ROAD TRIP!!! (sort-of) - A Wee Geocaching Adventure

Yay for blogging again...

So, the inspiration for this post is Geocaching.com's summer Road Trip 2015. (If you're new to Geocaching, here's a Geocaching 101 for you!)

Geocaching.com this summer decided to shake things up a little. The last couple of summers, August specifically, they have done a souvenir thing that you could "earn" for your profile (one year was find a cache every day in August you'll get the souvenir, the other year was "find this kind of cache" and you'll get the souvenir). This year to celebrate 15 years of geocaching, they decided to spread the fun out over the ENTIRE SUMMER! So every two weeks, beginning June 19th the website has enabled a new "challange" for it's users to get more shiny for their user profiles.

I'm excited, this year you have 5 different types of caches to find and earn a total 6 souvenirs. . So far, I got 3 of the 5. What's nice is everyone has until Sept 2nd to find the 5 different caches.

What's the kind of caches you're finding, you ask? I'll tell you! :D








On June 19th, you had to find a cache that had at least 10 favorite points, earning you "Fun With Favorites". Favorite points is usually a good indication of a nifty/cool/awesome cache (sometimes it's for the journey to the cache - like walking along a trail with the most spectacular views).

July 3rd brought us together, attending a geocaching event earned you "Meet Your Road Trip Crew". :) Had fun discovering a nice out of the way winery and a new favorite wine. ~.~

The most recent one, starting on July 17th, "Let's Get Extreme", was finding a cache that had a difficulty level or terrain level of 5 (caches are rated out of 5 on how much of a challenge it is, mentally or physically - a 5 terrain (or T5 if you want to get technical), you should have some sort of safety gear, like hard helmets and spelunking gear).



The next two are coming up on July 31st and August 14th will round out the summer fun. July 31st is "High Five for the Earth" - getting an Earth Cache or a geocaching event where you "Cache In - Trash Out" (i.e. clean up trash as you geocache). And August 14th is "Putting on Your Thinking Cap" for finding a Mystery Cache.

I will admit the "Let's Get Extreme" had me a little worried, only b/c I was afraid I would be trying to find this one by myself.  ~.~ Luckily I got a friend who caches as well to come with me and discovered it relatively quickly (if she wasn't there, I would have left sooner after looking for a short time. Took us about 15 min before I found it, granted it should have taken us a bit longer, but I would have walked away a lot sooner than that by myself).

My friend and I went to a near by National Park to find a couple more caches and to hike a little to an overlook with an awesome view. Well worth it in the heat and sweating buckets.

And in case if you were wondering about the different cache types, they can be found here.