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!