Good morning everyone. This weekend is Cache The Line's first WAM (Weekend Adventure Mission). The mission for this weekend is to find a cache that is rated as a size large. Looking at caches that are rated as a large in Canada, Ontario has the most with 491. Manitoba is 7th with 68 large caches. There are 1,589 large caches in all of Canada. Across the border, California is the place to be if you want to find large caches. They have 691 listed. North Dakota ranks 47th in the States with 22 large caches.
The one thing that all geocachers (I'm going to guess that all geocachers like to do this) is celebrate and share our milestones. The most prominent is the number of finds we have hit. It doesn't matter how big or small that number is, it's a proud achievement to that geocacher and worthy of celebration. Milestones can be anything. Whatever your goal is, if you reach it, it's a milestone. Did you complete a county challenge? Maybe you reached a certain number of subscribers to your YouTube channel just like CacheTheLine did. Or your FB page reached 100 likes, just like The Geocaching Guild did. Maybe it's a certain amount of a particular cache type, or a daily streak. The possibilities are endless and they're all moments to be proud of.
One thing I use to do was take a picture of every 100th cache found, with a sign to indicate which one it was. I've gotten away from that for no particular reason. Project-gc keeps track of your milestone finds. This is for your overall finds only. It starts with your first ever find, followed by your tenth, fiftieth, one hundredth, and every one hundredth up to your one thousandth find. After that it's every five hundredth find up to five thousand. Since I haven't reached six thousand finds yet, I'm going to guess that it becomes every one thousandth after that. My 5,500 find is not listed and that was an event I hosted in Williston, North Dakota. As the stats person for the North Dakota Geocaching Association, the first thing I start my report with is overall milestones. I start at 200 finds as that's the lowest number that cacherstats starts at and I follow a similar formula to project-gc.
It's always fun to look back at your milestones and remember the journey. How many of your milestone caches are still active? Project-gc has twenty two milestones listed for me. The last one is always the last cache you found, so not really a milestone of sorts. My last find according to project-gc isn't correct simply because I haven't logged any of my finds since August. According to my list, that's 70+ caches I still need to log online. When I have time.
Ignoring the last cache on that list, that gives me twenty one milestones so far. Of those twenty one, three were events (obviously archived by now), two multi-stage, three mystery, and thirteen traditional caches. Out of those eighteen listed milestones, only three have been archived so far. Not bad considering some of these milestones were achieved three or more years ago. When you know you're about to hit a milestone find, do you target a particular cache or cache type? Sometimes I have something specific in mind. My 5,000th find was on a challenge cache that required me to have found 5,000 geocaches.
The one thing that all geocachers (I'm going to guess that all geocachers like to do this) is celebrate and share our milestones. The most prominent is the number of finds we have hit. It doesn't matter how big or small that number is, it's a proud achievement to that geocacher and worthy of celebration. Milestones can be anything. Whatever your goal is, if you reach it, it's a milestone. Did you complete a county challenge? Maybe you reached a certain number of subscribers to your YouTube channel just like CacheTheLine did. Or your FB page reached 100 likes, just like The Geocaching Guild did. Maybe it's a certain amount of a particular cache type, or a daily streak. The possibilities are endless and they're all moments to be proud of.
One thing I use to do was take a picture of every 100th cache found, with a sign to indicate which one it was. I've gotten away from that for no particular reason. Project-gc keeps track of your milestone finds. This is for your overall finds only. It starts with your first ever find, followed by your tenth, fiftieth, one hundredth, and every one hundredth up to your one thousandth find. After that it's every five hundredth find up to five thousand. Since I haven't reached six thousand finds yet, I'm going to guess that it becomes every one thousandth after that. My 5,500 find is not listed and that was an event I hosted in Williston, North Dakota. As the stats person for the North Dakota Geocaching Association, the first thing I start my report with is overall milestones. I start at 200 finds as that's the lowest number that cacherstats starts at and I follow a similar formula to project-gc.
It's always fun to look back at your milestones and remember the journey. How many of your milestone caches are still active? Project-gc has twenty two milestones listed for me. The last one is always the last cache you found, so not really a milestone of sorts. My last find according to project-gc isn't correct simply because I haven't logged any of my finds since August. According to my list, that's 70+ caches I still need to log online. When I have time.
Ignoring the last cache on that list, that gives me twenty one milestones so far. Of those twenty one, three were events (obviously archived by now), two multi-stage, three mystery, and thirteen traditional caches. Out of those eighteen listed milestones, only three have been archived so far. Not bad considering some of these milestones were achieved three or more years ago. When you know you're about to hit a milestone find, do you target a particular cache or cache type? Sometimes I have something specific in mind. My 5,000th find was on a challenge cache that required me to have found 5,000 geocaches.
Another cache that I had targeted for a milestone was my 500th find and first find in Ontario. It took some pacing on my part so that the two would line up.
As I mentioned, I was taking pictures of every 100th milestone I hit. This next one, although not listed on project-gc, was a target I was hoping would line up. My 1,900th find at the set of the TV show 'Corner Gas'. The set is no longer there and is probably a safe bet that the cache isn't either.
Sometimes I try to land a milestone on a different cache type. My first find was a multi-stage that I actually didn't do. I just happen to stumble on the final and that was the start of my geocaching journey. On a geocaching road trip to Dauphin, Manitoba, I was trying to find enough caches so that I could hit my 3,000th on another multi-stage and have it done properly. I also needed sixty nine finds before I reached this milestone.
Another milestone that I would take pictures of was during my daily caching streak. Every 100th day would be another picture. I had a specific cache I wanted to get to start day one thousand. It was a puzzle cache. 'Dear Lord, I would like my life back' GC64231. This one was placed for another local geocacher who was also doing a daily streak. As the sign says, I found 3,702 caches during those one thousand days. That's almost four per day.
There's all sort of different milestones if you're really into the numbers and stats. As you're reading this, I reached another milestone. My 100th blog published. Almost two years in the making. When I started, I never envisioned reaching 100 blogs published. I just focused on each passing week and wondering what adventure I could share next. As I got closer to that magical number, I began to wonder what my 100th blog should be. Only fitting that I talk about milestones.
I also feel very fortunate to be able to write and share my adventures and thoughts. A recent episode of The Geocaching Podcast was about being thankful as it was on the eve of the American Thanksgiving. There are many things to be thankful for when it comes to this crazy hobby called geocaching. Without the people who hide the containers, there wouldn't be a hobby. One of the things that I'm thankful for (and I'm sure every geocaching creator is thankful for as well) is you, the audience. I would like to take a moment and give everyone a big virtual hug and a thank you for taking the time to read what I have to say. Here's to the next 100 blogs. Hopefully there will be many more fun, interesting and amazing adventures to tell. Maybe I can meet up with a few prominent geocachers and talk about that. The possibilities are endless.
Until next week, be happy, stay healthy, stay safe, hug your geo-pets, enjoy life and most of all, have fun. Peace out.
(caught in the act. I step away and geo-dog takes over to write a puppy story)
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