Geocaching with Geocacher Ken

Good morning everyone. Welcome to the first of the monthly blog schedule.  When I decided to make the switch from weekly to monthly, I had no idea what was waiting for me.  This actually begins before I concluded my fourth quarter review and year in review blogs.  I kicked off the new year by testing positive for covid.  Fortunately, I was double vaccinated at the time, but I still needed to isolate for a week.  Honestly, it was the best week off of work.  I had gone grocery shopping days before testing positive, so I was good for food.  I had a few people check on me via text, one of which is my geocaching partner, Auntie Mo.  I did solve a couple of geocaching jigsaw puzzles that are located in Southern Ontario.  Aside from that, it was a whole lot of video games.   (I had plenty of time to get creative on Minecraft, building a tardis and a rustic church). I honestly thought I was coming down with a cold....

Good morning everyone, Today I'm going to look back at 2021 as a whole.  I wasn't sure how to present the review.  I could break it down in terms of numbers and stats.  My quarterly reviews already does that.  Instead, I'm going to look at the highlights of the year gone by. I had set a bunch of mini goals and milestones throughout the year in terms of mystery caches found, multi-stage caches found, etc.  The biggest of them all was the first milestone I hit on April first.  I used GC8NEAT for my 6,000th find. (GC8NEAT I filled two bags and could easily have filled more) Another highlight was doing eleven different cache types in a single day without attending a mega event.  That sort of fell into place with an event, a CITO, followed by a Community Celebration event.  There was enough of the other icons to get ten in total.  I had to drive back to the city for the eleventh one.  I did it.  Not an easy task when you have...

Good morning everyone, Today I look back at the last three months of 2021.  Things picked up where they left off in September, but like the outdoor temperatures around these parts of the woods, my numbers went down with the temperature.  Let's break things down. October:  Still a big month for numbers.  I went on a big adventure on the week of my birthday.  After sticking my toe into Saskatchewan for 2 caches, I started to head east and towards home, with the goal of doing two Trans-Canada Highway Adventure Labs, and anything else that I could squeeze in.  I was also chipping away at a power trail that runs northeast of Winnipeg. (First time setting foot in Saskatchewan since 2015) (so much ground to cover still and little time left before the sun has sunk below the horizon) I finished October with 108 finds.  Sixty nine of those were traditional, thirty ALs, six mystery, a multi, letterbox, and a CITO each.  I also filled ...

Good morning everyone. I'm going to take a break from my weekly look in pictures.  Something occurred during the week that I want to reflect on.  What happened?  December 23rd and 24th to be exact was an anniversary.  A four year anniversary.  It's hard to believe that I have been writing a geocaching blog for four years now.  That's 206 blogs out of a possible 208 weeks that I have published something.  I only missed two weeks if I'm doing the math correctly.  Those two weeks that I missed occurred in the first year if I'm not mistaken.  December 23rd was when I wrote the first blog, and December 24th was when it was published. The very first blog wasn't really much other than an introduction to who I am.  You can read that here >  first blog   The blog as a whole was a work in progress.  I was always thinking of ways to grow the readership base.  I featured people and places, did a monthly opening of geocaching s...

Good morning everyone. The title to this week's blog really should be 'My Week Without Pictures'.  I could grab a couple of screen shots.  I didn't take any pictures   Technically, I only found one physical geocache from the time I published last week's blog to right now as I write this.  That one that I did find was a new publication, about half hour after I published last week's blog.  I was still in bed (like I am right now) when I got the notification.  I normally don't rush out for first to finds, unless I feel I have a legitimate chance at being first.  That morning I did feel that.  I jumped out of bed, quickly put some clothes on, including a hat to cover my messy hair, and out the door I went.  One advantage (depending on how you look at it) to the pandemic is the wearing of masks.  Put one on and no one else will know I still have morning breath.  Social distancing helps too.   It only took me a couple of mi...

Good morning everyone. This week is going to be a challenge.  It's normally about the geocaches I have found over the past week since my last blog.  Here's the problem.  I haven't found any.  I just didn't go out geocaching this week.  Didn't feel like it.  That's not to say there wasn't anything geocaching related happening.  I'll get to that in a moment. What have I been doing this week if I wasn't geocaching?  During the week, I have returned to going for a daily walk after work in Kildonan Park.  There have been a couple of nice days and the park isn't too busy.  This allows me to sort out my thoughts.   If I time it right, I can catch the sun setting over the river near Rainbow Stage.   There are two trees in the park that people can hang an ornament or two or more on.  This one is located near Rainbow Stage.  I'm not sure how many times I walked past it before finally spotting i...

Good morning everyone, As I mentioned last week, I stopped trying to fill my date found calendar so every day shows eleven finds for each and every day.  One of the reasons I sort of touched on was the rush hour traffic.  The way the road system in Winnipeg is set up, it may have been sufficient in the 1950s, but that was 60+ years ago.  Not much has changed since.  I can write an entire blog on this topic, but I'll stick to geocaching.   Another reason for stopping was that doing something like that was controlling my life.  Just like doing a daily streak did.  Geocaching is a hobby and hobbies are meant to be fun.  I'm always saying at the end of each blog to have fun.  Time to practice what I tell everyone else. Needless to say, I didn't do any geocaching until Friday.  There are four geocaches that I haven't found in the town of Stoney Mountain, just a short drive North of the city.  At this time of year, attributes are ver...