Last Day of 2009

Another year has come and gone. Time flies when you are having fun... and even when you aren't. Its been an up and down year for geocaching, but a fun one none the less.

Highlights for the year include:

• Hid just one cache
• Reached the 1700 and 1800 find milestones
  
• Tied my all time high of 53 finds 01/19/09
• Had 43 finds 04/04/09
• had 38 finds 10/24/09

Some of my favorite caches of 2009 include:

• Automated Cache Machine redux
• Most Photographed Building in Oregon?
• A Kiwi Connection - Las Vegas
• summer wild flowers
• Nugget Butte
• Bigfoot Cache Revisited
• Hounds Rockpile
• Do Bears......in the Woods?
• The Flume
• ABC Challenge

Thank you to all of you who have hidden the caches found this year. Happy New Year and I hope to see you all out on the trail in 2010!

Is the year over?

It is just about time to do my end of the year write up. My geocaching this year has been spotty at best. Despite setting a lot of all time lows including Zero finds in July my total for the year was better then 2006 or 2007. That was mainly because of a handful of really big days including a tie for my all time high of 53 in a day.

I hope 2010 will bring a return of enthusiasm for the game. I have been itching to get out and find a few caches, but the winter weather and work have kept me in. As I stated before except for group find days when we are after numbers I plan to be picky and only seek out better caches... that should mean putting in a few extra driving miles and doing a lot more hiking.

The only real hike to a cache I did this year was to Nugget Butte with DaveyDude. The hike almost killed me, but I had forgotten how much I enjoy having to put effort into a cache. I'm not talking effort in finding it... I'm talking effort in getting there. Finding a well camoed micro in town might be a challenge, but its the physical challenge that I crave. Again this is not to an extreme... I won't be buying any climbing gear or risking my life... I'll stick to the trails.

Merry Christmas!

As is tradition I went out for a few Christmas Caches today. These were today's finds

Reserved for Doogie Howser, M.D.
ATM Tree
Alternate Entrance

I also tested out my new video cam. Here is a short and badly executed video of one of our finds.

December thoughts

It has been a slow time geocaching for me. I've been at it for almost 7 years now and I have always gone at my own speed. I think it would be easy to get burned out. Once upon a time very few caches bothered me... today I have more and more of a dislike for certain caches. Caches that are hard to find... in residential places... micros in the woods.

This next year I plan to be much more selective. I might go out for numbers with a group, but any caches I do on my own will be those that I think will be better then average. I purchased a new video camera and I plan to document these better caches on this site. I also plan to archive some of my old caches and really focus on hiding a few new quality caches. I've talked about it before... somehow I feel that this time it either happens or I join Lazyboy on the old retired cachers list.