Geocaching with Woo

It's Geocaching Appreciation Week, who knew? Take a few minutes and send a message, picture or video to @GoGeocaching telling them how much you appreciate them and what they do for our hobby! Don't forget to tag it with #IHeartGCHQ!

It's time for another trackable promotion! Once again, Geocaching is partnering with children's author Kat Kronenberg (from the previous "Dream Big" promotion) for the release of her newest book, "Love Big." Follow this link to fill out the form, and become eligible to be chosen to randomly receive one of five hundred CATCH-M trackables. Fifty additional trackables will be given away at Meet-the-Author events. In addition to the trackables, from February to April 2019, three photos each month that are posted and tagged with #GeocachersLoveBIG and #contest, and are the best that capture smiles while on geocaching adventures, will each receive an autographed first edition of "Love Big." These winners will be entered for a Grand Prize of a free author visit to anywhere in the United States, and three additional autographed first editions of the book. Read more about the promotion here .

Geocaching Headquarters has just announced on their blog that this year's Cache In Trash Out (CITO) souvenirs will encompass two seasons instead of two weeks . In an attempt to address feedback from cachers in other regions of the world, the first souvenir will be awarded for attending a CITO event between March 1 and May 31, and the second between September 1 and November 30. This gives these cachers a better chance to coordinate events in time frames that are convenient in the countries that they are from. I think it's a great idea. Trying to find an event to attend in that narrow window has been difficult for me, at times. This past year, due to work obligations, I went to a CITO event and had to leave prior to completing the project. Another year, Tom and I had scheduled a road trip that ended that week, but there were no events in our area when we returned home. This will also help me to think of CITO more often than I have in the past, more than just two weeks a...

Wow, what a year it's been! For our third full year of geocaching, we've accomplished so much, let's do a year in review: January: We earned a souvenir on January 1 to welcome in 2018, then, later in the month went in pursuit of Signal the Frog, and found him in Australia! March: I went to New Jersey and found, among other caches, my first 5/5 Earthcache. We began a Planetary Pursuit, which, in addition to making us Official Space Explorers, netted us nine planetary souvenirs. I used the Flash Geo-Art in Baltimore in pursuit of those souvenirs, and was able to complete all but one, which was missing due to landscaping issues. April: We began this year's quest to make our Earth a better place, and participated in a CITO event. May: North America held it's first Giga event in Cincinnati, and we were there to experience it! We also completed two GeoTours while in Cincinnati (the Butler County Donut Trail and the Earthcaching 101 GeoTour), earning the souvenirs...

Since the "You might be a Geocacher if..." campaign has concluded, I thought I'd give it some thought. Here's how I broke it down: Four new souvenirs: As I've mentioned before, I love souvenirs. They are rewards for completing tasks, and I enjoy having something that says I achieved something. (Positive) Friend League utilization: I think I used the Friend League more on this campaign than any other since the Mary Hyde campaign. In the Planetary Pursuit and Hidden Creature campaigns, all I needed to do was keep track of the number of caches I found, but this time, because of the different ways that points were earned, I would sometimes forget how many I had, and how many more I needed, to earn the next souvenir. I wanted to use the Friend League. (Positive) Point structure: Using a point structure for earning each souvenir made me think about how to earn each one. I had to optimize my caching, and get the most bang for my geocaching buck. I could hav...

It took me two and a half weeks, but I'm a Trackable Lover! For the "You might be a Trackable Lover if..." souvenir, 80 points needed to be acquired. Normally, I'd attempt to get as many points as possible, as soon as possible, but in addition to a local cacher putting out a series of caches, one a day until Christmas, I was also expecting to go visit my parents for Christmas, and that would inevitably mean a couple of days of caching. So, there was only a small chance that I'd miss getting the required amount of points by the deadline. And if either of those things fell through at the last minute, I've got plenty of trackables that need to be activated. That being said, Tom and I attended an event tonight, which gave us the last of the points that we needed to get the souvenir. When the "You might be a Geocacher if..." campaign was announced, I made a few predictions. The first three turned out to be correct - no, I'm not amazing, I just...

Five new country souvenirs have been announced: Chile, Cyprus, Indonesia, Morocco and the United States of America! If you have previously found a cache in any of those countries, you automatically earn the souvenir, and they can be viewed here . I had noticed in the past that both Germany and Canada each a country souvenir as well as souvenirs for each region/province, so as soon as you find your first cache in either of those countries, you get two souvenirs. I had wondered why there wasn't one for the US, but now there is. Woo hoo!