Good morning everyone. This week's fun fact is all about Manitoba geocachers with the most finds in July. They are: two gemseekers - 748, JB - 668, JAB007 - 549, and Hakliva - 461. I finished 14th in the province with 233 finds in July. A total of 1,044 Manitoba geocachers found at least one geocache in July.
This is the second week that my blog will coincide with Hakliva's vlog. We'll both be looking at the most recent Geocaching HQ promotion that just concluded over a week ago. This time around, all you needed to do was find 100 geocaches in a 29 day period as specified by Geocaching HQ to unlock 13 souvenirs. The first few were easy, but the numbers needed to unlock the remaining souvenirs became harder. When this promotion was announced, my initial reaction was "meh". Nothing really difficult to finding 100 geocaches, unless you live in a rural area and you have your area cached out within a 50 mile radius. Unlike last summer's Mary Hyde promotion that introduced the "Friend League", or the last promotion in the Spring, "Planetary Pursuit", that had a point value for different geocache types, the "Hidden Creatures" promotion didn't offer up anything unique or even a twist.
When this promotion was announced, I didn't think I'd be able to claim all 13 souvenirs. Two of the weekends that this promotion covers is my weekend with the my boys, d-2002 and mew two. Unless I find a few Sunday evening after taking them home, those weekends are a bust for geocaching. The other weekends were already busy. One thing I have been saying lately is "You don't know what tomorrow will bring". Something occurred in my personal life that I wasn't expecting and thusly freed up two of my weekends. Hakliva had mentioned on Twitter about wanting to finish off some geo-art that we had started along with AFGirl at the beginning of April during the Planetary Pursuit challenge. We started planning on finishing what we started. There was enough left over, along with any other caches we get, to complete the Hidden Creatures challenge.
To get things going, there was an ice cream event to kick off the challenge.
This is the second week that my blog will coincide with Hakliva's vlog. We'll both be looking at the most recent Geocaching HQ promotion that just concluded over a week ago. This time around, all you needed to do was find 100 geocaches in a 29 day period as specified by Geocaching HQ to unlock 13 souvenirs. The first few were easy, but the numbers needed to unlock the remaining souvenirs became harder. When this promotion was announced, my initial reaction was "meh". Nothing really difficult to finding 100 geocaches, unless you live in a rural area and you have your area cached out within a 50 mile radius. Unlike last summer's Mary Hyde promotion that introduced the "Friend League", or the last promotion in the Spring, "Planetary Pursuit", that had a point value for different geocache types, the "Hidden Creatures" promotion didn't offer up anything unique or even a twist.
When this promotion was announced, I didn't think I'd be able to claim all 13 souvenirs. Two of the weekends that this promotion covers is my weekend with the my boys, d-2002 and mew two. Unless I find a few Sunday evening after taking them home, those weekends are a bust for geocaching. The other weekends were already busy. One thing I have been saying lately is "You don't know what tomorrow will bring". Something occurred in my personal life that I wasn't expecting and thusly freed up two of my weekends. Hakliva had mentioned on Twitter about wanting to finish off some geo-art that we had started along with AFGirl at the beginning of April during the Planetary Pursuit challenge. We started planning on finishing what we started. There was enough left over, along with any other caches we get, to complete the Hidden Creatures challenge.
To get things going, there was an ice cream event to kick off the challenge.
After the event, I teamed up with Hakliva and a guest from out of province. Last Zoo from New Brunswick was in town, so we took her to find a few caches, including one of the newer Virtuals.
It was at another event that was hosted by Marco Island Guy and Marco Island Girl (celebrating the 4th of July with a backyard BBQ) that Hakliva and myself cemented our plans to finish off the geo-art. It was also suggested that we pitch our tents at a campground so we can make this a two day excursion.
Saturday, July 7th was the first of our two day quest to finish off the geo-art. Hakliva got a head start by grabbing a couple of FTFs nearby before I arrived at her place. From there, it was off to Roland, Manitoba, where we were suppose to start the geo-art the last time. This time we were prepared for the lack of cell service. It was a roll reversal from the last time. I drove then while Hakliva and AFGirl took turns running. This time, Hakliva drove and I did the running. This would also be one of the hottest days of the year. With the humidity, the temps were around 109F. I came prepared with sunscreen so I wouldn't bake anymore than I already am. We also had plenty of water with us too. I did on a couple occasions holler back to Hakliva, asking what the terrain level was on some of these caches.
There was plenty of corn growing in the fields.
We completed the fox geo-art. Now on to the apple geo-art. Once that was completed, we did a small power trail of Letterbox caches. With all that done, and not a single DNF, we knew we had completed the Hidden Creature challenge. We wouldn't be officially getting the turtle until we logged all our finds for the day, so we had to settle for this turtle in Morden.
Now it was off to set up camp. After a small nap and a break from the hot sun, Hakliva and myself went for a walk to grab a few more caches around and near the campground. A couple of these are older caches that were published in 2005. One of those still had the original logbook. That is so cool to find.
Back to camp. I'm on the left, while Hakliva set up her tent on the right. I'm finally getting some use of my tent that I purchased two years ago. LOL Time for a bite to eat before turning in for the night. Approximately 114 finds for me on the first day.
Sunday's mission is to find a bunch of challenge caches, a series of field puzzle caches, plus any other caches we could get. That will be next week's blog. You can see Hakliva's video of our first day here >
https://youtu.be/N9eGoLvjcmA Her video will be available to view after 11:30am local time. Until then, be safe, enjoy, peace out, and most importantly, have fun.
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