Looking down, there is nothing for 30 feet and then the leafy floor of the Potsdam forest in Germany. My head is red from exhaustion. When I look at my hands, they are shaking. I try to write my geocaching username in the small logbook, but the letters are scrawly. “At least I did not forget the pen down there,” I think to myself.
Editor’s Note: Staff from Geocaching HQ in Seattle are visiting more than 30 Mega-Events around the globe this year, to shake hands, share stories and hear what you think is next for geocaching.
In February, the Southwest Arizona Geocachers hosted their signature event, S*W*A*G’s Yuma Mega #11, in sunny Yuma. Above is what it looked like at home in Seattle, where Geocaching HQ is located, that same weekend.
After arriving in Yuma and thanking the Southwest Sunshine Gods (they must exist), I found my first-ever Arizona geocaches and got started on the Mega Event’s Lab Caches.
Jeff Nicholson, you+me_makes3, with S*W*A*G created an elaborate series of 10 Lab Cache locations to show visitors a diverse range of attractions all around Yuma. Fortunately, he had suggested that I get a rental car for the trip. The Lab Caches were an excellent way to see the city’s well-known and hidden gems, ranging from the historical Sanguinetti House Museum to the Yuma Territorial Prison Cemetery. I even got to see some cute animals at the Wild World Zoo and Camel Farm, thanks to the Lab Caches.
The Yuma Warm-Up Mega Event #11 at a local restaurant was a great opportunity to meet the friendly Geocaching community and to get to thank our amazing volunteers in person. There was a nice handful of Geocachers who also had ties to the Seattle-area, and it was fun to catch-up with them. The event also featured a special screening of the Geocaching International Film Festival (GIFF), as shown at the 2013 HQ Geocaching Block Party.
The next morning, the Mega Event was set up and ready for crowds. The West Wetlands Park was an incredible location, not too cramped and very pretty. There was a large array of fun activities to choose from; check out the impressive Activities Schedule on the cache page! I met with even more geocachers, vendors, Signal the Frog, and checked out the cool vehicles on display before completing the Lab Cache series later that afternoon.
Before heading back to the airport, I hosted a very-early-morning event cache of my own: I choo-choo-choose you! at the historic steam train near Gateway Park. I arrived early and there was already a welcoming crowd of friendly faces waiting for me as the sun came up. What an incredible group of geocachers! A great way to end an outstanding weekend of geocaching. Thanks, S*W*A*G!
Help us find a caption for this stealthy predator – geocaching cat Mr. Pickles – , like “Just follow your nose to the geocache!” Tell us your funniest caption for this picture! You could even win a ‘barely coveted prize’ (emphasis on the ‘barely’) in the 41st Geocaching Caption Contest. This picture was discovered on the Recent Geocaching Log Images page. You can discover the 1000 most recent images from recent logs.
At the beginning of this month, the I <3 Geocaching Lab Cache experiment launched. During the month of February, Geocaching Premium members have the chance to create a temporary, personalized Lab Cache for one special person. This new test is different than normal geocaching and is open to all sorts of creative interpretations. In fact, in the short two weeks that the test has been live, we’ve already seen a number of amazing Lab Caches from the geocaching community. If you’re a Geocaching Premium member and you haven’t created your Lab Cache yet, do it here, then post your ideas in the comments below.
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A few comments from FlyingMoose regarding his Lab Cache: “I think what inspired me was that only one person could log the cache and I wanted more to enjoy making the find. As for the responses to the cache? I would say that the responses have been positive, who wouldn’t like the idea of claiming such a unique find? I heard about the Lab Caches last year and thought they were a cool idea, when I heard we could create our own I thought this would be a great chance to do something fun for everyone and I hope to find a bunch of ballots next week when I open it up and pick the winner! “
This story comes from Geocaching HQ’er, Maria: “I sent a small plastic container to my father in AK [Alaska, USA] via mail to hide for my bestie since 6th grade, Jennifer. I had him hide it on his property in an old CAT grader. This particular location served multiple purposes. First, my dad could see the grader out his window. This meant that when Jennifer came to find it he could watch, I got a play-by-play on my voice-mail of her entire adventure. Second, Jennifer got a huge promotion at her job (a CAT dealership) this year and her co-workers are always grading on her nerves…see what I did there? So punny. Anyway, Jennifer was ecstatic and my dad loved being part of the action. It was a great way to stay connected to people I love who live 2, 300 miles away. “
I had the pleasure of attending the GPS Adventures Maze Exhibit at the National Corvette Museum in Bowling Green, Kentucky. This exhibit has been the torque of this town (get it?). See it while you can. It will be there until May 4, 2014.
Many of us took advantage of this very rare opportunity to have a so-called “Busy Day of Geocaching” – a day in which you can find a full dozen different cache types. The eager community fastened their seatbelts to geocache across Bowling Green. Up for grabs were a CITO event, a regular event, some experimental Lab caches, a Wherigo cache, as well as the Maze Exhibit itself. At least one Bookmark List detailed the possibilities. The Middle Tennessee Geocachers Club (MTGC) came out in full force to support this Busy Day with a cheery group of volunteers clad in blue t-shirts made just for this day.
We are most grateful to Melinda of the 6Lindseys, a Bowling Green local and veteran geocacher, who was instrumental in making all of this happen—and all on her birthday! She and the MTGC secured a generous stack of door prizes that filled up an 8-foot table: boots, GPS devices, unactivated trackable items, swag for cache containers, area souvenirs and much more. Thank you to these organizations that support the geocaching community so generously.
The 10 Lab Cache containers were judiciously painted with colors relevant to that portion of Corvette design history, matching the cars displayed as each Lab Cache’s cover image. Additional decoupage treatment completed the iconic look of each one. I was tempted to take one these attractive containers back to Geocaching HQ with me. It’s a good thing that I didn’t: rumor has it that these 10 will re-appear nearby in another Corvette-related project.
And now, it’s time for some photos:
Editors Note: We’re very sorry to hear about the sinkhole that opened up in the museum. We’re incredibly glad that no one was hurt in the disaster and incredibly sad that 8 beautiful Corvettes were destroyed.
