to commanding officer of the Grenadier company of the 1st Royal Scots, a regiment that was situated in their area from 1813-1815.
(Karen and Dave dressed up in their re-enactment roles)
For those that follow along with the Cache Canada videos will recall the Cache Canada TB project. Twelve Cache Canada trackables were sent to twelve different prominent geocachers with the mission to set the trackables out into the wild and watch the progress. The twelve are Geocaching Jangie, 3 Happy Campers, Cache the Line, Geojerry, GeoPaul, GeocachingKaity, Kneel More, MotoJoe, Simrebel, Sir-Drumalot, Stardustzzz, and Geodoc. A three part update, featuring 3 or 4 of the trackables per episode is planned for the New Year. Keep a watch out for that update on Cache Canada's YouTube channel.
Speaking of Cache Canada's YouTube channel, there is a challenge currently on from Cache Canada. That challenge is to reach one thousand subscribers to the channel by the first light of January 1, 2020. Can they reach their goal? Will you subscribe to their channel if you haven't done so already? As I write this, they are currently at 904 subscribers. Ninety six more subscibers are needed in the next 37 days. I am a subsciber (I have been for quite sometime now), and I really enjoy their content. My favorite is the One Minute Wednesday segments.
This is a short video about the First Light Challenge - > https://youtu.be/wmAHEEMNLUY
As I am about to hit the publish button for this blog, it occurred to me that I forgot to ask about the Cache Canada catch phrase "Holy Doodle". Going strictly by memory, Dave works in a factory where some colorful words are said quite frequently. Those words wouldn't go over very well on a YouTube video, so Dave came up with a family-friendly version for his videos and the saying has become popular with his viewers.
More fun facts about londonwesty/Cache Canada: Completed the fizzy grid 19 times, completed the 366 day calendar five times, found ten cache types in a single day, found caches in five States in a single day, highest elevation is GCXEFG in Switzerland at 9,367ft above sea level, hidden six different cache types and hosted regular events and two CITO events for a total of eight different cache icons and a total of 470 hides, has 316 FTFs, total cache-to-cache distance of 240,160 miles (that's over nine times around the Earth). A more personal fun fact; both Dave and Karen found one of my geocaches. While visiting family in this neck of the woods with royalberries on February 24, 2017, they found 'Toys in the Attick' GC4Z2RG.
That's it for this week. I hope you enjoyed getting to know a little bit about londonwesty/Cache Canada. Until next week (I'm hoping something will be arriving in the mail soon and I can share it with everyone), be happy, have fun, hug your geo-pets, enjoy life, and most of all, let's be careful out there (Hillstreet Blues moment).
(curled up with a stuffed Koala)
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