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!