My Geocaching 12 of 12

Despite my lack of posts leading up to the first Geocaching 12 of 12, the day has come and gone with nearly fifty Cachers submitting their photo sets as of this post. That's about the number I'd expected so I'm very happy with the results. There were some excellent submissions this month and I encouraged all the Cachers to check them out. June 12, 2009 is the next Geocaching 12 of 12 and I'm hoping for at least double the number of entries from this month.

Meanwhile, I want to drop my submission to the blog in more a journal-like entry than Flickr provides. So you'll find my day shown below:



8:35AM: I had all the GSPRs (three total units -- the car nav unit then one for each Drie and I) and the iPhones all prepped last night, but then this morning five new geocaches published in the park and I had to reload all of them. The last two were the Nüvi (on the computer in the background) and the iPhone.


9:50AM: More than an hour after leaving the house we arrived at the park only a little ahead of schedule. The 2009 Metro Park Series Picnic event was due to start at 10:00AM. Drie, of course, still needs to finish her coffee to wake up and operate in the morning.


10:20AM: One of my favorite games at Geocaching Events is the "Closest to the Pin" game. In brief, the coordinates are given to a point in the middle of an open piece of land. Each GPSR User enters those coordinates into their unit, then places a flag at the location their GPSR takes them to. Once all the flags are placed, the location is checked and the flag closest to that point wins. What I find interesting is the scattering of the flags and how typically they're grouped into brand. This morning I was one of the first out and at the far edge of the few flags already placed.


10:20AM: Another game played this event was the Geo Bingo where the attendees work their way around the group attempting to get people to sign-off on a square. Drie had our sheet and was running around, I was sitting with some fellow regular MCCM cachers so I became a popular target.


11:08AM: Some of the regular MCCM cachers hit the trail for five new caches (and the clues to some older ones). Just before 11:10AM we scored our first cache find.


10:35AM: Along the trail we ran into another Cacher who had injured his thumb in the course of returning a cache to its hiding spot.


12:36PM: The last cache of the run with the MCCM crew was only about 24 minutes before lunch back at the pavilion. We stamped that logbook and hit the trail back to the food.


1:07PM: By the time we returned to the pavilion I was hungry (and in need of more water) and was happy to partake in the hot dogs fresh off the grill.


1:31PM: Following lunch it was time for the drawing! The tickets were passed out during lunch, but my number wasn't drawn.


1:54PM: The last task of the day was to determine the winner of the Closest to the Pin contest. Sadly I was second furthest from the pin with my PN-40. Oh well. Better luck next time.


2:46PM: As the event wrapped up Drie and I decided to hit a couple of caches just outside the park. Not only did this give us a few more finds for the day, but it clears out the park and the area nearby. I always hate leaving caches behind.


10:56PM: After a shower, dinner, and a nap it was time to log the caches from the day and get the last shot for the day. Thanks to the Geocaching iPhone App all ten physical and the event cache logs were waiting for me in my field notes on the Geocaching.com site. All I needed was to added the links and post. That still took about half an hour though as getting the various links ended up being tougher than normal.