***For my 400th Hide, I figured I would make it a bit of a Challenge***
US Counties- there are 3,144, if you count the 137 "county equivalents" and for this challenge - they count. However, you only need to find 26 caches. That is the simple part.
In the United States, a county is a political and geographic subdivision of a state, usually assigned some governmental authority. The term "county" is used in 48 of the 50 U.S. states. The exceptions are Louisiana and Alaska, where the functionally equivalent subdivisions are called, respectively, parishes and boroughs. Numerous consolidated city–counties exist throughout the U.S. in which a city has merged with its county to form one unified jurisdiction with the governmental powers of both entities.
The average number of counties per state is 62. The state with the most counties is Texas, with 254; the state with the fewest counties is Delaware, with three. As of the 2000 Census, the average county population was about 100,000. The most populous county is Los Angeles County, California, with an estimated population of 9,880,000 (2009 Census estimate), larger than all but eight U.S. states. The least populous county is Loving County, Texas, with some 80 residents. The largest county or county-equivalent is Unorganized Borough, Alaska, which is over 330,000 square miles. The five largest counties or county-eqivalents are all in Alaska; the largest county by land area elsewhere is San Bernardino County, California, which is over 20,000 square miles. The smallest county by land area is Arlington County, Virginia, which is 26 square miles.
The nature and power the county government exercises, as well as the distribution of power among the state, counties, and municipalities, varies widely and is defined in each state's statutes and constitution. At one end of the spectrum is Connecticut, which abolished county government in 1960 and has functions carried out in other states by counties carried out in city and town governments instead, maintaining its eight counties only as geographical designations and to organize its judicial and state marshall system. At the other end of the spectrum is Maryland, which has few incorporated municipalities and has its 23 counties and the independent City of Baltimore handles almost all services, including public education, which in most other states is the responsibility of a separate school district, a special-purpose district usually governed by an independent-elected school board.
The site of a county's administration, and often the county courthouse, is called the county seat (or in Louisiana or Alaska the "parish seat" and "borough seat," respectively). Several Northeastern counties officially use the term "shire town" to refer to the county seat. Common sources of county names are names of people, geographic features, places in other states or countries, Native American tribes, and animals. Quite a few counties bear names of French or Spanish origin.
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Here is the challenge that will require you to travel a little, and what makes this "extreme" you ask - Read ON... You will have to find twenty six different caches before you go after the final. The extreme part is that each cache must be in a county that starts with each letter of the alphabet, and only ONE county PER State counts. Which twenty-six States are up to you, and which twenty-six caches for that matter. There are a few rules that you will need to follow for this one:
- Previous finds do count for this challenge.
- Only physical caches count, i.e. Traditional, Multi, Unknown, Letterbox or Wherigo
- Use the posted coordinates to determine which county the cache counts for.
- You will have to find a cache in twenty-six different counties, each county must be in a different State.
- Each county name must start with each letter of the alphabet.
- For the letter "X" you can use any county that has an "X" in its name, but you can't use that county for any other letter. ALSO - you cannot use that state for any other counties.
- No Wild Cards for this challenge.
- Only counties located in the United States count for this challenge.
- For Louisiana use parishes and for Alaska use boroughs.
- To gain credit create a list any way you see fit, but include the GC#, county name, state and date you found the cache.
- All other questions can be sent to the challenge owner.
There it is. A fun little challenge for you to think about this winter as you dream us road trips for next summer. You may thank Boreal Walker for the idea for this cache, his challenge GC2JQ5W US Challenge: Alphabet Counties, was the inspiration behind this one. His was a bit easier, but this one is a bit more adventurous...
Difficulty is for the challenge, Terrain is for the hide.
The list of my adventure is here: MY LIST