Geocaching and Social Distancing

Good morning everyone.  This week I'm looking at my most distant found geocaches.  This is by longitude and latitude.  My most Easterly found geocache is 'Multi-Talented' - GCBCA6.  It has a longitude of W079 22.685.  It is also 1,515kilometers (941 miles) from my current home.  My most Westerly found cache is 'Lake of the Little Fishes' - GCA079.  It has a longitude of W116 12.978 and is 1,352km (840 miles) from home.  My most Southerly found cache is 'Cache with a View #2' - GC1V196.  It has a latitude of N36 05.902 and is 2,115km (1,314 miles) away.  Finally, my most Northerly found cache isn't very far North.  'Q' GC4BXQF has a latitude of N51 29.210 and is 174km (108 miles) from home.

I actually had a different subject lined up for this week's blog.  With everything going on in the world right now and the social distancing that we're suppose to be practicing, I thought there could be a possible topic there.  Unless you've been living under a rock, the coronavirus/covid-19 is all over the news and social media.  What's also all over the media is the hysteria that's going on as well.  A couple of important things to practice during these times is 1) Wash Your Hands.  That isn't rocket science.  Everyone should be washing their hands multiple times per day regardless.  2) Social Distancing.  What does that mean?  Avoid large crowds by staying at home.  Become anti-social.  That's easy for me to do since I haven't really been seen by the local caching community since last summer.  You will need to get outside and do something before you go stir crazy.  What can you do that's fun and do it solo?  Geocaching of course.

There is plenty to do for a geocacher.  Aside from going out, you can stay inside and solve puzzles.  You can catch up on videos from your favorite Geocaching creator such as the Geocaching Vlogger, Cache the Line, Cache Canada, Kneel Moore to name a few.  If you're more into reading, then there's the Geocaching Guild on FB and Twitter.  There's a new blog published every morning.  We can't forget about podcasts.  Is there an episode of your favorite podcast that you missed?  Now would be a good time to catch up on missed episodes.

But we're geocachers.  We want to be outside finding geocaches.  That's what I did yesterday.  I went out, with a container of disinfectant wipes and found a bunch of caches just outside of the city where I wouldn't be in close proximity of other people.  Just a quick explanation, Nathan Lewis, a geocacher down in Tennessee, better known as @SuperNateTN in the Twitter world, put out a challenge for people to post videos of them disinfecting the geocaches they find.  #CovidCacheDecon.  I don't do videos.  I have pictures but not of me wiping as that would be hard to do with one hand while I hold my phone in the other.  Back to my adventure.  My first attempt at finding took me the longest.  Not that it was a difficult find.  It wasn't Winter friendly.  After some poking around, I found the wire that attaches the container to the fence.  Undeterred, I dug, I pulled, and I dug some more.
 

Soon I had success.  The wire had come unattached from the fence.  That was an easy fix.  Signed and replaced.  This was just one geocache in a 32 cache powertrail.  I don't have the other ones and I decided that today wasn't the day I'd find the rest.  Maybe later in the Spring.

Of all the caches I found today, the next one was the only one that would be in a higher muggle area.  Fortunately, it was more vehicle traffic going by.  What also helped is that this was a quick find, although it was in the second place I looked.  

There was a couple of geocaches that I wanted to get today, since I was going to be in the general area.  This next one was listed in the bearing on my 360 from home stat that I haven't (and only bearing that I didn't have) found a cache in.  Another quick find.  From reading past logs, I had seen that the container was frozen to the ground, but the log sheet was still accessible.  That's exactly what I found.  A small container frozen to the ground, but I was able to sign the log sheet.

The other one that I wanted to get was a recently published cache, but not a recently hidden cache.  Huh?  The owner had hidden a bunch of Letterbox caches in June of 2019, but forgot about one until she was told about it from another geocacher who had found it and signed it for the FTF.  That was published this week.  I have found the other Letterbox caches along this stretch of road last year.  I knew this would be the perfect spot to be geocaching and still able to socially distance myself.  

For those who follow Cache The Line, you'll know that he likes to say "there's always one more".  I was going to conclude my adventures after that last find, but I decided to go get that one more to give me more content to write about.  There are more Letterbox caches that I haven't found yet, with the exception of one that I grabbed on Leap Day.  I swung by and grabbed the Letterbox beside the one I found on February 29th.

That was going to be my last find of the day, but I decided that there just had to be one more to find.  A very quick park and grab on my way home. 

Now that I'm back home with my boys and geo-pet, I know my day isn't done yet.  I might be inside now, but there's still more geocaching stuff to do.  I have this to write.  I still have the North Dakota stats to work on.  I am so far behind on doing the stats report for them that I'm considering handing that project over to someone else who can do it.  We shall see.  I should solve more geo-art puzzles and go find those in due time.  I also had two live streams to watch on Saturday night.  First was Cache Canada and guests talking about Adventure Labs.  If you missed it or want to watch it again, you can find that here > Cache Canada Chats.  Less than an hour after that was done, The Geocaching Podcast did a special Saturday episode of their show.  I believe they will be doing this ever Saturday while we should be social distancing and self-isolating.  You can catch the replay of the first episode here > Saturday Night Anti-social club 

That was my Saturday.  Until next week, be happy, be safe, enjoy life, hug your geo-pets (I think that's still safe to do), be kind to others, but most of all, have fun and WASH YOUR HANDS.

(something else to do if you are self isolating, read to your geo-pet)