Flash Mob!

The location is downtown Le Mars, IA. The plan is simple - at high noon on Holy Saturday, be ready to do the Bunny Hop! Find a spot to park and make your way to the intersection of Plymouth St and Central Ave. It doesn't matter which of the four corners you use (we'd like to have a group on each of the four). But be nonchalant about it. Don't look like you're gathering for an event or have anything up your sleeves. Then, bumanfam Dad will enter with an Easter Basket. When he sets it down, and the music starts, quickly form a conga line with the other folks on your corner and start doing the Bunny Hop! You know how - but if you don't here's a link to show you the way. For everyone's safety, the Bunny Hop lines are not to enter the street for any reason - stay on the sidewalks! After the music stops, we'll all gather around the aforementioned Easter basket and share a quick meal, sign the log, swap some swag, and snap a group photo. The most important part is that we finish it all up and leave - exactly 15 minutes after we arrive! The uninformed passers-by will wonder what the heck they just witnessed!

If you really want to have some fun (and please do!), wear your bunny ears and your bunny slippers! It is the day before Easter, after all. . .

Clicking on the title of this post will take you to the full event description on Geocaching.com. Read more!

We Made It! 1,000 Finds!

Well, it took a comment on the blog from someone far, far away, but perhaps it's time for an update! We did make it to 1000 finds shortly before this year's Hike-N-Seek event. We (bumanfam Dad) were planning to make the event itself #1000, and carefully planning each cache find so as to time it perfectly. At the time, we were focusing on a) finding a cache on each calendar day for which we hadn't yet found a cache, and b) making sure we didn't go through any county on our way to the event without finding a cache there so we could mark it off our map. Couple that with bumanfam Mom's insistence that we NOT use an event as a milestone so that we could place our "signature" milestone swag in the cache, and we decided to go for the 1000th before the event.

So, we scoped out a location not far away that had just the right number of caches to hit 1000, and the last one would be big enough for the swag. We headed out on a Sunday evening with the whole bumanfam, and our German exchange student (jonas1993 on GC.com). The terrain was much tougher than we'd imagined, and the daylight was waning, but we went for it anyway. There were 5 caches to find. After going in, bumanfam Dad realized one of the caches had a string of DNFs, and the last one being several months prior. He declared that we'd find the four we could, and use another for the big one - so we skipped that cache. On the way back, bumanfam Mom realized we were walking within only a few feet of where that cache's coordinates were. She insisted on looking for it, telling bumanfam Dad that he should just not look, then it wouldn't count as a find (#1000). Wouldn't you know it - she found it! In the grass. A bison tube. Now, anyone who knows bumanfam Dad will attest - he signed the log! But, the swag wouldn't fit. So, we decided to have dinner and head out for another in the dark to place our cache commemorating our 1000th find, into our 1001st.

The cache we picked was in the middle of a field. Literally - nothing there but tall grass. It had been placed for the Hike-N-Seek event we planned the year prior. Now, it was fully nighttime, and dark. Also, it was raining. The grass was about shoulder height. We all had headlamps and flashlights. bumanfam Kid #3 rode on bumanfam Dad's shoulders. We found the cache, tried taking some photos, and placed the swag - a penny for every cache we'd found to-date. Yep. 1000 pennies. Ten bucks. That's the last time we exercise that "tradition." This caching business is expensive!

Anyway, we made it. We also found one cache in every county across the south of Iowa on the way to HNS shortly thereafter. And on the way home - the second row of counties from the bottom. For the HNS weekend (a parents-only trip), we found 107 caches. That means we also crossed 1100. We've done a bunch since also (not by some people's standards - did you hear there was a new 24-hour find record set recently at over 1100?!?!?!), and are just shy of our 1200th find. We have abandoned the quest to black out the calendar for the time being (we can't do until 29 Feb 2012 anyway), but we'll probably cross 1200 soon. Pathetic that it's taken this long, but that's okay. We're still having great fun! Oh, yeah - we're also in the (very) early stages of planning Iowa's first MEGA event! Look for it in 2012! Read more!

Yeah, We're Still Geocachers!

Yeah, yeah - we know. The idea of a blog is to actually USE it. Well, at the time of the last post, we were beginning work on the Iowa Geocachers Organization's annual event, the Hike-N-Seek. We were the hosts and had a spectacular event here in Plymouth County. The trouble with that? Well, we were doing so much geocaching-related stuff for so long that we kind of burned out. By the time the event came to a close in late September, we had abandoned our goals for the year of finding a minimum average of a cache a day within each month, and of reaching 1000 finds by year's end. Heck, we don't even have that many now, and we're quickly approaching the next Hike-N-Seek!

Some other developments happened for us during that time frame, including bumanfam Dad's election to the IGO board of directors, and to the post of secretary. It wasn't that we'd given up on all things geocaching, just put some other priorities over actually going out and finding caches! Now, in his second year of his term on the board, bumanfam Dad has been elevated to the post of President. He's hoping to make some headway toward making membership in the organization even more beneficial for geocachers, and to really boost the game/sport/hobby in the state.

Well, back to the present, an amazing thing has happened here in the Ice Cream Capital of the World - another geocacher has gotten the bug to hide caches! In over four years of geocaching, only three caches had been placed in town or within about 5 miles of it that weren't placed by us or by our crew working on the HNS event. That meant that we had to travel quite a ways to even attempt any FTFs, and as geocaching becomes more and more popular, the likelihood of actually being the first grows slimmer. So 395 days had passed since our last FTF when all of a sudden, there's a new cache. Four miles from home! Yep, FTF! Then, over the next couple of weeks, more popped up. In 23 days, we've managed 10 FTFs in a place where nobody else was placing caches! We even missed out on a couple due to work schedules! But, we just picked up another tonight, and now we've found at least one on each of the last four days, and six total during the same time frame!

We still aren't caching at full speed again, but the bug sure gets a boost by new prospects for FTF adrenaline! We're looking forward to a couple of great events coming up, including one close to home, and another just about as far away as it could possibly be and still be in Iowa! For that one, the current plan is to make it an adults-only trip, and get some serious caching in. Gosh, this silly game is fun! Read more!

Another Hike at Five Ridges Prairie

Another Trip to Five Ridges Prairie

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Headed out for another geocaching run at Five Ridges Prairie today. This time, no blizzard in the forecast! In fact, it was in the upper 70s today. The hiking was pretty good, though truly a shame the trekking poles were forgotten at home - again!

bumanfam Dad had good company today, brining along Schilmoellers for a first caching outing. Nothing like baptism by fire, right? This is no easy hiking trip - saying the Loess hills are rugged is like saying the ocean is kinda big! The feet are sore, the knees are achy, but the spirit is refreshed! The best news? There are still four geocaches out there that are in need of our signature! Off to log the finds. . . Read more!

Blizzard? Who cares?!?! There's caching to do!

There was literally a blizzard warning, with talk of 7 to 12 inches of snow. But, there were four new caches published in 5 Ridges State Preserve. Since December there have been 16 new caches published out there. We found the two that were there previous to that last spring. On that trip we were also introduced to the morel mushroom! Anyway, bumanfam Dad and bumanfam Dog were the only ones brave enough for the trek. The warnings were to officially begin at 6:00 pm, so we headed out around noon. We documented the trip at EveryTrail.com. Here is that trip.

bumanfam's 5 Ridges FTF Hunt

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The blizzard, by the way? Well, we only got about a half-inch of snow on the ground as it was just too warm for the falling snow to stick. It was plenty windy, wet, and cold, though! We had four FTFs for the day, and three other caches as well. There are still nine out there we haven't yet found. We'll be back during morel season! Read more!

We're Cache-A-Maniacs!

We recently had the honor of being interviewed on the Cache-A-Maniacs Podcast! The podcast is a cool place to hear interviews with geocachers from all walks of life and all over the globe. It's fun to hear about the different ways people enjoy this game-sport-hobby thing we do! Our interview is on show number 110. Here's the link - enjoy!

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Where the Heck Have We Been?!?

Wow! More than six months have passed since that last post. What was it we said about posting more often? Okay - no such promises this time! We'll do what we can. Our caching slowed considerably after we reached the 500 mark - largely due to disappointingly missing the fall Hike-n-Seek by the IGO, then a move to a new home. We're finally getting a bit more up-to-speed now after the first of the year. We have a lofty goal of reaching 1000 by the end of 2009 - the GSAK macro we use to generate our statistics says, at our usual pace, we won't make that goal until November of 2010! If we are to make that goal this year, surely there will be more stories along the way to come by here and post, baby, post!

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