Geocaching and the Birthday week

Good morning everyone.  Fun fact for this week, most caches in an area according to project-gc.  In Manitoba, no surprise here, Winnipeg leads the way with 1,790 geocaches.  Dauphin is second with 1,027.  Pembina Valley, which includes the cities of Morden and Winkler is fourth with 859 geocaches hidden.  On the other side of the border in North Dakota; Cass County (which includes the city of Fargo) leads the way with 427 geocaches.  Williams County sits in eighth spot with 139 and Stark County is next with 120.  I haven't been to Williams or Stark counties yet.  Maybe next year for the North Dakota Camping and Caching event.  Fingers crossed.

Do you do anything special that's geocaching related when it's your birthday?  Do you host an event so you can celebrate with your geocaching friends?  Do you go on a geocaching adventure?  This week, I'll be looking at what I do and how I celebrate my birthday, geocaching style.

Depending on what day of the week my birthday falls on, I'll either take the day off or the week off.  Whatever I do, I plan on a day long geocaching adventure.  It may not necessarily be on my birthday, but during the week of my birthday will do.  I pick a day where my find count is low (less than 10) and plan from there.  The first two years I've done this, I've gone North to Victoria Beach and Grand Beach respectively.  The third year, I was living outside the city, so a trip to Winnipeg was all I was able to do.  This year, I wasn't quite sure where I was going to go.  I noticed a bunch of newer challenge caches in the Winkler/Morden area.  I love challenge caches.  They are fun to complete and adds an extra game within the game we already play.  One of the challenge caches required the finder to have found five thousand caches.  Since I was closing in on five thousand finds, what a perfect cache to get for my five thousandth.  Now I have a destination.

On Thanksgiving Monday in Canada (the day before I would head down for my big geocaching adventure), I kicked the week off by claiming a different challenge cache.  This one requires the individual or group to have ten thousand finds.  A group was assembled so this challenge cache can be claimed.  Along with myself, I was joined by (from LtoR): QuiltinAnnie, MightyStrongValiant, me, Hakliva, ThePeanutGang, PelikanKru, JAB007, and QuiltinAnnie's husband.  Awol took the group picture for us.

Before we found this cache, we knew there was a traditional nearby.  As we gathered, we noticed the traditional was no longer showing up on the Geocaching app.  What the heck???  We knew it was found the day before, so some quick searching told us it was just archived.  Found yesterday and archived today?  Is the container still in place?  If so, there's a potential zombie cache to be found.  So off we went.  It didn't take long to make the find.  My eleventh zombie cache found.  The rest of the day was spent finding puzzle caches with a high difficulty rating and other puzzle caches.  The group slowly thinned out with each geocache found until it was just myself, Hakliva, ThePeanutGang and MightyStrongValiant left.

Tuesday morning, I'm up early to get my day started.  It's about an hour and a half drive down to the Morden/Winkler area.  This would be my third time going to this part of the province this year.  I had everything calculated out so that my five thousandth find lined up with the challenge cache I came for.  As I began, I wasn't expecting to find some fun gadget caches.  The very first find was just that.  I really enjoy finding caches that JAB007 puts out.  I would find a few more of his caches as the day would go on. 

I had everything lined up, but with any plan, there is always the potential for a curveball.  In this case, five caches leading up to my goal were on a road that apparently had no exit and the road looked muddy.  Hmmmmm.  I know I had bypassed a bunch of caches, so I had to recalculate, backtrack, grab some of the caches I drove past, and got myself back on track so everything lined up for.....

Honestly, I didn't think I'd hit the five thousand find mark this year.  My goal was to reach #4,500.  Having done that at the North Dakota Camping and Caching event in June, I set my sights on five thousand.  Anyway...  I carried on down the power trails, also grabbing a few other caches that were just off the trail, like this other fun cache from JAB007.

With the Victory Trail challenge caches done and the Unicorn Power trail also complete, I found a few more caches as I made my way into Morden for some lunch.  Another thing I knew I could do, and wanted to do was a library cache in Morden.  Since this was a Tuesday, the library would be open.  So, after lunch, I made my way over to the library.  I followed the directions to get to where I needed to be inside.  It felt that I was in the wrong spot, so I moved over to the next section.  I still wasn't seeing anything odd.  I soon realized that the spot I thought was wrong was actually right and where I had moved to thinking that was the right spot was actually wrong.  Back I went and the cache was soon found.

I found a few more caches in Morden, including another JAB007 cache.  I love the thoughtfulness and work that he puts into his caches.  It's these type of caches that make the game fun and adventures memorable.  

There was a couple of more caches I wanted to attempt in the neighboring town of Winkler.  Both are DNFs and I wanted to avenge these.  I was successful in both.  I could have stayed longer and found more caches, but I wanted to be home in time to catch the Winnipeg Jets home opener on TV.  I ended my day with 68 caches found and 11 notes on challenge caches that I didn't qualify for just yet.  51 traditional caches found and 17 mystery.  

I'm not sure what I'll do next year as my birthday will be on a Saturday.  No need to take a day off unless I take a day in lieu of since I don't work weekends.  That's next year, I have a few months before I have to submit my vacation request for 2019/20.  

As for the rest of the week, it was quiet, just the way I like it.  Found a few caches here and there.  Got plenty of birthday wishes on FB.  All in all, it was a good week.  The week ended with International Earthcache Day, which will be another blog.  Until next time, be safe, enjoy, peace out, and have fun.