Tag: Extreme Geocaching

/ Eric Schudiske /

A Journey of 1001 Days of Geocaching

Editor’s Note: Kiet and Jill Callies (kietc) along with their daughter visited Groundspeak HQ on June 18th, 2010.  It was their 1001st straight day of geocaching. The journey began on September 22, 2007 and ended that day at HQ. Kiet authored this guest blog. This is his story.  These are his words.  Here’s what you can learn from a team that completed a geocaching streak of 1001 days.

Kiet and Jill Callies with daughter McKenzie. Geocaching username "keitc"

When we started our streak on September 22, 2007, it was a reboot of a previous 41-day streak, broken by work commitments, which just whetted our whistles for the big one. No other commitments would interrupt our next streak until June 18, 2010 – a thousand and one days later. In that time, if stringing our finds together like a necklace of pearls, we traveled nearly 60,000 miles and made finds in 15 states.

The original streak probably began as a pacesetter for reaching a milestone by the year’s end. The big streak was to prove we could go all the way. We started setting the goal of 100 days, then a year and, if a year, why not a thousand days. Then, again, why not be literary, like A Thousand and One Arabian Nights, A Thousand and One Geocaching Days.

I almost carried the whole load alone. However, this was never meant to be a loner’s endeavor. My wife and daughter stepped in my place a couple of times. Once, during one of life’s frustrating moments of defeatism when I decided to give up on everything and pick a fight with the world, my wife, unable to witness the regret I would face in the after-moment, took my daughter and made a find to keep the streak alive.

The next generation of geocacher, McKenzie Callies.

Now, to maintain such a streak, the quality of some caches suffers. Though we have seen and discovered some amazing things in the course of our adventures, both obvious and hidden, we often had to settle for some mundane finds – a film canister tucked under a lamp post cover or inside a guard rail, which can be demotivating when these are the majority of your finds. Then I stumbled upon the Danboard and Stormtroopers 365 photo projects and was inspired.

One of the things we enjoy about geocaching is the context of location. There is a reason why someone chose a particular location and decided to share it with others. Now you can argue whether the location is worth sharing, but you cannot deny that it now has context, a story. I decided to lay another narrative on top, and my medium was Legos and Star Wars.

Legos are small and portable, perfect for travel, and like in Star Wars, we as geocachers use technology to get us close to the truth, the cache, and then use the mystical, or our geo-senses, to actually find it. Over-thinking it? Probably. I grew up under the strong influence of the original trilogy, and besides that, Star Wars is just so cool. On Day 779, I introduced the Star Wars Lego storyline and have managed a few chuckles here and there.

Click the picture to view Kiet Callies Flickr page

Now that the streak is over, and I have had time to digest it all, I will tell you that I did experience withdrawal and guilt the next day, June 19th. What’s next? In celebration of geocaching’s 10-year anniversary, to find a cache placed in each month of geocaching’s existence. Isn’t setting goals fun?

/ Eric Schudiske /

Geocaching: The Best Work Out for Your Hippocampus or is it?

Haven’t you always dreamed of a bulging hippocampus? Another question at this point, might be: what’s a hippocampus?

The hippocampus is the portion of the brain believed to store maps of our surroundings.  It allows us to navigate around this crazy mixed-up world.  It’s your inner GPS.  If you’re going to the grocery store, your parents’ house or the place by that Thai restaurant your friend told you about? Yeah, your hippocampus gets you there.

A famous study into the inner wiring of London taxi drivers’ brains discovered something, well, unexpected.  The late 1990’s  research found the drivers hippocampi were much larger than normal, non-taxi-driver, hippocampi.

Taxi drivers navigating with their hippocampus.

The more the taxi drivers navigated the complex web of London streets, blind alleys and winding lanes, the larger their hippocampi grew.

The oyster-sized and colored portion of our mind also plays a role in long-term memory.  And I believe geocaching flexes your hippocampus.

Now there’s no study for what’s next (yet), but geocaching must be an amazing work out for your hippocampus.  You’re continuously navigating and building maps of your surroundings.  You’re challenging your ability to move from A to B. Finding a geocache pumps up your awareness of your location.  The concept sounds fairly simple.

But some fear we rely on our GPS devices and mapping sites far too much.

Last year a Los Angeles woman, Lauren Rosenberg, was struck by a car while crossing a highway in Utah.  In May, she filed a lawsuit against Google. According to The Washington Post, Rosenberg’s lawyer claims Google Maps provided walking directions that sent Rosenberg into harm’s way.  She ended up on a busy road with no sidewalks. She followed the directions sent to her Blackberry – which Rosenberg claims did not come with a warning about missing sidewalks.

She got hit by a car. She accumulated massive medical bills.  She sued.  There was clearly a loss of “situational awareness.”

So, which is it? Do we rely on maps and GPS devices too much? Or does the act of geocaching and navigating help grow the awareness of our surroundings?

VOTE in the Geocaching.com Poll in the sidebar to your right.

/ Eric Schudiske /

“As North As It Gets” GC5803 GEOCACHE OF THE WEEK – June 25th, 2010

A local resident near GC5803

Just in time for the beginning of the best weather to travel north, is our Geocache of the Week GC5803.  The geocache titled, “As North As It Gets!” takes you up to N. 82 degrees.

Besides the wolf above, cachers who’ve logged GC5803 say you’ll also be walking among foxes, lemmings and even polar bears.  The cache is just outside what’s reported to be the northernmost permanently inhabited place on earth: Alert, Canada. The Canadian Air Force staffs a station there. Temperatures in Alert average about -30 degrees Celsius most of the year.

Geocacher finding GC5803. At last report, the cache thankfully contained gloves and hand warmers.

Now is the perfect opportunity to plan your northern caching adventure.  July is typically the warmest month.  The snow melts to reveal a rocky terrain of jagged shale.  Temperatures average a scorching six degrees Celsius (42 Fahrenheit).  You could be among the nearly two dozen geocachers to earn a smiley for logging this cache and take away memories of a rarely visited northern landscape.

View from near the GC5803

What to explore more geocaching adventures? Take a look at all the Geocaches of the Week here.

/ Eric Schudiske /

“Geocaching Diet” A Geocaching.com Lost & Found Video

Geocaching squares off again the battle of the bulge.  Geocacher Martin Pedersen is on a diet. Martin is determined to lose 100 pounds by the end of the year.  He’s using geocaching to shed the weight.  His aim is to find 1000 geocaches and walk 2500 kilometers.  Root him on by posting a comment and sharing your geocaching weight lose stories here on our blog.  You can also track his progress and send well wishes his way on his must-read family website, http://familynavigation.com

/ Eric Schudiske /

That’s a Geocache?!? The Unending Evolution of Geocaches

Traditional geocache

For most, the evolution of the geocache container begins with a sturdy great-great-great-grandfather geocache.  It’s the iconic metal ammo can. But in one decade of geocaching, the geocache family tree branched off into dozens of directions.

Each branch embodies the spirit of evolution.  Geocaches now blend more and more into their natural environment.  Say you place a cache on the outskirts of an estuary?  There’s a bird geocache for that.  You’re considering an urban cache on a park bench?  We’ve heard of magnetic microcaches that resemble gum for that.

Take a quick look at the picture below on the left.  Guess how many geocaches are in that picture?  Ok, I know there are a few caveats. There can only be one geocache every tenth of a mile and none of these are activated, but how many possible geocaches do you see? The answer is… six. The bird, those pinecones, that rock, even two of the sticks are actually geocaches.

How many geocaches are hidden in this picture
Just enough room for a log

Geocaches are not the only part of the geocaching equation to evolve.  Geocachers developed a keener “geo-sense” over the past decade.  Say that you placed a corn cob shaped cache in field of corn… the cache will be found.

A cache like this one pictured at the bottom of the page is all in a days work for an average cacher.

I’d love to hear your most difficult find.  How many DNF’s did you log before uncovering the cache?  Let us know, just post a comment to this blog.

Thermometer reveals a geocache