Its About Time

The moment I posted this title, I had a lot of thoughts. One was the old LDS commercial where the father is so busy he can’t spend any time with them. The family loads the camper in secret, then tricks the dad into getting in the back to check out a kid’s project and drive away with him. With the words, “Family, it’s about time”.

This last year or two have been busy and chaos. Too much is going on. COVID, neighbors and friends deaths, my youngest kid graduated from high school, my son brought a new fantastic young lady into our family. However, I have taken little time for caching.

I miss friends. DrJay missed a day, after having the longest caching day for years, he casually mentioned that he missed a day. Like KingBoreas before him. It happens to everyone. However, many of us had a weekly event, we saw each other weekly. So between covid and the end of his streak, we do not get together as much as we did.

Also, the chaos has kept me busy, and I have not gotten together with others to go out caching. I did spend a day in central Utah riding with Zer0 and Coach Steve. We had a great time. I come to enjoy and miss those.

So, like all good people, Zero and I are kidnapping each other to head to Seattle for the celebration. Sadly, not to Geowoodstock. It would require crossing the border and an extra week. We do not want to find ourselves in a Canadian jail for tom foolery.

It will be good to get out, see friends and just pass the time with cachers. Hopefully a few of you will be on the road as well, and we will see you in the area. Enjoy

Utah Geoaching at the End of 2021

We have came to the end of another year. 2021 slowly creeps out and the new year will pop in soon. We are still here. It seems things have slowed down a bit, but I would have to see what Punk Rock Girls thinks. However to me it appears we have slowed

The reviewer numbers

I have not looked deep. Some of the old cache pages I could look at this info is gone,. So I am digging this information through other sources.

If it has not happened yet it will soon. I will pass 30,000 caches published as BlueRajah and GeoawereUSA2. I am trying to pull info now, but it has stalled for 15 minutes. I am close if i have not. That is since.2009, so it has been a while.

Punk Rock Girl has been going since 2013 and I think he passed 10,000 total published.

I had not realized the dates. Here is a list of all the reviewers that were assigned to Utah at different points. It is surprising to me.

• BlueRajah - 12.5 years

• Punk Rock Reviewer -8.5 years

• UtahAdmin - 2 years 10 months

• Red Hiker - 2 Years 6 months

• Irishe - 1 year 10 months

• Mtn-Man - 1 Year 10 months

• Lord Stirling - 10 months

• HighCountryAdmin - 10 months

What happened to them all?

Lord Sterling retired in 2020 from helping around the world

HighCountryAdmin retired from reviewing in 2017

Mtn-Man retired from reviewing in 2019

Irishe was one of the founders of Groundspeak and ran the company for many years.. I have not heard from him since his retirement from Grounspeak to work on other project.s

RedHiker - stopped reviewing for some time and left for California to work. He picked up reviewing there. He recently moved back here and still reviews california.

UtahAdmin Does not appear to be caching anymore.

Punk Rock Girl is still causing problems

BlueRajah is as well.

Utah Numbers

In 2015 we hit 29,500 in the state. Then that number crawled over 30,000 caches before dropping below, bumping above, then sliding below. Currently six years later we are at the same number.

It seems Punk Rock Girl and I archive about 1500 per year. We publish about 2500-3000 so a large number of caches are archived by their owners. Thanks for that. It is so much easier for everyone if you take care of them yourselves. However a large number either ignore their caches, or they leave the game to never be heard from again.

Springtime in the East

I have gotten bad at writing here. Hopefully I can do better. Last month I was asked for work to travel to update South Carolina to work for five weeks. I don’t often travel for work, so this was a surprise, and helped me avoid a two week furlough. I found that part out later.

Well upon ariving in Seneca South Carolina I found that there were not many caches in the area. There were caches, it just was not as cache rich as back home. However every day or two I would pick a direction and travel for 45 minutes then turn 10 minutes to the right and come back home. Grabbing the caches on the way.

At the same time I saw some of the adventure labs that were in the area and took the time to go see them. I thought I would take the time to share a few stories and photos.

My flight

I did take the time to load my trusty GPS and load up my phone, then grab a battery pack for the trip. I have learned that those three things can save you a ton of heartache. Then as an afterthought I created a notification for the area. Just in case a new cache was published.

Well it did not take long. I think I arrived on a Sunday and by Monday that a cache was published around noon. Well I did not think much of it. You know, back home the race would be on, and there would be no chance. but not there In Honor of Manny H. Manteca Calif I would come to realize later that one of the people that goes for the new caches was out of town. So I had free reighn for a few days.

I parked on the edge of some ball diamonds and headed over, and was wondering of the person had not logged it or if I would be FTF. Well yep, it was a surprise that I was first. I think that may be the first FTF in a number of years.

Walhalla and Adventure labs

Well the next few days of that week had me traveling back to Whitehall park a few times to grab a few other FTF’s and later second and third to finds. It was a good time. However I eventually picked a new direction. I decided one day to head north to Walhalla and work on some adventure labs. It was a nice trip and I saw a few cool lcoations as I walked around town. .

The Jail

In one of the stops I found this jail wagon. This was the town/area jail for a number of years. In the winter a burn barrell would be added and the sides covered. They could be taken to different locations for work details. Coming from Utah where winters are months of snow and sub freezing temps I was appalled. Then checking the weather for the area it averages a low of 35 degrees. So it will get freezing during cold snaps but nothing terrible, unless it was a bad bad year. It was a nice advanture lab.

Northward

I headed north from here. And it was a really nice ride. The forest gets heavier and heavier and the underbrush just begins to cover everything. My real goal was to try and grab a few of the earth caches and virtuals that were on the way. A few of them were off the beaten path but I figured I would at least see before I made the decision. So I headed northward.

I stopped at one of the state parks to get the geocache what kind of house is it. Yet, further north when I got to a pull out and a well beaten dirt road that headed down to the Cheohee road falls Earth cache. It's one of those locations that's out of the way, a waterfall that's beautiful and most people never see. This is one of the reasons why I've really come to love geocaching. It's that location that is not a tourist spot, not a highlight, not something that everybody goes to. Those beautiful locations off the beaten trail that you get to take people to. I did look for the regular geocache that was there with absolutely no luck. But that's how it goes sometimes.

I then traveled a little further northward there's still another Earthcache I need to take the time to log on that road. I did stop and grab the Moody springs earthcache. But to be completely honest most spring Earthcaches are not that great. There's a reason why they've been limited because they're not very good. There was one that I should have taken a road off to but I didn't and I look now and believe I should have gone after the King Creek falls Earthcache but what happened happened.

New Earthcache

I did cut a road Eastward to come down a different trail. And while I was there I noticed arock out cropping. I would take a number of photos and eventually go home and do research for the area. So when I took a few minutes I created an earthcache of my own and submitted it for the local reviewer. And a few days later had it published. It's been a month now and only one person is found it but it is a really beautiful location and hopefully highlight something a little interesting to people I ended up call it calling it Leader of the Band. And unlike many Earth caches it is very simple it just makes people think about the location a little bit without a lot of studying.

That reminds me I'm sitting here looking at the map and realized I have at least one other Earth cache to take the time and log from the date. So I should get to it.

I will leave you with a final photo a few yards from my Earthcache.

Covid and Caching

This has been an odd year. So odd. I have been out caching some, and taken some great trips. One to southern Utah, another longer one through wyoming, south and north dakota, clipping a corner of montana. I should do a write up of that trip. It was fun. Really fun.

I have also sheltered in place quite a bit. I have gotten out, I have grumbled to friends. Covid has not effected my work until now. i think I will be furloughed every other week for the rest of the year. So that will be tough. If i can budget trips out, I will. However who knows.

Just thought I would say hi, that I am still here. with more to come.

Utah in 2019

I used to do these every year, but lately I just forgot about the blog, and the numbers. My caching habits have changed to caching in the hills on trips. That was cut down a but this year with remodels, and repairs to the yard after the city tore it up and walked away from it.

The numbers…

Well the numbers are down. Slowly declining. A few years ago we topped 30,000. Well kind of, a few weeks later I archived a bunch of caches and we slipped below 30,000 and we have never gotten back.

I don’t think that is a bad thing. Anyone out caching knows that a lot of caches in the hills are old, very old., and some are in bad shape, washed away, carried away, or just gone somehow. Many of the cache owners are gone from the game, making the caches just abandoned.

Well enough of me babbling. And onto the numbers. Yes, these screenshots are a bit small..

The above list is from Project GC and does not include the archived caches. There were 1500+ new caches placed, and I would guess about 1800 archived. I can only guess because I dont have numbers from Punk Rock Girl. Only my personal archiving number.

Utah, Salt Lake, and Tooele are the big three this year. Utah and Salt Lake are always in the the top three. Others vary, This year Tooele jumped into the mix. Specific location that are an active area this year are Lehi area, and south Utah county, plus there seems to be a busy group out on antelope island.

Piute, and Wayne were the two bottom counties that did not even make the list. It was interesteing to me that half the counties had less than a dozen caches placed in them.

Saying Goodbye to the Past

We reached the end of the Utah Geotour after a long run of five years. We should really thank the Utah State Board of Tourism for their funding the geotour. They spent a lot of money. I have not heard officially but I have no doubt it reached into the five figures paying for the geotour, the coins, jackets, and patches. Not even counting the costs to send a representatives to Geowoodstock in Denver to advertise Utah and the tour.

Along with that there area number that I would personally thank to get things going. HikingSeal is on the top of the list, and there are a number of others that I should list but once I start way too many will be left out. Some did a lot of legwork at the start, and others came in later.

We are also coming to the end of the first 20 years of geocaching. Interesting to think where the hobby has gone in the time. I remember cachers when I started that talked about how many they had found in the state. Some claimed over half of the caches in the state had been found/placed by them. The numbers at the time were about 10,000 caches.

The Future .. who knows

We have had a number of discussions as the the state of caching in Utah. I know those discussions have gone on. Emails have been sent, and discussions in smaller and larger groups. Many people work hard to maintain facebook sites, smaller local groups, and holding events to keep the local communities together.

Punk Rock Girl and I wish everyone the best for the new year. We hope that the next year has a lot of new things on the horizon.

Already a few things are announced. People are signing up to hold special events. A special locationless cache will be published for the year. These are only a few things that have been announced. We hope that all goes well for you, and your friends

We will see you around the corner, and at the next cache.