Last Day of 2022

Much like last year, this year isn't any better. We lost my Uncle Mike (aka Duck) the other half of Duck-n-Deedy. Just a little over a year after the passing of my aunt. He's probably most famous for hiding the Oregon DeLorme Challenge.

We did a lot of geocaching together, both of us had started geocaching independently around the same time. My dad told him one day about my crazy new hobby one day and I think that weekend we went out and found 10 together, which in those days was a lot.

I went and saw him one last time a few months ago. He was recovering from open heart surgery and sounded good at that point. We even talked about the idea of geocaching together again when he recovered, but that was never to be.

I did find a few caches this year, which I told my uncle about. I even remember saying how fun it was to get out again. Only one, Under Bush, is still active. It did remind me of the old days. Maybe next year I'll try for a few more.

Last Day of 2021

I thought about stopping this tradition and letting this old blog slip away into the murking waters of forgotten internet where old blogs go to die, but here I am with one more yearly update. Just as a tribute to a couple of fine geocachers we lost in 2021. Kelly aka BIGGIEET_AL and my aunt Diane the second half of Duck-n-Deedy. 

Kelly was the first geocacher I ever met in the "wild" and we had a lot of great adventures together. I don't know how many caches we found together but he was with me for a couple of my biggest days. The last geocache I hid I named after him, "Kelly" Bigelow Lake partly in tribute and partly as a jab that I knew he'd probably never go look for it. It had been a while since I had seen him, but I imagined I would again. Gone far too early.

Here's a nice picture of Kelly logging a cache while DaveyDude examines some trade item.

Aunt Diane I have known my whole life, and with Uncle Duck we also found many geocaches. It's hard to imagine she's gone. The last facebook message I got from her was about Kelly's death. Her favorite part of geocaching was probably our pizza events. Again gone way too soon.

Here she is trying to get out of the way of my picture

Last Day of 2020

Well, 2020 was quite a year. Obviously, since March it has been all about the pandemic. It seemed pretty innocent at first... worse than normal flu bug, stay inside for a few weeks while it passes. Weeks turned to months, and despite a vaccine, no end is in sight. The NBA season finished in a bubble. Baseball and football have had seasons without fans. All while we sit at home.

I've had it lucky. For one I'm already a loner so social isolation isn't so hard on me. Second, I am lucky to be able to work from home a lot of my time. Even when I was in the office I was usually by myself. Despite some layoffs, it looks like my job is safe for now, but it hasn't been so good for many others. My favorite thing about living in Portland, besides Blazer games, is the food. Sadly I have watched many of my favorite places close, and haven't been able to really enjoy those that are still open. I just hope that these places can make it. Despite a new "lock down" I've only seen road traffic increasing. I think most people are just tired of it now.

And then we have politics. I grew up in a conservative town and I live in an extremely liberal town. My true leanings are the right side of the middle. Being in the middle can mean disagreeing with both sides, talk about frustrating. Add in a pandemic and weeks of protests. There is a lot that we need to fix in this country, and none of it can be solved when we have our backs turned to each other.

But 2020 did have some highlights

• 8th year of Blazer season tickets (cut a bit short)
• The Mandolorian
• Lack of Traffic during the pandemic was great
• Found some cool tokens
• Found a geocache for the first time in 2 years

So the geocaching highlight, since it was the only one

• Hanami

I was tired of staying inside and decided to go hiking. Found this one on my way home. I didn't even have my GPS. I looked in a spot where I thought a cache should be and there it was.

Maybe I'll look for more next year. I certainly need to get out more, that one hike almost killed me. Hope to see you out on the trail.

Last Day of 2019

Another year and another blog post. Like all years there was good and bad, but mostly I can't complain. It had good moments like the Blazers playoff run last season and bad moments like the entire start of this season. I spent a whole day in the ER with a kidney stone, but at least I wasn't dying like I thought I could be when it started. I was able to find a lot of great tokens for my collection. Didn't find a single geocache, I did sort of look for one last week... so maybe one day I'll try it again.

Highlights for the year include:

• Seven years of Blazers Season Tickets (despite the bad start)
• 2nd Cruise to Alaska
• 12 Grants Pass tokens added to the collection
• This Star Wars wasn't as bad of a dumpster fire as the last (On second thought, it was worse)
• Lost about 30 pound (though the holidays may have added some back)

No geocaches found so I can't list the best ones. I still haven't archived all of mine, but will be cleaning them up.

I've got some goals for 2020. Read more, hike more, explore more and eat more. Maybe I'll see you out there.

Last Day of 2018

Some habits are hard to break, and so I couldn't leave 2018 behind without my year in review blog post. Since geocaching has been the topic of this blog from its inception I have to report that I have found none this year. I actually did search for one after I saw a group of people searching through some bushes. I became curious and turned on my geocaching app. Sure enough there was a cache at that location and... it was missing or I just couldn't find it. Additionally after wild fire made many of my remaining active geocaches unreachable I disabled them. A reviewer then archived them before the roads were even reopened to the public. After that I pulled a "lazyboy" and archived almost all of my others.

Highlights for the year include:

• Sixth year of Blazers Season Tickets
• Ran my first 5e D&D Campaign
• Took over as Treasurer for the WCC

With no geocaches found I have none to list as favorites.  I'll probably try and adopt out a couple of my remaining caches and archive the rest this year. I might search for some, it looks like the app has been improved.

While 2018 was not the best year ever for mostly personal reasons it wasn't that bad. I've branched out to hit a few more restaurants here in Portland rather than just food carts. I've really started to focus on collecting Oregon Trade Tokens which is proving to be a lot of fun. I do hope to get out and do more hiking. Geocaching could still be a part of that. We'll see what 2019 has in store.

Last Day of 2017

The year is over. I though 2016 was an odd year, but 2017 just continued the oddity. As for geocaching I didn't even end up finding a Christmas cache ending 14 years of tradition. I did however attend a lot of coin shows.

Highlights for the year include:

• First geocache found in Colorado
• Attended the ANA Summer Seminar
• 5th year of Blazer season tickets

I'd normally list my top caches here, but with only 4 finds and none of them great I won't bother. You'll also notice that I didn't list Star Wars in my highlights of the year.

I imagined finding some more geocaches, but since the new app is pretty much useless in free mode there went the easy finds. Loading up my GPA and going off geocaching just doesn't appeal to me anymore. I'll probably start to archive some of my caches as I can get to them and remove the containers. Others I might have other geocachers collect or adopt.

Colorado and other stuff

I found my first cache in Colorado

A Birthday Walk With Sis

That's 9 out of 50 states... one day I may get them all. I don't exactly travel out of state a lot.

Since the geocaching app sucks now I don't do any caching. I might pay the $5 for the Cachly app, but I haven't had the urge yet.

February and beyond

I found 2 caches last month

15th East Rules!
What can brown do for you?

The first was in Lincoln City. I drove over for a coin show and this cache was near a public parking lot that I used to stop at a couple of shops.

The second was in Roseburg. I took the opportunity to find it while I was down visiting.

The main thing being that I had nice weather and took the opportunity to find these with my phone app. I haven't taken my real GPS out since Alaska. But now the classic phone app is being retired. The new app only shows "beginner" caches with a difficulty under 1.5 . You have to be a premium member to see all of the geocaches.

So essentially a hobby that I have slowly been giving up on has thrown another roadblock at me. I doubt I'll pay for a membership again

With that said, I also attended two coin shows last month. There will be a small show in Clackamas next Sunday and a big show up near Seattle the next weekend.

Starting off 2017

Looking over the site this morning I found a cache within walking distance. The sun is out and after having been stuck inside with snow and ice for so long it was nice to get out for a walk.

Ring-a-ling

Its not my favorite kind of find in a largely residential area, but it wasn't too bad. It was kind of tricky but I spotted it once my gesenses kicked in. I'm sure I won't find many this year but maybe I can reach 2500 with another 19 finds.

Last Day of 2016

The year is just about over and for some people it can't come soon enough. It has been an odd year for sure. Donald Trump was elected President. Among many celebrity deaths were Carrie Fisher and Kenny Baker my Star Wars heroes of old. Also among those we lost was my Uncle Randy. I suppose its not a year I'm sad to see end.

Highlights for the year include:

• Cruised to Alaska and found a few geocaches
• Visited Canada and found geocaches in British Columbia and Yukon Territory
• 4th season of Blazers season tickets
• Saw Paul McCartney in concert
• Saw Guns n' Roses in concert
• Attended the World's Fair of Money

Caches were few and far between this year, but the best included:

• International Falls & Border - Alaska/BC 
• Tutshi Memorial 
• Alpine Loop 
• You Rock, Victoria! 
• Rene's B-day Totem Pole Multi

I've slowed down a lot in my hobbies. I hardly geocached and I really didn't go out of my way to find new food carts. In fact more than once I looked around different cart pods and ended up just getting fast food someplace else. One of my hobbies I really picked up was my collecting of coins and tokens. I purchased a good number of Presidential Campaign medals from 1828 to 2016. I probably became a little obsessed. I even ended up traveling to Anaheim to attend the biggest coin show I could find to look for big ticket items. I won third place for my display at the Portland Coin Show. We'll see what 2017 brings. Thank you to everyone who hid the caches found this year, and I hope to see you all out on the trail.

One last cache

Its been a long year. Not much geocaching for me. I just haven't been interested. Maybe I'll try to do some hiking this next year and grab a few better caches.

It's been a tradition since 2003 to find a cache on Christmas. This year it was cold, but dry and I choose a nice cache in Fish Hatchery Park were I have a couple of caches hidden. There are quite a few geocaches on the trail beyond this that I haven't found. But for the day just this one find

3 tree

Alaska--- the conclusion

Day 4 Glacier Bay:

The reason we picked this particular cruise was that it was the only one for Carnival going to Glacier Bay. Other cruises would go to Tracy Fjord which I'm sure is nice. Glacier Bay just happens to have more glaciers and is a national park so we figured if this could be our only visit we might as well see it.

It was nice and sunny (glacier melting weather.) Had a great time watching for whales and looking at the glaciers. Whale watching was probably one of the things I enjoyed most about the trip. If I had it to do again I might have tried to book a whale watching excursion from one of the ports.

Day 5 Ketchikan:

Ketchikan seemed to be the most familiar of the stops to me. Sure it was the same tourist trap shops, but they also had a shuttle to Wal-Mart and the convenience store sections had a lot more normal stuff (I'll be it very expensive.) I guess it made me feel I like I was on the edge of civilization again.

My mom and sister took the shuttle to Wal-Mart so while they did I took the time to find a multi cache.

Rene's B-day Totem Pole Multi

This one took you to several totem poles. I would have preferred a cache each, but I took what I could get. Took a walk down to Creek Street which was the old Red Light district. Found this cache

Fish-On

Once the family was back we walked around a little more. Took a tour of Dolly's Brothel.

Then we said goodbye to Alaska as we boarded the ship.

Day 6 Victoria:

After most of a day at see we arrived in Victoria rather late in the day. We took one of the buses downtown and too picture and looked for caches till it was dark

Whats Cooking?
Sunken Garden
You Rock, Victoria!

We didn't have very long. Got back to the ship and we were back in Seattle in the morning. We just got up and got moving.

The End

Alaska... continued

I left off at...

Day 3 Skagway:

Skagway was our port with the longest stay. We decided to rent a car and drive into Canada. The ship was in port when we woke up and after a bit of breakfast we made our way off the ship. We picked up the rental car and started our trip.

Just after crossing the border we took some picture at the crossing and then I found this cache

International Falls & Border - Alaska/BC

It was my first cache in Canada, yet we hadn't yet stopped at the border crossing.

We continued up the road stopping at the Yukon Suspension Bridge and these two caches

Just South of 60 - South Klondike Highway

Lean on Me

We got to our destination of Carcros where we had lunch and I found one more cache

Tutshi Memorial

We continued up to Emerald Lake and just as we went to turn around we spotted a bear at the side of the road. We took a few pictures of him. Even got out of the car at what seemed like a safe distance. Didn't really notice he was a grizzley until examining the pictures later.

The trip back was fairly uneventful. We looked around at the old grave yard and a lot of the shops. Back at the ship I found one more virtual

Skagway cliffs

To be concluded...

Alaska

Its been a couple of months, but I felt I should come back and finish my posting on Alaska.

I'd never been on a cruise before so I tried to pick up all the advice I could. All I can say is that you should go how you'd like to go. We got this cruise for my Mom's 70th birthday because we've talked about Alaska so much.

I booked Carnival despite a lot of warnings not to. Warnings from people that had never cruised with them. Carnival has kind of a reputation for being the cheap party cruise line. The first part is true, Carnival was by far the cheapest, we got a balcony for about the price of an obstructed sea view on other cruise lines. As for the partying and wild children there was little to none as this was a late May cruise to Alaska.

Now one thing about Carnival I will say is I was not impressed with the food. Maybe other cruise lines are better because I'm always hearing about the food. Carnival's buffets were OK, but certainly not great. And they weren't open long. The dining room was much better. I'd probably stick to that exclusively if not for formal night and such. I have no desire to dress up on vacation.

Started the trip in Seattle. It was an interesting day of getting on the ship. It is a big undertaking to get the ship loaded and ready for a week

Day 1: A fun day at sea. I can't think of much I did. Eat, look at the ocean, wonder around the ship

Day 2 Juneau: We got into Juneau a bit late and then had to tender off the ship. This was our first cruise and first port so it was a bit confusing. Once we were off the ship we went right to the Mount Roberts Tramway. This took us up the mountain were we looked for our first cache

Alpine Loop

We ran into some other geocachers and had a good search before finding it well hidden.

Back in town we didn't really have time to go to the Mendenhall Glacier like we wanted to. Instead we looked around at shops, the Capital Building (under renovation) and found one more cache

Museum Trading Post

 

 

 

 

 

To be continued...

sogeo.org is gone

I decided last month not to renew sogeo.org and the hosting company finally deleted it. It was one of the last local geocaching sites.

Portland
Central Oregon
Corvallis
Eugene
Southern Oregon

All once represented by their own websites and all are now gone.

www.georegon.com does still exist. I'm not sure when it started, but it was after all of these.

I decided to keep the domain name and just have it point to this blog. As for this blog I decided to change the name back and maybe even post a little. I'll be in Alaska and Canada later this month and should have some adventures to share.

Last Day of 2015

Another year has gone by. This was my second full year of living in Portland. Again I ate at a lot of food carts and took in lots of blazer games. Geocaching wise it was a disappointing year, but there is potential for 2016. Highlights of the year include:

• Booked a cruise to Alaska for 2016
• Ate at numerous food carts in the #1 food city
• 3rd season with Trail Blazers Season Tickets 
• Timbers win MLS Cup
• Star Wars!

Of the 10 caches I found I decided that I could list the best:

• The U.S. Coast Guard through history  
• Picea Sitchensis Octopoda 
• The Atomic Penguin   

The first two are more for their locations then their micro caches. The last was just unique. Overall it was a good year. Here is to hoping that 2016 brings me to some more interesting places and maybe a few more geocaches. Thank you for those who hid the caches found this year. I hope to see you all on the trail in 2016.

A Christmas Tradition

In keeping with tradition I found a cache on Christmas day.

Party Cache #1

Nothing exciting or special. It makes 10 total for the year.

In a couple of days if I don't forget I'll do my recap of the year. With just 10 finds I don't think I'll bother with a list of the best caches.

MLS Champion Portland Timbers

Today the Portland Timbers won the MLS Cup making them the league champions.

A couple of my friends even got married at the game.

I went to 3 games this season, and one last season. I haven't always been a fan of soccer, but I have come to appreciate it more over the last couple of seasons. It won't be replacing my Trail Blazers any time soon.

Here is a picture from earlier in the season.

Blog changes and Alaska Cruise

I decided its time to quit whining about geocaching. I changed the name of this blog and I'll continue to post from time to time, but most of it probably won't be about geocaching.

I created a new blog to focus on coin collecting

http://gptokens.blogspot.com/

I've already made a handful of videos and will be posting them on there. If videos about tokens and coins interest you I invite you to take a look.

I do have some other news of sorts. My sister and I purchased my mom a cruise to Alaska, and we're going too. The trip is planned for May. I don't have a passport so I applied for one last week. We're still planning off boat excursions. I'll probably find time for a geocache or two I'd imagine.

Am I done geocaching?

A few weeks ago I was sitting at lunch and looked on my phone app to see if there were any caches close. Sure enough there was one within feet. After lunch I stopped and found it quickly, but did not have a pen on me to log it. Now fast forward to earlier this week. Same place for lunch, pen in hand, cache was signed, went to log it and....

Stick Me!

This might be the cache. I let my premium membership lapse and this is a premium only. I can't see it on the map or log it.

There seem to be a lot of premium only caches in Portland. Actually the cache map looks pretty nice without so many of those puzzles and challenge caches. I never made any of my caches premium only. I guess I always wanted my caches to be found by all. I know some people thought it might help with caches being muggled and trade items being pilfered. In this age were anyone with a cell phone can find a cache it might make more sense to have caches for the more devoted geocacher.

Anyway my membership was canceled when paypal couldn't pull money from an old closed account. I'm not sure why paypal couldn't figure out that I have a new account and credit card active with them. It doesn't matter I suppose. I saw that it wasn't going to renew and I chose not to renew it. I didn't really pay attention to how many Portland caches it would wipe off the map.

With just 9 finds for the year (10 if you include this one) this might just be the final nail in the coffin