Geocaching with Woo

The next challenge in the "You Might Be a Geocacher If..." campaign is "You Might Be a Social Butterfly If..." This Geocaching Personality souvenir can be earned between October 29 and December 3 by earning 70 points. Check the Friend League to keep track of your points, here's how they're earned: Log a Found It - 5 Find a geocache with 10 or more favorite points - 10 Attend an Event - 15 Drop a Trackable - 1 Being a "Social Butterfly" is easy, just attend events for extra points. Luckily, GIFF weekend falls in this time period, so for 15 points and an extra souvenir, I might find a way to attend my first one! Don't forget to keep track of your progress on your Friend League.

Today, after two years, we have completed the final three remaining caches that we needed in the Spring Grove Area GeoTour, and hopefully earned the associated souvenir. This GeoTour brought us to the area of Spring Grove, Pennsylvania, and was our first exposure to gadget caches. Despite the fact that the GeoTour was several years old and many of the caches had not aged well, we were still able to get enough of the required codes to qualify for the geocoins for each of the three years. The geocoins were nice prizes and did not have tracking codes. The one for 2013 was a typical coin, but the coins for 2014 and 2015 were part of a four piece puzzle, which, when put together with the geocoins for 2016 and 2017 (maybe?), would form a "mega" coin. Unfortunately, new caches weren't put out for 2016 or 2017, so our puzzle is incomplete. After we finished finding the GeoTour's final three remaining caches, we stopped by the Visitor's Center to enquire about the o

Every year, the second Sunday in October is International EarthCache Day. This year, if we log an EarthCache on either October 13 or 14, we'll earn a souvenir from Geocaching. Would you like to add a little more pizzazz to your profile page? Visit the EarthCache web page and apply for a Masters or Discovery award. Masters awards are dependent upon the number of EarthCaches that have been found and logged, the number of states/provinces/countries that they've been found in and the number of EarthCaches that have been developed. Discovery awards are for finding and logging large numbers of EarthCaches: 50+, 100+, 250+, 500+ and 1000+. Me? I have a Bronze Master and a Quartz Discovery Award.    So, go on, learn a lesson about the Earth, and log your EarthCache today!

Today, Tom and I went to Antietam National Battlefield in Sharpsburg, MD and worked on the Antietam Adventure - a ten stage lab cache put out by the Maryland Geocaching Society . Unlike most lab caches that I've completed, which only last the few days surrounding a Mega event, this one began in 2016 and has a duration of about five years. At the first stage, we got a Master Key, which preceded the answers for each subsequent stage. At stages two through seven, information for a word puzzle was gathered and after the puzzle had been solved, we learned what information needed to be gathered at stages eight and nine to solve a second puzzle, and the tenth stage. Videos accompanied the completion of each stage and were a nice touch, as well as educational. The route we took around the battlefield followed the driving tour, so we were able to work on a Wherigo ( Antietam - The Bloodiest Day ) at the same time. Even though I had gathered the answers for six of the stages before a

Woo hoo, I'm a Caching Connoisseur! We started this journey yesterday, and ended up only scoring 55 points (three caches with ten or more favorite points and two other caches). I needed a cache for this calendar day anyway, so in getting that cache, we achieved our goal. I can barely wait for the next personality!

Tom and I decided to take the few good weather days this past weekend and head across Maryland to work on the Heart of the Civil War Heritage Area GeoTrail . The GeoTrail consists of 16 caches, and everyone who finds and records thirteen of the code words found in each cache will receive a free prize, a geocoin is also available for purchase. We were able to find thirteen the first day, so first thing this morning we went to the Frederick Visitor Center to pick up our free prize (a Pathtag) and purchase the geocoin. Overall, I felt like the GeoTrail was well done. There were a nice variety of cache types (one multiple, five mysteries and ten traditionals), and aside from a few wet logbooks and one illegible code word (which I was fortunate enough to figure out from the cache description), they were pretty well maintained. The coordinates for the multiple and mystery caches were easy to solve - I was even able to figure them out before we left on the trip, partly thanks to a web