June 17, 2023 – I am not sure if this was the day that I decided to go on a Geocaching streak, but it is the day that it started. I knew that I was going to have to put a small streak together to get the Wheel of Challenges: Out and About souvenirs. The following month’s Wheel of Challenge was about streaks, and at that point, the challenge was on to reach 366 days. It did help that Kapfam4, who also lives in the area, was on a streak as well, and that served as some motivation at times.
My previous longest streak was 31 days during the 31 Days of Geocaching in August 2013. After that 31-day streak, I was pretty sure that I was not going to pursue a long streak again. At the time, I lived in Las Vegas, and caches were everywhere, but maintaining a streak seemed to take some of the fun out of geocaching.
I am now living in a more rural area of Nevada and have spent the last couple of years geocaching in the area, so my choices for finding a cache for 366 days were going to be limited. One of the secrets that I discovered in this process was that Adventure Labs are a difference maker in keeping a streak alive. Unlike 2013, I didn’t have to find a physical or virtual geocache every day because I could find one stage of an Adventure Lab, and that would count towards the streak. I cannot properly explain how beneficial this was for me to maintain the streak.
What did I Learn
Lesson 1: Your spouse will frequently say, “You don’t need to go geocaching.” Yes, going on a streak is a choice and a choice that I made. Once you get going and have a goal, can you really stop?
Lesson 2: It takes discipline. Throughout the 366-day streak, I passed up numerous opportunities to find multiple caches in a single day. During the entire streak, I found only 405 geocaches plus 310 Adventure Lab stages. The exceptions that I made were when I was out of town because I did not have to worry about cleaning out an area of caches and then driving an hour to get the next closest one. The second exception was when I participated in my first GeoPoker Run Event. I will say that I was on the fence about the GeoPoker event because I knew that I could extend my streak by about 19 more days, but I couldn’t pass up my first chance to do that type of event.
Lesson 3: You learn to develop a schedule. During the beginning of the streak, my employer instituted a policy in which I was required to take a one-hour unpaid lunch. I was annoyed about the increased lunch time and decided that I was not going to sit in the office for 60 minutes unpaid, so I started going geocaching on my lunch. When my start time changed from 7:00 AM to 8:00 AM, I realized that I now had an extra hour before work to get a cache and started doing that every day. If I was a DNF in the morning, I would go during lunch. If I still hadn’t found one, I had all evening to get one.
Lesson 4: Adventure Labs are your friend in more ways than one. I always liked seeing a new Adventure Lab in the area because I knew that was five more days where I was not going to have to drive long distances to get a find. The second benefit of Adventure Labs, especially when you are traveling by plane, is Adventure Labs inside of airports. These are usually quick finds during layovers; they are mostly informative and fun to do. I won’t admit whether or not I selected airports with Adventure Labs for my layovers, but it was a bonus. The best Adventure Lab in an airport is the one created by CacheSleuth in the Oklahoma City Airport.
Lesson 5: Having great geocaching friends is very helpful. In the couple of years since my move to Carson City, I have had the opportunity to meet great geocachers in the area. They were very supportive during my streak, including hiding more caches in the area to cut down on drive time, providing hints on caches that I couldn’t find, and hosting events. Kapfam4, Spacemanpurpscooter, and CrunchyFrogs were always hiding caches and helping, and I don’t know if I would have finished the streak without their encouragement. Kapfam4 also provided me with the pictured geocoin to celebrate my accomplishment. For those of you who have read this far, you can log it with this code: CHMW0T.
My streak did end at 366. I probably could have kept going, but there are other Geocaching challenges I want to pursue and other hobbies I want to dedicate some time to this summer. When I retire and can geocache more frequently, I am sure that I will start another streak.
Streak Statistics:
Average Difficulty*: 1.76
Average Terrain*: 1.65
Oldest Cache Found: Alvin’s Phone Line (GC9FF)
Milestone Cache: Find #5000 – Devil’s Tower National Monument II (GC22DD)
Souvenirs Earned: 26 including Hider Souvenirs
Adventure Lab Postcards: 42
| Cache Type | Number of Finds |
| Adventure Lab | 310 |
| Traditional | 268 |
| Virtual Cache | 42 |
| Earthcache | 37 |
| Unknown Cache | 21 |
| Event | 13 |
| Letterbox | 10 |
| Multi | 7 |
| Wherigo Cache | 4 |
| CITO | 2 |
| Webcam | 1 |
| Cache Container Size | Number of Finds* |
| Micro | 117 |
| Small | 103 |
| Other | 88 |
| Regular | 47 |
| Virtual | 41 |
| Not chosen | 5 |
| Large | 3 |
| States | Number of Finds* |
| Nevada | 286 |
| California | 25 |
| Hawaii | 16 |
| Minnesota | 11 |
| New York | 10 |
| Wyoming | 10 |
| Colorado | 8 |
| North Dakota | 7 |
| Arizona | 6 |
| District of Columbia | 5 |
| Virginia | 4 |
| Georgia | 3 |
| South Dakota | 3 |
| Utah | 3 |
| Kansas | 2 |
| Nebraska | 2 |
| Maryland | 1 |
| Missouri | 1 |
| New Jersey | 1 |
- indicates does not include Adventure Lab stages
Caching with Craig 