Featured Geocacher of the Month Nominees – Add Your Comments

Geocacher of the Month Geocoin

Groundspeak needs your help featuring a geocacher each month that stands out by inspiring other geocachers with their innovation, creative hides and/or logs, respect for the environment, and helpfulness. More than a fifty geocachers submitted outstanding nominees from around the world.

The featured Geocacher of the Month recognition celebrates geocachers for their contributions.  A panel of Lackeys had the difficult task of selecting three of the most outstanding nominees. You can help name one of these nominees the featured “Geocacher of the Month.”

Each geocacher you see below displays extraordinary geocaching qualities including generosity and  inventiveness. Write a comment on this blog post about which of these three geocachers you’d like to see as the September featured “Geocacher of the Month.” Those not recognized as a nominee or as the featured “Geocacher of the Month” are encouraged to submit nominations again next month.

Read the testimonials below and leave a comment with your suggestion. Some testimonials have been edited for length.

AussieCacher

(Member since 2006)

AussieCacher

Nomination by pkreun: “AussieCacher has hosted events in both the US and his native country, Australia, helping experienced and new geocachers alike. He is always willing to go out of his way to help others. In 2007 he organized a Travel Bug race from Sydney, Australia to Sioux Falls, South Dakota with 33 Travel Bugs taking part in the race.  He laminated each competitors TB details and delivered them all to the starting location in Australia. AussieCacher has created and hidden some very unique and creative geocaches in both Australia and the US. Many of these geocaches have not been seen anywhere else and were hand made from scratch.

AussieCacher thoroughly enjoys the outdoors and respects the environment immensely. During his travels geocaching he has performed CITO many times and rescued animals from turtles, birds, frogs to dumped kittens. AussieCacher has taken part in 12 CITOs and just last month he hosted his first CITO.  He has developed 12 EarthCaches as well as finding over 180.”

 

SuperGoober

(Member since 2005)

SuperGoober

Nomination by The Weasel:  “Jeff has hosted five “official” 101, 201, and 301 events. What I would like to stress is that Jeff has done WELL over 50+ 101 events for SEVERAL groups from the Girl Scouts, Boy Scouts, Libraries, and any group that asks for a class to be held. Some of these events have been several hours away, but Jeff is always willing to lend a hand and do this.

Jeff has hosted 8 “unofficial” trips to a 5×5 caches of his, The Siege!. This is a very extreme cache which involves going over a cliff face. Jeff is ALWAYS willing to take groups to this cache to ensure their safety.

Jeff is a VERY active member of the Iowa Geocachers Organization where he has held a position on the BOD for several of years as well as part of the Land Management committee.

Jeff is a volunteer  with the Linn County Conservation, and has donated several hours helping them with various events.

Jeff is a model geocacher which all of us in the area and beyond can be proud of. He is always willing to lend advice/help to any cache that approaches him or contacts him.”

 

pilgrimsprogress

(Member since 2006)

Pilgrimsprogress

Nomination by OddAngles: “David and Tina would be an excellent choice for this award.  This team has a Fire Love for Geocaching. They will take anyone who wants to caching and take them to do any and every cache that their heart desires.

David and Tina are always willing to participate in CITO’s and have co-held many CITO Events.

They have been caching since December 2006.

I would say David and Tina are well rounded cachers in experience when it comes to terrains and difficulties.  Their cache hides are as versatile as the caches that they’ve hunted.  The Pilgrim’s have hidden water caches and high terrain land hides as well.

When Pilgrimsprogress help’s with an event, they will go to no end to make it fun.  David and Tina will come up with the most exciting and fun games.  Besides the Human Checkers, they did a boardwalk team race once…where a team of 3 had to walk using boards as their feet. Pilgrimsprogress also co-managers of a Geocaching Group out of Augusta, Georgia called “CSRA Geocachers”.  They are the heart and soul, the brains and backing behind many of the group’s monthly events.”

 

A panel of Lackeys will use your comments to help decide the featured Geocacher of the Month award. Each featured  Geocacher of the Month will receive an exclusive special edition featured ”Geocacher of the Month” geocoin along with a Geocacher of the Month hat and certificate acknowledging their contributions signed by the founders of Geocaching.com: Jeremy Irish, Bryan Roth and Elias Alvord.

If you know an outstanding geocacher who should be the Geocachers of the Month, send an email to geocacherofthemonth@groundspeak.com.

Geocacher of the Month geocoin front and back

 

Every nomination must meet the following requirements. Please include your name, the name of your nominee, their username, at least one picture of the nominee and description (in 500 or fewer words) explaining why he or she deserves to be the Geocacher of the Month. Please inform your nominee that you’ve submitted them for the award. Nominations for the October Geocacher of the Month must be received by October 3rd.

Once we have received all of the nominations, we will choose the top candidates and post them on the blog. You will then get a chance to champion your favorite. Our goal is to involve the entire geocaching community in this process so we might learn from each other.

Groundspeak Weekly Newsletter – September 7, 2011

Geocaching.com Video Series

Over the last year and a half, Geocaching.com has created more than 40 videos designed to help new geocachers learn about the activity, share the stories of Geocaching.com milestones and showcase the best of geocaching. Those new to geocaching should check out the “Getting Started with Geocaching” tab on the videos page, which includes videos such as “Finding Your First Geocache” and “Basics of hiding a Geocache.” For those trying to understand how to use some of the more advanced Geocaching.com features, the page also includes instructional screencasts.
The majority of our videos focus on the geocaching community. We have interviewed, gone geocaching with and even showered with geocachers from around the world to bring you the stories of some of the most interesting caches, events, people and trends in the geocaching community. These videos will inspire you to be a better geocacher and make it easy to share with friends what geocaching means to you.

The End of the World [Sagres] GC12CRJ – GEOCACHE OF THE WEEK – September 6, 2011

'End of the World"

The southwest most cache in Europe takes geocachers to what might seem like the end of the world.

The cache page shows an image of the hazy blue ocean horizon  beyond the edge of the cliff and reads, “The pictures really tell the story, so there’s not really anything else to say. Just go there and experience it for yourself.”

More than 1000 geocachers have taken the advice and logged, “End of the World [Sagres]” (GC12CRJ).

The difficulty 1.5, terrain two traditional geocache was placed by funkymunkyzone in 2007.  The cache owner warns people to use caution and be especially careful when there are high winds.

Geocachers traveling to log “End of the World” discover a lighthouse with beacon so bright it can be seen as far as 60 kilometers out to sea. The cache site also sits at the crossroads of history. Battles at sea raged just off the coast, pirates plundered settlements here and an earthquake shattered buildings. The current lighthouse was built over the ruins of a Franciscan convent.

"End of the World"

The geocache has earned more than 80 Favorite Points. A geocacher who logged the cache wrote, “Very beautiful (and windy) place and our most western cache so far! Because of the good weather and the great view, there are many muggles in this area, so we had to be fast.”

Continue your exploration of some of the most engaging geocaches from around the world. Explore all the Geocaches of the Week on the Latitude 47 blog or view the Bookmark List on Geocaching.com.

Geocaching.com Caption Contest 27 – Win a Barely Coveted Prize

WINNING CAPTION - "TKLAB= took kangaroo, left angry boy. "- andrabrewer

Share your genius for witty captions in the 27th installment of our Geocaching.com Caption Contest. You could earn a barely coveted prize. What caption would you write for the picture snapped at this year’s Geocaching Block Party? It shows the Groundspeak mascot Signal with a kangaroo brought to Seattle, Washington USA by a group of Australian geocachers.

Coveted Prize

Submit your caption by clicking on “Comments” below. Please include your geocaching username in all entries. Then, explore the captions other geocachers have posted.

You can even influence the voting process. “Like” the caption that you think should win.  If you think your caption should win, convince your fellow geocachers, your friends and family to “like” your caption. Lackeys vote from the top finalists to decide the winner of the contest.

The winner receives this coveted, ‘barely coveted prize.’ It’s a Trackable from the Geocaching Block Party. Join us next year at Groundspeak HQ for the Geocaching Block Party on August 18, 2012.

24 Lackeys voted to award the winner of the 26th Geocaching.com Caption Contest a barely coveted prize. Click on the image on the right to discover the winning caption from the 26th Geocaching.com Caption Contest.

Click on the image to see the winner of this Geocaching.com Caption Contest

Explore all the past winning captions by checking out all the Geocaching.com Caption Contests.

Groundspeak Weekly Newsletter – August 31, 2011

Get Out the Door and on the Trail Faster

Pocket Queries make preparing for your geocaching adventure a simple 2-step process.

Step 1: Create a Pocket Query for the area that you want to go geocaching. You can select which cache types to receive in the results, specify your range of difficulty and terrain levels, choose cache attributes and more. Want to see only traditional caches within 25 miles of your home that are above a difficulty 3 and require a long hike? This step lets you do so. When you’re done, you’ll receive an email containing a file with the Pocket Query results.

Step 2: Plug your GPS into your computer. Either drag and drop the emailed Pocket Query file onto the device or use third-party software to load the file (the process for loading files depends on your GPS device). You can find a list of your Pocket Query files that are ready for download under the tab “Pocket Queries Ready for Download” here.

That’s it! You now have the complete Pocket Query (up to 1000 cache listings) including cache coordinates, descriptions, hints and recent logs on your device, so whether you decide to go geocaching right outside your house or miles away, you’re ready to go.

Users can even look up caches when away from home! When you create a Pocket Query, just set it to run on one or more days of the week. The query will run on the specified day(s) and can be saved for later use, set to run automatically each week or deleted.

Pocket Queries are a Premium Member feature. Premium Members can run up to 5 queries per day with up to 1000 caches per query. Premium Membership is only US $30 per year or US $10 for 3 months and it’s well worth it for the amount of time (and paper) you’ll save. Don’t believe us? See what other Premium Members have to say about the benefits of Premium Membership.