The latest Geocaching challenge this summer is the Geocaching Road Trip The idea being to find six different cache types to earn virtual souvenirs. Now I’m not fussed by a virtual souvenir. However I do as you know like a challenge.
I also as you know am quite an unorganised, seize the moment kind of girl. Whilst others have been carefully planning their caches for the challenge for months. I’ve done no such thing.
Must. Get. Organised.
Apparently the challenge started at the weekend.
Apparently I’ve earnt my first badge already.
Zero planning. Nice!
The first challenge, to find a cache with 10 or more favourite points.
This to me was a bit of a surprise. Whilst our Father’s day walk was a cracking walk, the caches were damp, full of junk and not amazingly placed. Clearly however one of these at least had 10 or more favourite points. Bizarre.
It’s fair to say my Geocaching tastes vary from others, considerably. I see that as a good thing though, the world would surely be a boring place ‘If everything was Awesome…’
I’m sure you’ve worked out by now that I like a cache in a nice spot or with a cracking view. I also appreciate a well made cache or a cache which was placed with a bit of thought. I also like a cache which appeals to my inappropriate childish slightly dubious sense of humour. I also totally love a cache which gives us a great deal of fun and adventure. In short make me or my family smile and I’ll give you a favourite point.
As a premium Geocaching member for every 10 caches I find I get a favourite point to award. To date I’ve awarded 39 favourite points and currently have 17 to award. Who knew I was so stingy?!
Highly favourited caches often tend to leave me wondering if I’ve missed something, to the point that I don’t tend to look at the number of favourite points a cache has anymore.
The things I don’t like; badly maintained caches, dubious locations, and overlooked caches that takes lots of searching or a place filled with litter. Clean it up!
So just for fun here’s a little look at some of my favourite caches so far…
A night cache. You can read about it here. A strange choice for someone who is terrified of the dark but very good fun.
This one has to be my favourite to date. It worked for me on too many levels. You can read my embarrassingly gushy account here.
One of my daughters is fossil mad, truly happy with a hammer and a rock in her hand. A cache placed at the foot of a clunch cliff filled with fossils was always going to rock her world.
(See what I did there? ROCK her world… 😉 )
Wherigo Cache GMT #6 GeoMobber Trail
A wherigo is essentially a location based game. When standing in a specific area you unlock further parts of the game, you need to either gather info from your surroundings to answer questions to proceed or in this case find hidden keys in the forest and input the code. The children really enjoyed this one, a make believe game of entering a cave and escaping dangerous beasts all whilst not Waking a sleeping dragon.
A timed aspect saw us running at full speed through the forest, the children fully immersed in the story running for their lives, me so as I didn’t have to start again.
Luckily we made it!
The reward for this cache a really well stocked treasure chest.
This one was a very clever cache indeed.
A moment of head scratching as we found just a wire fence.
A closer look however revealed a series of cable ties attached to the wire. For the unsuspecting passerby a bunch of barely visible knots of plastic on a fence, to people like me a handy set of numbers (coordinates) telling me where to go next. Genius!
To date this cache has been awarded just one favourite point and that was me.
This was one of my favourite adventures. The cache just a plain Tupperware box, not particularly well hidden. Sometimes it’s not about the cache though. The location would win no beauty contest but as a location to explore – oh yes! Read about our fun here.
This one was a grower. Fun at the time but I was unaware at first quite how much the children loved it. The fact that several months later when we drive past the children still squeak about the cache excitedly.
Sometimes a cache issues an unexpected challenge. Being short I face them more often. This cache involving first a scramble down a riverbank to get to it and then what should have been an easy find and retrieve. Except when you can’t reach it.
Cue lots of jumping from a pipe trying desperately not to fall in the nearby stream. A fun challenge, lots of laughs and a cheeky curse of the CO.
Music fans might also be interested to know that the cover of the Pink Floyd album Division Bell was shot nearby. Obviously I ‘m far too young to remember any of that happening! 😉
Run Around`s Ramble – 1.Locked Out
Found during our recent geocaching adventure in Hatfield Forest. Ingenious!
Sappers Surprise (Woodpecker Trail #12)
An ammo can. It’s always fun to find one of those. This one just so happened to be suspended in a tree in the middle of the forest and had to be lowered down on a pulley system. Good fun.
Stand Wood Walk 6
This one blew me away with its location on our recent trip to Chatsworth
So there’s an idea of what works for me. As always I’m looking for new geocaching challenges and adventures so please feel free to share your favourites in the comments.
Mud and Nettles 
I love your enthusiasm for all of this, it’s very catching. It was through Lisa at Into The Glade blog that I very first discovered geocaching a couple of months ago. I still only have one single cache to my name, I really must get out more and find some, you always make it sound such good fun.
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🙂 I find lots of regular ones too but obviously they don’t make such good stories.
I love that you’ve been inspired to give it a go and I hope you have many, happy, caching adventures.
Seriously though, thanks for your comments if I can inspire people to get outside having fun then I’m a very happy bunny!
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Oooh, some of those seem excellent! I wish I was in your area to explore them some day. The BF and I are doing our own challenge of 100 days in a row. We did it while on vacation and earned 8 new souveniers [7 states and Fun with Favorites]. We are at day 67 as long as we find one today. Cheers! 🙂
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Oh wow, a streak! That’s hard work – good luck. I stopped at 110 days just last week. So much travel involved! I’m now just working on filling my calendar which means a cache most days but the odd day off does mean you enjoy them more. Good luck with the 100 🙂
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Thanks. My friends keeps joking we should do a streak of 1 for 365 days. I think 100 is good, especially managing it over ten days of vacation!
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If you do the year, go for 366! I can stalk you now to track your progress 😉
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I love the treasure chest!
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That one on the wire fence seems tricky! My favorite geocaches always seem to be the ones that takes a lot to find them. I had to hike pretty far through a really cool section of a trail one time to find one. The geocache itself wasn’t that spectacular but the adventure getting there was! I hate doing this but I have a YouTube channel that I document my adventures. Love for you to check it out!
youtube.com/geocachingkaity
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Exactly, it’s not always about the cache but the adventure you have finding it. Are you on Twitter? Come find me on Twitter so I can follow your videos on there … 🙂
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My favourite of all time is http://coord.info/GCKZ29 Your Mission which we haven’t even finished yet!
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That looks fab and is fairly local too. I may have to look into that further! Seriously though can you believe somebody left a TFTC log on that? Incredible!
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lol, yeah I know although I think that it might be a child of a parent that had already logged it. Still though. You do have to cover quite a lot of distance to complete it… Codicot, Harpenden, Ashridge, North Mymms and I think we are off towards bishop’s Storford next!
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We both agree that the caches that stand out to us are the Mega Events in particular The Halloween ones in Northamptonshire. My hubby seems to be addicted to cms at the moment and many of the multis are very enjoyable. We recently accidentally obtained the first souvenir of the Geocaching Road Trip. Usually we would pin point a cache to do to obtain the souvenir but this time we didn’t. There are loads more caches over time that we’ve done and we even had one set for our wedding. The trouble is remembering them all as we’re nearing 10,000.
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That’s a lot of caches! I hear good things about the megas. Maybe one day I’ll make it to one.
That first souvenir is a bit of a strange one really. I would personally have set it a bit higher – would have been nice to make the effort to find a really enjoyable cache.
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The MEGa’s are good fun, a very different sort of caching. Your best bet to go year as it is in
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We both agree that the caches that stand out to us are the Mega Events in particular The Halloween ones in Northamptonshire. My hubby seems to be addicted to cms at the moment and many of the multis are very enjoyable. We recently accidentally obtained the first souvenir of the Geocaching Road Trip. Usually we would pin point a cache to do to obtain the souvenir but this time we didn’t. There are loads more caches over time that we’ve done and we even had one set for our wedding. The trouble is remembering them all as we’re nearing 10,000.
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Hmmm, not sure what happened to that comment. I was saying that Your best bet for attending a mega might be this year as the UK mega is in Essex. Alas there is no haloween mega this year, they are taking a well deserved break
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Love SOOO many of those. I have never tried a puzzle one and wonder if I would even be good at it. I’m not a puzzler. Lol. I’d need a guide for those. Care to fly to WI to teach me? Again….I may copy some of these ideas when I make my own geocache!
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