Geocaching and some Random Stuff

 Good morning everyone.  This week we stop in Maryland.  The geocache with the most favorite points is 'A Picture is Worth a Thousand Words'  GC5DN6X.  Placed in May, 2015, it has been found 859 times and has 500 favorite points.  The first geocache placed was 'Assateague Island'  GC56.  Placed in September, 2000, it was never found and archived in 2002.  The oldest active geocache is 'Jusef's Cache'  GC1FD.  Placed in February, 2001, it has been found 1,406 times and has 370 favorite points.

This isn't the blog I was eluding to last week.  There's been a slight change of plans.  All that is connected to my moving.  Yes, I do have a new place, but the apartment needs a little TLC before I can move in.  The apartment won't be ready until after Easter.  The blog I had intended to do will have to wait a bit.  The last two times I moved, I had one blog dedicated to sunrises and sunsets.  The other time was showcasing water towers that I came across in my travels.  I do have something planned for this move and it is something that I like to get pictures of during my travels.  I'm sure we've all come across these in our travels, but do you stop to look at it?  Enough of that teaser.

With my latest move, (7th move in seven years for those keeping score), will come a change in some of the stats.  For the most part, our personal stats don't change, but a few do.  Such as the cache closest to home.  Needless to say, that has changed with each move.  Another newer stat that can be found on Project-gc is the 360 degree from home cache found stat.  Before moving out to Beausejour last spring, that circle looked like this..

After moving to Beausejour, it took on this appearance...

Yuck.  Some will see that as a new challenge.  East of Beausejour, there isn't a whole lot of geocaches.  Plus the landscape and access isn't as easy due to the fact that you are now entering into the rocky Canadian Shield.  I'm hoping that moving back to Winnipeg will bring back a completed 360 circle.

As a blogger, I'm always trying to think of new topics aside from the adventures.  Some do make it into draft form, but never completed as I didn't like the way the blog was going.  One idea was talking about living in a rural area and how far I need to go to find the closest unfound geocache.  For those that do live in a rural area would understand and have to travel an hour or more for their closest unfound geocache.  My closest was 17km away in the town of Garson.  I have since found that one, so I believe my closest unfound is almost 18km away in the opposite direction.  I love living in Beausejour.  It's a small town, quiet and you can walk to wherever you need to go.  For geocaching purposes, I do feel isolated.  Most of the geocaching activity is in the Winnipeg area, or it's South or West of the city.  Not much occurs in this corner of Manitoba.

I have to drive 38km or almost 24 miles for a cache on the East side of the city.  I already commute to the city five days a week.  I really don't want to go a sixth or seventh time.

A couple of weeks ago, I did a blog about pathtags and a trade that I made.  I'm happy to announce that each pathtag has made it to it's new owner.  I got confirmation the other day that Cryptid received the pathtag I sent and I got Cryptid's pathtag last week.  Both arrived in less than the three weeks that I had anticipated.  Thank you Cryptid for the trade.

Earlier in the week, I was approached by gloworm_77 in North Dakota about some stats on their oldest geocache.  Their oldest active cache 'The Buck Stops Here'  GC551 turned 20 years old over the weekend and the ND caching community held a birthday party celebration.  What I was able to find out about this particular geocache and share to the celebration was the following:  the cache owner is dakota.  They only placed two geocaches.  The other was a multi that was found five times before being archived.  Assuming that the five finders of the multi are all from the U.S., all I had to do was subtract five off the totals from 'The Buck Stops Here'.  As of last weekend, the oldest geocache in North Dakota was found by 956 people from the U.S, 98 from Canada, 7 from Germany and Denmark, 2 from Switzerland, and 1 geocacher from New Zealand, Australia, Netherlands, and Japan.  I'm one of those Canadians as I found it almost 2 years ago.  On average, this geocache is found about 50 times per year.  The early years saw maybe twenty finds per year and the last five years have seen about 80 plus finds per year.  It's mostly in the summer months as this is not a winter friendly hide.  Depending on how much snow is in Bismarck, ND, will determine if you'll be able to find it during the winter months.  Happy 20th birthday GC551.

The weather around here has been awesome.  Most of the snow has melted away and it's warm enough to go for a walk and find geocaches.  The past few days I have been picking away at a power trail, trying to get closer to my 6,000th find.  It's an abandoned railway line and it has more than enough geocaches placed along the route.  

To give you an idea of just how long this power trail is, I needed to do three screenshots just to get it all in.

With that, I'm going to tie in the photo contest.  This is the last week to submit your entries.  The theme is your favorite geocaching hat.  This week I'm showing an older hat of mine that I did wear often.  My IRS hat.  No, not the Internal Revenue Service.  Industrial Rubber Supply.  That's a company I use to work for over twenty years ago.  This is one of the few geocaches I found along the power trail.

Send your entries to thegeocachingguild@gmail.com or direct message me on Twitter @thegeocachingg1 

Before I wrap things up, I want to share something that I came across on social media and it sort of ties in with my closing line.  It goes as follows:

"If he/she doesn't chase you when you walk away, keep walking and don't turn back.  If you are afraid of leaving because you know they won't chase you, staying won't change a thing.  Pursue your own happiness and the right person will catch up to you.  Until then, get a puppy."

That's all for this week.  Next week I'll announce the winner of the March photo contest and what the April theme will be.  I'm always open to suggestions for the monthly themes.  Until then, be happy, stay safe, wash your hands and wear a mask, hug your furry critters, and most importantly, be happy.  Peace out.

These two won't be moving with me.