Eleven months ago we had 73 blanks in our geocaching Finds for Each Day of the Year grid. I decided then to try to fill in the blanks by the earliest possible completion date – 2013 Feb 6. As reported at the end of November, the earliest possible completion date has been pushed back to 2013 Nov 28. After failing to find a cache on 2012 Nov 28, I decided to continue trying to fill in all the other blanks, and after a long walk yesterday and a short walk in the bitter cold this morning, we’re down to just three more blanks!
It’s been interesting going out caching the past few months. Mr. GeoK joined me a few times over the winter break, but for the most part I’ve been caching solo. I pretty much always take a camera and used a lot of those photos to keep up with my 2012 Project 365 and some of them for the weekly photo challenge I’m doing in 2013.
Consistent with my aim not to drive just to go geocaching, some weeks I’ve walked more than 30 km (20 mi). I’ve been parsing out the nearest unfound caches, finding and logging just one cache instead of “cleaning out the area” as would be more typical. I owe a special thanks to Pirate Grrlz, who placed several new geocaches over the winter break. Those new hides have allowed me to continue walking to find a cache (most days). Some days, heavy snowfall and/or frigid temperatures meant I dropped C off at school and then continued in the vehicle to park as close as possible to my target cache. But for the most part, the weather’s been pretty good.
One day, I spotted a couple of rusting bicycles where no logical person would leave their ride. It was a painful process to contact the police to report possible stolen property – almost not worth my time.
With just three days to go to complete the grid, I wanted share to a few of the more interesting / picturesque sites I’ve seen while out caching over the past several weeks…
(click on any photo to view as slide show with short captions)
What geocaching (or other) challenge are you working on these days? And how close are you to achieving your goal?
Wow. I’m impressed. I am not sure I’ll ever do this one because it seems like I always forget about it. I would like to finish, but we’ll see. I think I have 95 squares. My problem is there aren’t enough caches near me to go get one to fill in squares. I’m hoping to fill in two this weekend though!
I’ll assume you got Jan. 30 and are going to get Feb. 6. Then that one in November? Good luck with it!
One thing definitely working in my favour is that there’s close to 1000 caches we haven’t found within a 25 km radius of our house. So as long as I remember, I should be able to get it done…in fact I already have a target cache selected for Wednesday (although I may have to change my plans ’cause it looks like the trails are going to be very muddy).