Geocaching Statistics

I was playing over at mygeocachingprofile.com and had fun looking at our geocaching statistics! If you haven't already checked out mygeocachingprofile.com, it's a cool site where you can upload a pocket query from geocaching.com and it creates all these cool graphics with your statistics!  Fun!

 Cache Types We've Found















 

States We've Cached In

Geo Badges We've Earned

 
 
 

 Counties We've Cached In

 

GeoTrip to Kansas City

We took a short GeoTrip on Saturday to Kansas City.  Jeff was leaving for Ft. Lewis, Washington early on Sunday morning, so we decided to drive to Kansas City and stay the night...and of course, cache along the way!  The trip to the airport usually takes a little over 2 hours...about 130 miles, however, we took all day long.  The sun was bright, the wind was blowing (when doesn't it blow in Kansas??) and we had a great time.  We ended our caching portion of the trip at Russel Stover where we ended with a cache and an ice cream cone. 

Ghost Bus on the Prairie

A settler's cemetery tucked away

Great road sign!  Witch Way to OZ

Funny sign we saw in St. Mary's.  I wonder if there is a brain insurance???

Roy II

 We did a cache in Silver Lake and it was like being on the set of Alfred Hitchcock's "The Birds."

http://hitchcock.tv/mov/birds/images/birds.jpg

I was so busy watching the birds flying around that I missed the cache!  Jeff found the cache, signed the log and put it back all without my help!  Come to find out, it was one of Jeff's most memorable caches, Lord, Give Me a Sign!  And I missed it...all because of the birds! 

What a great day!  We saw some pretty cool places~

Nicodemus National Historic Site

On our Spring Break GeoTrip across Kansas, we stopped at Nicodemus National Historic Site in Nicodemus, Kansas.  Of course, there was a Nicodemus geocache!

A little background information about Nicodemus:  Former enslaved African Americans left Kentucky in organized colonies at the end of the of post-Civil War Reconstruction period to experience freedom on the free soils of Kansas. Nicodemus represents the involvement of African Americans in the western expansion and settlement of the Great Plains. It is the oldest and only remaining all Black Town west of the Mississippi River.

While at the Nicodemus NHS, Jacob (aka Buggywasher) participated in the Junior Ranger Program.  You may ask what is a Junior Ranger?  Well, according to the National Park Service, a Junior Ranger is an explorer, a learner, and a protector of National Parks.  Junior Rangers complete a series of activities and share their answers with a park ranger.  At the end of the activities, the Junior Ranger receives a badge and a certificate.  It's a pretty cool program.  This is the 2nd one Jacob has done and he really has enjoyed it.

Jacob hard at work!

Jacob is an official Nicodemus Junior Ranger!

While we were at Nicodemus, Jacob and Jeff were able to use their National Park Passport.  For Christmas last year, my mum got Jacob and Jeff National Park Passports.  Each book contains information about our National Parks with a place for National Park stickers and stamps.  Each National Park has a cancellation stamp for you to put in your book.  Jacob and Jeff were able to stamp their books while at Nicodemus!

Spring Break GeoTrip

I've been so bad at keeping up with this blog.  Between my other blog (What's Cooking At Jen's House,) school, work, teaching, family and everything else, I just haven't been writing about our geocaching adventures, even though we've been geocaching during the last few months!

All three of us are on spring break for the past week, so we Jeff planned a big geo trip around Kansas.  When we were talking about and planning our trip, we knew that we wanted to combine several challenges...the Kansas 105 County Challenge, the Delorme Challenge and the Virtual Challenge, along with going to a few specific caches.  So Jeff worked for hours and planned our route and the caches along the way.

Early on Tuesday morning, we started out on our trip!  It was a beautiful spring day, all of us were wearing shorts and enjoying the mid 80* temps.  We visited some pretty cool cache sites on day 1.  Marblecake, The Love Shack, Boston Corbett Dugout and the Oil Museum.

Boston Corbett Dugout

Love Shack...I wonder what stories this house could tell...

Hmmm, a totem pole in front of the Oil Museum...Interesting!

Marblecake...the rock formations are amazing!

We stayed the night in Hill City at an awesome Bed and Breakfast.  After seeing what hotels were available in town, we called the B&B and were told to come right over.  The proprietor was so nice and friendly and the old Victorian house was lovely.  We stayed in the Angel Room, which was beautiful and overflowing with antiques and angels!  Our breakfast in the morning was wonderful~blueberry pancakes, sausage, fruit, Costa Rican coffee, OJ and milk.  Jacob told us that was the best place ever!

The Angel Room was on the 2nd floor with the "tower" and the middle window.

Day 2 took us from Hill City to Scott City.  Our caching started in Morland City.  We watched the sun peek over the horizon at the City Park.  Jacob and I played a few games of tether ball as Jeff searched (and replaced) the cache.  We traveled to Hoxie, were we did the Green and Yellow cache.  The cache container was well done!  After caching in Colby, we stopped for a picnic lunch at It's an Oasis.  Let me tell you, it was NOT an oasis.  The wind was howling and we ended up quickly making our sandwiches and eating them in the car!  We headed towards Mt. Sunflower, the highest point of Kansas, and the Colorado border.  We found Crazy Tricycle along the way to Scott City, which is where we spent the night.

 

 

It was really WINDY!

We started Day 3 with the windchill at 14*!  Brrrrrr.  We had the heater cranked, whereas two days before we had the AC cranked!  We started caching in Amy, Ks.  We did a run on KS 4, which led us to 20+ caches in a row.  What fun!  One of the caches in Great Bend led us to the Fuller Brush factory.  We took a 20 minute break from caching while I ran into the factory store.  Grammy Shaw used to buy me brushes from the Fuller Brush salesman.  The Lady Catherine was the only brush that could go through my thick hair.  I was pleased to see they still sell Lady Catherine, so when mine gets worn out, I know where to get another one.  However, I don't think it will wear out anytime soon...Grammy bought this last one for me about 17 years ago...and it's still going strong!

Our last cache of the day (or so we thought) was in Lincolnville, Ks at a cemetery.  Our 49th cache of the day.  It was just getting dark and a thunderstorm was heading our way.  Just as we finished up with the log book, it started to rain and hail!  A big bolt of lightening and the crack of thunder scared Jacob half to death!  So we high tailed it out of there.  It's a wonder that my poor Prius is still has all it's parts underneath as I bottomed out several times on the gravel road out of there! 

Once we made it home, Jeff and I began to log in all of our finds on geocaching.com.  Just after we finished, we noticed there was a new cache in our area...only 9 miles away!  Jeff got dressed and ran out at 10:20pm to claim the First to Find!  The 50th cache of the day, making this our record number of caches in one day. 

We had a great trip.  3 days, 841 miles and 115 different caches. 

Geocaching Trip Labor Day 2010

We took a quick geocaching trip last Sunday and Monday.  It was Labor Day weekend, so Jacob didn't have school, I have Monday's off and Jeff was on leave.  Perfect timing for a road trip!  We packed up the Prius and took off heading southeast towards Dunlap, Kansas.  Since Jeff is from Dunlap, Iowa, we decided to set a cache in Dunlap, Kansas!  Dunlap, Kansas was a small town that in it's heyday, must have been a bustling farming community.  Today, there are gravel roads instead of paved, there are old buildings that are abandoned and in disrepair.  The school is all boarded up.  There is a church, and it actually seemed to be one of the few buildings that looked as if it was well taken care of. 

Burden, KS

Who-who can find me?  Jacob can!

Big Brutus

We continued southeast towards Chanute and Columbus.  Columbus is in the southeast corner of Kansas, near Oklahoma and Missouri.  Once we reached Columbus, we started heading west, zigzagging north and south, hitting caches in particular counties.  We're trying to attempt the Delorme Kansas Challenge and the Kansas 105 County Challenge so we needed to be specific on where exactly the caches were!

Little House on the Prairie

Bossie

We had a great time...  2 day, 706 miles (we only had to fill up once!) and we found a total of 69 caches.  We drove down a lot of gravel roads, traveled paved roads that were more like gravel roads, and saw a lot of small-town Kansas...Big Brutus, Little House on the Prairie (which is a replica of their Kansas home) and Bossie dancing the Bosa-Nova.