Good morning everyone. This week, we are heading back across the border to Washington State. The oldest cache is 'Mike's First' GC4. Hidden May 7th, 2000. It was found once and has since been archived. The oldest active cache is 'Geocache (GCD)' GCD. Hidden in June, 2000, it has been found 1,881 times and has received 898 favorite points. The most favorited cache in Washington State comes as no surprise. 'Geocaching Headquarters' GCK25B. Hidden in July, 2004, it has 17,264 found logs and 4,944 favorite points.
I was hoping to do my June Cache Advance Cache Crate unboxing this week, but there's just one problem, I don't have a cache crate to unbox. I have a busy weekend coming up, so if it shows up in the next day or two, the unboxing will have to wait until next week. What I really wanted to do with this month's unboxing was talk about the journey the crate takes to get to me. I'll still do that and toss in some other things as well, hence the title for this week, random stuff.
The journey of this month's cache crate began on June 19th in Spokane, Washington. I received an e-mail saying that the crate had been shipped and it was going to my old address. WHAT!! I thought I had changed my address with Cache Advance. Turns out, I only changed my billing address, not the shipping address. I'm not sure if my oldest boy will forward the crate over to me, toss in the garbage, or go Elvis on me and mark it 'Return to Sender'. That was on Friday. Monday, I head over to the post office and get a mail forwarding thingy so any and all of my mail will be rerouted by the post office to my new location. In the e-mail from Cache Advance is the ability to track my package. I've never done this before. It gets here when it gets here. This time it's different, so I've been tracking this thing almost daily.
Meanwhile, the crate was shipped to Santa Clara, California, then to Bell Gardens, California, before stopping in Los Angeles on the same day I was at the post office. It takes three business days for the mail rerouting to kick in. Hopefully it's still in California, or heading my way via Pony Express, allowing the postal rerouting to kick in. In those three days, the cache crate went from Los Angeles, to Compton, California, then back to Los Angeles. On June 24th, the crate passed through the international distribution center in Los Angeles. Almost a week later, it arrives in Newark. Newark? As in Newark, New Jersey? I Googled Newark and it turns out, there's a Newark in California. That makes more sense. Why would they be shipping it across the country to New Jersey? The cache crate left Newark on July 1sr, arriving in Vancouver, B.C. on July 2nd. It cleared customs on July 7th. That was yesterday (I'm writing this on Wednesday). Almost three weeks has passed and no cache crate to open. I already know what's inside as I saw Joshua, the Geocaching Vlogger post his cache crate unboxing just before I sat down to do this. It does feel like this month's cache crate is coming to me by Pony Express. Careful for what I wish for.
How is geocaching in your area? Have they started publishing caches again or did they never stop? Around here, they never stopped. Only thing that wasn't being published was events. Until recently. The Covid numbers for Manitoba are quite impressive, compared to other parts of the world. As of today, we've had 325 positive or assumed positive cases since this whole pandemic started. Currently we have six active cases with no new cases in the past seven days. Manitoba is slowly opening things up, and that includes publishing of events to an extent. We are currently in phase three of reopening. That means we can have up to fifty people for an indoor gathering and one hundred for an outdoor event, with safe social distancing practices. Yesterday was the first event that I know of in Winnipeg. A 'Lazy Evening Coffee... in the park!' (GC8VH43), hosted by local vlogger Hakliva. I didn't attend this event as the logistics didn't work in my favor. So far, I see seventeen attended logs. We've been self-isolating for months now, so it only made sense to have the first event an outdoor event.
How is everyone doing on the Memory Lane challenge? I've been super busy with moving, settling, and other things that I haven't really had a chance to go geocaching. That doesn't mean I haven't done any. I did manage to squeeze in eight finds for the month of June. Compare that to June of 2019, where I had 266 finds. That's a huge drop. Sometimes life gets in the way of our fun. With the deadline for Memory Lane extended until the beginning of January, 2021, I have plenty of time to reach the top of the award ladder. You need 200 points to be at the top. I calculated that six caches per month over the seven months this runs is enough to reach 200 points. I'm on pace to reach 200 before the end. One of the caches I got in June was a first to find. I stopped rushing out the door when I got a notification of a new geocache, but I honestly felt I had a chance at this one. While I was there, who should come around the corner? Marco Island Guy and Marco Island Girl. A husband and wife geocaching team who I haven't seen since the North Dakota Camping and Caching event last June. It was good catching up with old friends. You never know who you will bump into when you go geocaching. My contact with local geocachers has been very minimal at best. I should change my geocaching name to The Invisible Man. LOL.
One thing I haven't done yet is updated my home coordinates on the official Geocaching web page. For the most part, I don't think it will matter except the odd stat here or there. One in particular is the 360 degrees from home stat. Should be interesting to see how or if that changes. I did have all the degrees from home completed.
I was hoping to do my June Cache Advance Cache Crate unboxing this week, but there's just one problem, I don't have a cache crate to unbox. I have a busy weekend coming up, so if it shows up in the next day or two, the unboxing will have to wait until next week. What I really wanted to do with this month's unboxing was talk about the journey the crate takes to get to me. I'll still do that and toss in some other things as well, hence the title for this week, random stuff.
The journey of this month's cache crate began on June 19th in Spokane, Washington. I received an e-mail saying that the crate had been shipped and it was going to my old address. WHAT!! I thought I had changed my address with Cache Advance. Turns out, I only changed my billing address, not the shipping address. I'm not sure if my oldest boy will forward the crate over to me, toss in the garbage, or go Elvis on me and mark it 'Return to Sender'. That was on Friday. Monday, I head over to the post office and get a mail forwarding thingy so any and all of my mail will be rerouted by the post office to my new location. In the e-mail from Cache Advance is the ability to track my package. I've never done this before. It gets here when it gets here. This time it's different, so I've been tracking this thing almost daily.
Meanwhile, the crate was shipped to Santa Clara, California, then to Bell Gardens, California, before stopping in Los Angeles on the same day I was at the post office. It takes three business days for the mail rerouting to kick in. Hopefully it's still in California, or heading my way via Pony Express, allowing the postal rerouting to kick in. In those three days, the cache crate went from Los Angeles, to Compton, California, then back to Los Angeles. On June 24th, the crate passed through the international distribution center in Los Angeles. Almost a week later, it arrives in Newark. Newark? As in Newark, New Jersey? I Googled Newark and it turns out, there's a Newark in California. That makes more sense. Why would they be shipping it across the country to New Jersey? The cache crate left Newark on July 1sr, arriving in Vancouver, B.C. on July 2nd. It cleared customs on July 7th. That was yesterday (I'm writing this on Wednesday). Almost three weeks has passed and no cache crate to open. I already know what's inside as I saw Joshua, the Geocaching Vlogger post his cache crate unboxing just before I sat down to do this. It does feel like this month's cache crate is coming to me by Pony Express. Careful for what I wish for.
How is geocaching in your area? Have they started publishing caches again or did they never stop? Around here, they never stopped. Only thing that wasn't being published was events. Until recently. The Covid numbers for Manitoba are quite impressive, compared to other parts of the world. As of today, we've had 325 positive or assumed positive cases since this whole pandemic started. Currently we have six active cases with no new cases in the past seven days. Manitoba is slowly opening things up, and that includes publishing of events to an extent. We are currently in phase three of reopening. That means we can have up to fifty people for an indoor gathering and one hundred for an outdoor event, with safe social distancing practices. Yesterday was the first event that I know of in Winnipeg. A 'Lazy Evening Coffee... in the park!' (GC8VH43), hosted by local vlogger Hakliva. I didn't attend this event as the logistics didn't work in my favor. So far, I see seventeen attended logs. We've been self-isolating for months now, so it only made sense to have the first event an outdoor event.
How is everyone doing on the Memory Lane challenge? I've been super busy with moving, settling, and other things that I haven't really had a chance to go geocaching. That doesn't mean I haven't done any. I did manage to squeeze in eight finds for the month of June. Compare that to June of 2019, where I had 266 finds. That's a huge drop. Sometimes life gets in the way of our fun. With the deadline for Memory Lane extended until the beginning of January, 2021, I have plenty of time to reach the top of the award ladder. You need 200 points to be at the top. I calculated that six caches per month over the seven months this runs is enough to reach 200 points. I'm on pace to reach 200 before the end. One of the caches I got in June was a first to find. I stopped rushing out the door when I got a notification of a new geocache, but I honestly felt I had a chance at this one. While I was there, who should come around the corner? Marco Island Guy and Marco Island Girl. A husband and wife geocaching team who I haven't seen since the North Dakota Camping and Caching event last June. It was good catching up with old friends. You never know who you will bump into when you go geocaching. My contact with local geocachers has been very minimal at best. I should change my geocaching name to The Invisible Man. LOL.
One thing I haven't done yet is updated my home coordinates on the official Geocaching web page. For the most part, I don't think it will matter except the odd stat here or there. One in particular is the 360 degrees from home stat. Should be interesting to see how or if that changes. I did have all the degrees from home completed.
I was working towards having a minimum of five finds per degree.
It could change in my favor, or take away a degree that I have a find in, or not change at all. When things settle down for me, maybe then I'll update my home coordinates and see where it stands.
Last week I hinted at getting a cat. I caved. I got not one but two kittens. Two females about eight weeks old. This is my first time being a cat owner, so I'll provide updates here on how things are going. So far I've discovered that cat poop is really stinky. We're talking eye watering. Introducing...
Tinkers.
and Sassy.
I couldn't think of any geocaching terms that would make for appropriate names for 2 female cats.
That's it for this week. Not much of a blog and done very quickly as I don't have much free time this week. Until next week, and hopefully my cache crate has arrived by then, be happy, be safe, wash your hands, and most of all, have fun. Peace out.
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