Leap Day Souvenir #1

Isn't it lovely? Earned my first Leap Day 2016 souvenir while enjoying a Reindeer series of caches yesterday! Looking forward to earning its sister souvenir while attending a Leap Day event! TaGeez and I took the entire day off and plan on caching our way around the metro areas.

Speaking of which, those crazy Southeastern Michigan cachers outdid themselves this year. I think they created 18 events (starting at 12:01 am tonight)! TomasDiaz calculated that you could actually break a record and attend 16 of them! His numbers are:

• Total time at events: 4.27 hours
• Total driving time: 11.07 hours
• Approximate mileage: 602 miles!

He shared an incredibly impressive spreadsheet on our group's FB page including GC codes, coordinates, event hours, estimated attendance times, drive times, and idle times. It is for this reason I struggle with his geocaching puzzles - the man is too smart!

Go out and earn your souvenir! Grab a cache this weekened! Attend an event tomorrow!

Detroit's City Sculpture Park

Categorize this as "Unexpected places geocaching takes you".

I can't tell you the GC code to this cache as it's a part of a relatively new puzzle, but TaGeez and I were thrilled to stumble across the City Sculpture Park in Detroit's New Center.

Detroit has been rated as one of the top ten influential cities for urban art. It's around so many unexpected corners!

Have you visited my blog post This is Our Detroit: An Urban Art Adventure? It's one of my favorite geocaching blog posts, and I included GC's. 

I'm looking forward to Spring when everything is in bloom. Wildflowers springing up through the cracks and fresh paint adorning the factory walls. 

Just another month until the Belle Isle event where hundreds of cachers head to downtown Detroit for caching on the Isle amongst those great buildings and along the waterways. 

Winter Streaking Tip: Recently Found Caches

So far, I've cached every day for the last 1,452 days. This includes 4 Michigan winters where temps can range from a balmy 60 degrees F to as low as -26 degrees F. What is the key besides boot warmers and extremely tolerant loved ones? Pre-planning.

The calm before the next snow storm

On my 1,000th day of caching, I wrote a guide to Successful Streaking. One point I'd really like to focus on is the benefit of a good pocket query*. Several of the Southeastern Michigan streakers heavily rely on their daily or weekly Recently Found PQ.

*Note: Pocket Queries are a Premium-member feature, and, IMHO, well worth the moolah!

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CREATING A 'RECENTLY FOUND' POCKET QUERY

Winter time is hard on cachers as "park and grabs" could be buried under snow drifts, LPC's encased in snow banks, conditions dangerous with ponds barely covered in snow. For successful finds on blustery days, follow in other's footsteps (literally and figuratively)! You are more likely to find a cache if it's been found recently. I personally run this query weekly and save to a special "group" or folder in GeoSphere. You can also run it and save it to your GPSr. 

Below are general instructions to creating a pocket query. Visit the tutorials on Geocaching.com for greater detail.

Step 1: Go to geocaching.com and click the Play menu. Select Pocket Queries from the drop-down menu.

Step 2: Click the Create a New Query button.

Step 3: Populate the following fields (based on your personal preferences).

• Name your Pocket Query. Make it distinct.
• Under Days to Generate, pick the day or days of the week to run.
• Change the Frequency to Run this query every week on the days checked.
• Change Cache Total to 1000.
• Change Selected Type to Traditional (*though many Virtuals, Webcams and Earth Caches are winter-friendly).
• I leave the default of Any Container, but you can select as desired.
• Under Status, I will select I haven't found, I don't own, Are not on my Ignore list, Found in the last 7 days, and Is Enabled. Found in the last 7 days is key! 
• Change Terrain to Less than or equal to 2.
• As I don't travel far in inclement weather, I change my From Origin to My Home Location.
• Scrolling to the bottom, I will check Include Pocket Query name in download file name.
• Click the Submit Information button.

I receive my revised pocket query on Monday and upload it to my iPhone app. Save yours to your phone or your GPSr.

My target list

Remember when you play to play safe! Even if found recently, watch for concealed holes or ponds and careful of loose or drifting snow. 

Caching in Bloom County

Who knew Opus was a geocacher? 

I want to geocache in Bloom County, where the animals talk!

Wasted Trip?

"What did they mean 'Needs Maintenance'?" TaGeez bemoaned. "There was still PLENTY of room!"

Geo-Adventure Prep: Foodie Heaven!

TaGeez and I are vibrating in excitement - just two months until our next great adventure!

Nightly we're pouring over guidebooks, reading up Virtual cache descriptions, and plotting likely Benchmarks. But tonight is a big one - FOOOOOOD!!!!

Settled in for the night, we're watching Diners, Drive-Ins, and Dives and Eat the Street for fabulous food leads in DC, Baltimore, and Philadelphia.

So much fun making lists, bookmarking restaurants and daydreaming as we catch glimpes of each town in the background. Walnut Street in Philly. Chips Pit Beef in Maryland. And this scrumptious metal & glass diner outside Arlington Cemetery.  

Add to that the need to return to Old Town Alexandria for dinner alongside that cobbled road. Crab Cakes in Baltimore, Philly Cheesesteaks... 

Food can add such amazing memories to a trip. I found myself in Philadelphia almost 9 years ago on business. My hotel, the Hilton (Garden Inn), was the home of the original Philly Cheesesteak plus the site of my very first one. I sat at a white-draped table in their top-floor restaurant and had my very first one under the watchful gaze of William Penn atop Philadelphia's City Hall. I'll never forget it.

Imagine my horror sitting next to TaGeez tonight (a man, I should add, that up to this moment I considered my heart's true love) when he turned to me and proclaimed that HIS cheesesteak will have Cheez Whiz on it! ((shudder)) Alas! A memory I hope to forget!

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