DeliciousPanda: Thank you for coming!
It was around the year 2009 or so when I found out about Geocaching. It was in Boy Scouts, we were on a camping trip and one of the adults brought us out to Geocache while hiking in the woods. We had fun doing it, though unfortunately there was never a merit badge when I was in Boy Scouts. I didn’t create my own account until 2014. I did it on occasion, but didn’t start picking it up a lot until about half a year before Covid hit, so late 2019. I held my first event at Hawthorne Mall in Vernon hills on a snowy January day in January 2020 (on the 18th to be exact). There was a nice showup, which included psychovw, Gurnee Glenn, CEGthe3Wonders, AnimalMan_SD, AKiteFlier, tea4tilrmn and myself (DeliciousPanda). It wasn’t until November 1, 2020 that I hid my first Geocache at Dover Straits in Mundelein. Unfortunately it has been archived (archived on May 7, 2022) due to the host (an evergreen bush that wrapped around the giant Dover Straits sign) has been removed. What a shame, but there have been plenty of other caches I’ve placed since then, as well as plenty of other events I’ve hosted. My first big thing was the mermaid tail, as I have some really good mermaid friends who make livings (some do it just for fun) doing events as mermaids or creating tails and accessories. In November of 2020 I decided to work towards my 365 day finding streak. November 14th 2020 I found a Geocache, and every day since then I found one until December 7th 2021, as December 6th 2021 was the last day in a row I found a cache completing 388 days in a row. I purchased my own place in March 2021 (closing day was on March 1st) so that helped the streak some as I was living near caches I haven’t found yet. Once a full year was complete, I decided to just keep going. It wasn’t soon after that I figured it wasn’t necessarily in my best interest to continue, as the only thing I could get out of it was just simply saying I have X amount of days. Nothing against those who have streaks much longer than mine, but it wasn’t worth it to me to keep mine going with how busy I get and such. During the summer months, I work at the Bristol Renaissance Faire (which I have been doing for over a decade), so I work a full time job during the week plus spending another 12ish hours at the faire each weekend day (plus Labor Day which is always a Monday, which comes out to 9 weekends or 19 days that I’m working at the Bristol Renaissance Faire) so I usually don’t have too much free time during that time period. The Faire is also the reason everyone calls me Panda (to the point where pretty much only my family calls me by my real name which I rarely give out now) as I work with MooNiE the Magnif’Cent. I also work at the Mentally Insane haunted prison at the Old Sheriffs House Lake County Jail in Crown Point Indiana. Those are decent weekends for me, as I’ll sleep out there, I don’t have to be at the haunt until 6pm on Fridays and Saturdays in October so I’ll spend Saturday exploring abandoned places in Gary or Geocaching. There’s also the Zombie Club Tiki Lounge that I’ll stop at each day before going to the haunt. Thank you for putting this cache out for me to find.