For those who geocache, you know there are a lot of milestones one can hit.
It starts with the first 100 finds.
And then 250. 500. 1,000.
The first “special” milestone I planned was my 1,000th. I attempt to make each thousand finds something special. My 1,000th was GC39, “The Spot.” It’s the oldest active geocache east of the Mississippi.
Then came 2,000, which was Europe’s first on my trip to Ireland.
On No. 3,000, it was the finale of the New York Delorme challenge. That was followed by 4,000, which came at the midnight madness event at GeoWoodstock in Pennsylvania. Several friends went and got a cake and “decorated it” for the find.
Good times.
But since then, it’s taken me a lot of time to get to 5,000. I wanted to make it special as this is a pretty big milestone, I think. So, I started looking at caches to plan out. Where to go? What to find?
All signs pointed to Mingo.
For those who don’t geocache — or those of you who do and don’t know what Mingo is — it’s the oldest active geocache in the world.
It’s a cache I have wanted for several years. And what better goal than to make it my 5,000th find.
Originally, this trip was going to be a weekend one. Fly into Denver, drive to Mingo. Do some other caches, and then fly out.
Simple.
Or not.
Instead, this has turned into an epic geocaching journey that will no doubt create a ton of memories and fun stories. I looked into a couple of states and such, but once I did the math, it was decided we’d go for the gusto.
It’s going to be a seven-day trip to the west. We’ll land in Denver, stay a night there and then hit a Rockies (vs. the Phillies!) game the next day. From there, we’ll hit eight states and a bunch of wild and cool things. This trip will take us from Colorado to Wyoming, and then from there we’ll hit Nebraska, Kansas, Oklahoma, Texas, New Mexico, Arizona, and Utah.
All in all, we’ll cover a bit more than 2,000 miles.
We’ll see some amazingly cool spots and hopefully meet a few people. I’ve had a few events published along the way to try and meet people.
This is going to be one heck of a cool trip. Hopefully it will not only be a great trip to get me recharged in my life, but also something to give me inspiration to blog more often again.
I’ll have plenty of stories and photos … and I look forward to sharing them here once I get back in and in the coming weeks!
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