My 777 Find!

As it was nearing a fun number, my geocaching buddy Lisa and I made a day of it. And it was a super fun day hanging out! As she and I had a fun day, I'm going to list these out and then put a little more about my 777 cache.

• Must walk to this progressive LPC
• 301 Bldg 2
• To InfinitE... and beyond
• Muster Point
• Neglected Parking Lot #5
• TCCVB #5 - Welcome to TC
• Bridge Over Trouble Waters

Then it was time for lucky number 777! This one we really a very easy find, but we wanted a spot without many muggles so we could spend some time there. Also, the next cache on the list (which was found later) was at a gas station and I didn't want that to be #777 so we detoured to here. Again, this was an easy find, but it was so worth it! Plenty of Parking UP Here

We did find one more cache as we were wrapping up the day: Fill her up with Ethyl!. For some reason (there really isn't one), this name makes me smile.

I'll wrap this up with more photos from the day.

Geocaching in Berlin

Evan and I took a cruise out of Copenhagen to see Baltic capitals, and one of the stops was Berlin (a long train ride from the port). We arrived a little later than expected, so sadly missed lunch with our friends there (and quite sad about this), but we did get a nice tour of the city and then some time to ourselves. During this free time, we started walking around and noticed another couple from our tour going the same way, so we paired up and walked around quite a bit and grabbed lunch. After returning to the meeting point, we had some time and I was not wanting to sit still, so the guys stayed back while the gals continued walking and found a geocache near the hotel. Happy find before hopping on the train back to the ship.

Französischer Dom

Visiting Denver, Colorado

The hubby and I had a free weekend and found cheap tickets for a flight to Denver and what a day it was. We got in late Friday and left early Sunday, so we had a full day Saturday to enjoy the city. And we sure made a day of it. And got a geocache (I love visiting cemeteries, so this was a bonus).

Colorado Spirit Quest #5 – Riverside Cemetery

Road Trip 2016: Rhode Island and Connecticut

Hubby and I took a road trip with my parents this year to take my mom to the north east. Over the course of this trip, we spent time in Massachusetts, Rhode Island, Connecticut, New York, Vermont, New Hampshire, and Maine and saw a LOT of different things. It turned out to be a great time of the year with the leaves changes, so as we drove along there were so many pretty sights. And, being from Texas, we were surprised how close all of these locations were.

The first day of the trip saw us taking a short drive to Providence, Rhode Island where we visited a botanical garden, cemetery, and city festival.

We took a short walk away form the festival to find our first geocache of the trip: Boccce. It was a cute hide in a pretty busy area, so we waited out traffic and muggles to make the find. Then, we went to visit what brought us to the plaza in the first place - a giant chicken for Evan!

After spending some time at the festival, we headed on to Hartford, Connecticut and of course found a cache there as well: Sea Worthy.

We got to go to Yellowstone! (And cache in Wyoming, Idaho, and Montana!)

My husband and I took a short weekend trip to Yellowstone and took this time to get geocaches in three new states at the same time. On the drive up from Jackson Hole, our first two stops were in Idaho. The first one was particularly neat: Island Park Village Resort. The location was pretty obvious when we got near, and lots of goodies inside. We also stopped for a break and found this cache (Sticker Cache) in a muggle-heavy zone.

We then found a few in Montana, starting with Roadside TB Hotel. Welcome! This one wasn't too hard to find, even though there were muggles nearby. We followed it up with Welcome to West Yellowstone 1 again - my location seemed a bit off on this one, so it took longer than I suspect it should have.

We spent so much of our time exploring Yellowstone, we almost missed getting a cache in Wyoming. But we did manage to find Elk Refugee Viewpoint Version 2. We also explored a nearby museum (which was closed) and posed with the statues in the parking lot.

Geocaching in Hawaii!!!

I am super excited that we finally made it out to Hawaii! It was a fantastic vacation and we did and saw so many cool things, including finding some caches.

Our first stop was in Kauai, where we enjoyed some snorkeling and ATVs along with general sightseeing. During one of the scenic drives, we found a geocache with a GREAT view: Hanalei Bay View.

We spent a bit more time in Maui, and as a result, had some more finds here. While driving the road to Hana, I noticed a geocache a little off the path that led us to a spot we wouldn't have even noticed and are VERY glad to have stopped at: As The Waves Pound The Lava Rock.

Further along on the same drive, we caught up with another cache hanging out near a general store. This was another fun stop with art by local artists and good snacks. And a lot of goodies to look through :) Beer, Ice-cream or Candy

Our last Hawaii cache was my favorite and a little bit of a surprise. Don't get me wrong - Hawaii is beautiful and all of the locations we went to were great little spots we wouldn't have found with a geocache guiding us there. Also - learned to download the caches cause there is pretty spotty service in many areas. In any case, I just love how different this part of the island was - dry, windy, and lots of grass - not like what I pictured all of Hawaii to be like. Cactus included :) Big Island Lookout. At this spot, in addition to logging the cache, I picked up a travel bug to transfer to my lovely dog-sitter Lysax13.

And, while not related to the caching, here are some pretty dang neat videos anyways from the trip.

I was a bad blogger in 2015

To say that 2015 was crazy is such an understatement I don't even know where to start. So, I'm going to retroactively post some blogs for the finds I made in 2015. Sadly, I got no where near my goal (I didn't even fill in January), and there are way too many reasons to go into. However, I would say that I did an EXCELLENT job finding caches in other states and other countries with all my travel.

Number of finds	38
Number of states	14 Delaware, District of Columbia, Kentucky, Maryland, Massachusetts, Mississippi, New Jersey, New York, Ohio, Oklahoma, Pennsylvania, Texas, Virginia, West Virginia
Number of countries	5 Hong Kong, Indonesia, Ireland, United Kingdom, United States

For this year, I'm going to set some other goals that should be easier for me to achieve:

1. Perform maintenance on all of my caches
2. Find geocaches in Hawaii and Louisiana
3. Find a geocache in Jamaica
4. Get to 700 finds
5. Find this cache that attacked us with fire ants and poison ivy last time!

Caching while visiting the Bourbon Trail

We all decided that we'd take a weekend trip to Cincinnati and then drive down the Bourbon Trail (which meant I was the designated driver on this trip). This was also great for me as I got to find a cache in Ohio (my first and only!). We also got another cache in Kentucky. This was a great time - highly recommend spending more time in Cincinnati, because we missed so much we wanted to do.

My geocaching finds wall art

I got a new cork board for my walls today, and trying to fill up all the states with finds.

Rehasing of 2014 goals and setting of 2015 goals

Well, not so bad this year for the goals. Not 100%, but since I also found caches in Denmark, Iceland, Norway, UK, Ulster, Grand Cayman, and Mexico, I'm cutting myself some slack on the fifth state.

Get to 600 finds:

105%

Find caches in 5 states:

80%

With this in mind, I only have one goal for 2015: fill out my Finds for Each Day of the Year chart. We shall see how this goes, but so far I think I can do it. Below is how I'm starting off the year; I'll keep it up-to-date on its own page.

Finds for Each Day of the Year

You've found caches on 139 of 366 days of the year.

	1	2	3	4	5	6	7	8	9	10	11	12	13	14	15	16	17	18	19	20	21	22	23	24	25	26	27	28	29	30	31
Jan	11	5	1	0	4	0	0	0	0	0	1	0	2	1	2	1	0	0	2	0	0	3	0	0	8	0	0	0	0	0	4	45
Feb	3	0	0	0	0	0	2	1	0	0	0	1	2	0	16	1	7	0	0	20	14	2	1	0	0	15	7	0	1	X	X	93
Mar	2	17	0	1	4	10	1	0	0	1	4	0	4	0	1	0	0	0	3	1	0	5	0	0	6	11	0	3	0	0	3	77
Apr	6	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	14	9	0	0	2	14	0	14	8	0	0	1	1	1	8	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	X	78
May	0	0	0	0	0	0	1	0	0	0	0	0	0	6	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	6	0	2	23	17	7	3	0	65
Jun	0	0	4	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	1	9	1	0	0	0	3	5	2	2	0	0	0	0	0	0	X	27
Jul	3	0	0	12	0	2	10	3	0	0	0	1	0	0	0	0	0	1	0	1	1	0	0	0	0	0	2	0	0	1	0	37
Aug	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	1	4	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	1	1	0	2	6	6	8	1	0	0	0	1	31
Sep	3	16	5	4	11	1	0	2	0	0	1	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	1	0	0	6	2	0	0	3	1	0	X	56
Oct	1	1	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	4	7	1	6	4	4	1	0	0	1	1	0	31
Nov	0	2	0	5	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	5	0	0	0	0	0	0	10	8	0	1	0	1	1	X	33
Dec	0	0	0	0	0	0	2	0	0	4	6	1	0	0	6	4	0	3	1	0	0	0	0	0	13	3	3	0	3	1	5	55
	29	41	10	22	19	13	16	6	14	15	16	3	10	21	26	29	21	4	6	28	28	17	19	34	47	40	37	23	14	7	13	628

2014 Geocaching Goals

I'm keeping it light this year so that I have a shot of meeting some of these goals. Fingers crossed!

• Find 80 caches (get to 600 finds)
• Find caches in 5 states

2013 Goal Recap

To put it in as few words as possible, I missed quite a few goals this year. I'll attribute this to my surgery in the later part of the year, but that is just a small piece of the puzzle.

Find 150 caches:

45%

Find caches in 1 countries:

0 %

Find caches in 5 states:

220 %

Finds for each day of the year:

33 %

Goal Progress

Just over halfway through the year, so checking in on goal progress. I don't think that I find this report at all favorable...but I'll leave that for others to decide I suppose.

Finding 150 caches...I'm only at 17%. This doesn't really surprise me with all that's happened this year, but I had even decreased the number and I'm still having problems reaching it. Guess I'll have to try that 31 days of caching in August that the geocaching.com folks are promoting and see if that helps any.

Find caches in 1 country...still at 0% and likely to stay that way this year. I don't see any international travel in the year, although I may figure out a way. Next year will see a lot of places, though.

Find caches in 5 states...at 80%. This one should be easy enough to make happen. I should go to Vegas in October, but even if not, I'll find a way to do something over Labor Day weekend.

Get to top 1500 geocachers in TX...actually went down the list to 1819. Kind of a bummer here, but seeing how I'm not really finding caches, also not really a shock.

So...I really need to start caching or no way will this happen by the end of the year.

Waiting to Fly Home

Quite tired by now, we decided to really chill before heading home. Well, home for Evan and work trip for me. But away from vacation in a great place, nonetheless.

Found a couple of PNGs, the one listed is really memorable for me because it was covered in ants. MTSB – 50-year-old Mansion?

Caching in Downtown Ashville, NC

After driving around a bit the previous days and exploring, we decided to stay nearby and shop and visit Biltmore (awesome, BTW). While walking downtown, we found a couple of caches.



I took the above picture near one of the caches: Paley’s Passion

We also walked by some shops and this one appears to be near a cache-loving store: Natural Selection For the Birds. There were some muggles here, but not too bad.

Meeting Friends for Dinner

Evan has some friends near Ashville, so while we were there, we met them for dinner and drinks. While waiting for dinner, since we are cursed with being early birds, we found some caches near the restaurant we were meeting at. All were park and grabs, so pretty easy. But I like the one below cause of the name.

As High As Geoffrey’s Neck

Prior in the day, we had driven along the Blue Ridge Parkway - very pretty - and gone to the highest point east of the Mississippi River. Nice view.

Three States: South Carolina, North Caroline, and Tennesse

Evan and I headed out of town for our 10th wedding anniversary and decided to make this one in a peaceful location...that just so happened to be close enough to other states to help meet some caching goals.

We started our first morning in Ashville, NC by driving south to South Carolina. Not far into the state, we honed in on the cache Highway 11 Lodge Tree, which was in a very pretty location. We found this one fairly quickly and headed back into North Carolina.



After finding the cache in South Carolina, we headed back to Ashville and parked downtown for some shopping. While downtown, we stopped for a break on a bench and I decided to see if there was a cache nearby...and there was one "within 10 feet", so basically where we were...a quick grab before heading to dinner.

Tops for Caches

After dinner, we weren't quite tired yet, so headed north to Tennessee.







Once at the cache, we had no coverage, so we searched for a bit before heading back to where we had coverage, reopening the map, and then heading back to locate the cache. Had I really just stepped 10 feet further than I had in my original search we would have found it much more quickly. However, the search was well worth it, as it was quite dark when we were done and we got to enjoy seeing the lightning bugs up and down the hills. Very nice end to the day.

Lookout!

2012 goal recap and new goals for 2013

Recapping 2012

Find 500 caches total:

100 %

Find 300 caches:

69 %

Find caches in 2 countries:

150 %

Find caches in 5 states:

140 %

Finds for each day of the year:

28 %

Goals for 2013

• Find 150 caches
• Get finds for each day of the year to 67% (currently at 28%)
• Find caches in 1 country
• Find caches in 5 states
• Get in the top 1500 TX geocachers (currently at 1774)

Finding my 500th cache

Today was all about getting to the magic number 500, and I made it. My 500th cache was a fantastic hide, and I was way excited once it was located!

The End is Near

More PNGs to help me to 500 this year

Since I know now that I won't be getting my 300 caches this year, I decided to definitely hit that 500th cache overall. It seems very reasonable, so today I set out to get a few caches nearby. Found a few PNGs, some with muggles, and by far the best:

Just For You My Friend