BooBooBee’s 20th Cachin’ Anniversary series: ‘iščom paškaškom
This cache represents a translation of the number “twenty” in Cruzeño (Isleño), the Chumash dialect spoken on the Channel Island off the coast of Santa Barbara. All of our caches and homes are on lands formerly held by the Chumash and Salinan people (depending upon where on this coastal stretch you might be wandering). Most of their languages had been largely lost, but during the 1900s linguists and anthropologists led by John P. Harrington set out to document indigenous languages across North America.
His 750,000-plus typed, legal-sized sheets of field notes were tribal traditions, ceremonies, music, geography and other observations including linguistic notes collected over the course of half a century. Among them were Samala, the official language of the Californian Chumash people, and its Ineseño dialect of the Santa Ynez Band of Chumash Indians. 
To commemorate our family’s 20 years of geocaching, we put out 20 caches for release on 5/18/2024. Can you find them all?
We began geocaching in May 2004, invited by BooBooBee’s dad because GC.com and Jeep had teamed up for a promotion that offered a chance at winning a Jeep. At the time, we were driving a ’79 CJ-7 she’d built with her dad long before the arrival of our little ’cachers. It was worth a shot to enter the giveaway. I found my way to the website, then, using just the map and local knowledge, our preschoolers and I found our first. And we were hooked!
Geocaching has provided us a shared activity we’ve enjoyed as we traveled the states and beyond. At times, we felt the pull of the numbers game, but other family activities quickly replaced our hunting time, so we focused our finds on more purposeful targets. Geocachers around the world helped us find interesting, educational, even awe-inspiring locales we likely wouldn’t have found (and enjoyed) without the game.
Now the kids are grown, BooBooBee has picked up the pace on hunting, and we’ve really appreciated the new life breathed into our shared game by relative newcomers Dr. Grackle, Rhono, PokiPowers, LisaWisa, and Chummyfungus. to name a few. Some have really upped the game with puzzles and gadgets.
While far less creative, this 20th Anniversary series aims to give them a bit of a hunt to add to their numbers game in scenic settings while also, we hope, providing some smiles along the way.
Happy hunting!
CONGRATS TO I_Kitten, Arisokittens and PokiPowers for the FTF along this trail! Thanks for playing along!