MIKEY MAC'S
CACHING MEMOIR
I started caching in 2012 when I was looking to get out the house with my toddler. We found one cache, a letterbox hybrid, in a small park near our home. From there, caching turned into a way to hang out with my friends, but caching didn't really become a lifestyle until I moved to Michigan in 2014. I found a few caches around my area, and then, on a whim, I joined a local Geocaching Facebook group. I posted that I was new to the area and wanted to go attempt a few night caches one weekend in May. The next thing I know, a random guy wants to come pick me up to go night caching. My wife was FURIOUS, but he seemed like a nice guy (don't they all?) and I joined him on the trail along with a few other folks I had never met before. That night, my kidnapper, MOQs, introduced me to AddHam, Laker91. Now, nearly 9 years and 13,000 finds later, I'm still pressing on, uncovering new challenges, crossing off bucket list items, meeting new people, and blazing trails all across the country (and hopefully, someday, the world).
After that weekend of night caching, I was hooked. The next month, I joined MOQ's on a drive from Michigan to Chicago...my first caching trip, and my first real visit to Chicago. We saw Navy Pier, Millennium Park, and even snapped this great pic at the infamous Chicago Bean. We nabbed two new states on the trip (Indiana & Illinois) before returning back to home base that evening.
When I told my wife how much fun I had in a new area caching, looking back, she probably wishes she'd have squashed that excitement, because there's PLENTY more where that came from in the years to come.
Later that fall, my family would travel to Disney World, a place I've been (as of writing this) a dozen times. But this trip brought the opportunity to add a fourth state to my geo-map, Florida. Disney World is home to some highly favorited virtual caches, so it was a no-brainer for me to add a few new smileys and a new state to my résumé.
There wasn't any more travel in 2015, but I did start to pick up the puzzle caching bug. As I found more and more puzzles, I made more and more friends trying to solve those puzzles! At an event in October, I finally got to meet Puzzle Hounds JBExpress & RDC4106. We'd been knocking heads on puzzles up to that point, but I don't think we were ever at the same cache or the same event before then. At some point before that, during that, after that, I can't really remember, JBExpress introduced me to their son who was also a cacher, but had some caching burnout and wasn't really active anymore. (More on him later).
Another person I knocked heads with on puzzles was a cacher by the name of Theophi1os. We had worked together to solve a tough puzzle in that same month, October 2015, and decided to redenzvous for the joint FTF. I can't remember who arrived first, but I took special note of his Cincinnati Reds bumper sticker. Being a Reds fan myself, I asked if he was a fan of the Reds and it turns out we're both originally from the same part of Ohio and both had transplanted ourselves to Michigan. We were roughly the same age, married, and our kids were also roughly the same age...so hanging out with Theophi1os was really easy for me.
Theophi1os and I hung out quite a bit in the years to come. We both had a hankering for caching at night, even if the caches weren't designed to be found at night. Of course, we weren't trespassing into cemeteries or anything, but caching at night does have some advantages. Streets, parking lots, and parks are a lot less busy, and some caches are easier to spot via flashlight than natural light (pine tree micros are a good example).
At the end of 2015, I added another new state, Kentucky, to my caching resume when I took my wife down to a University of Kentucky basketball game that Christmas. When the calendar turned to 2016, my next big adventure was on Leap Day, a sort of "Holy Grail" for the caching community. I joined forces with that kidnapper MOQ's on a full day of caching which was planned around attending 5 different caching events....then things got REAL crazy.
I don't know whose idea it was...Theophi1os' or mine...but we decided to embark on an insane 4-day road trip with a goal of caching every Indiana county. Theophi1os planned out a route, rented a car, and I was just along for the ride. We put something like 3500 miles on that Ford Focus in four days. For the most part, we took turn sleeping, but there were two occasions where we slept in the car overnight. That was my first encounter with a tick, but lucky for me, it was on Theophi1os and not on me. We popped into the MOGA geocaching event that weekend (my first MEGA event), and when we got back to town, our goal was completed. Along the way, I found find #1000 and found my first ever "state's oldest" cache.
2016 also brought with it some new states. In the summer, my wife and I visited her uncle over a week in Texas. The San Antonio Riverwalk is one of the coolest spots I've ever been, and who could forget the Alamo!? In early 2017, we road-tripped to Georgia for another basketball game, which got me caches in West Virginia, Virginia, North Carolina, South Carolina, Georgia, and Tennessee for the first time. The highlights of course were Beaver Cache and Octopus Garden. 2017 also brought my first real geoart experience as MOQs and I went across the state for a big event in the Detroit area.
2017 also had a big surprise for me. For our anniversary, my wife and I flew to Seattle to visit Geocaching HQ. Of course, we opted to layover in Denver (hey, new state!) thanks to an earthcache inside Denver International. We spent the week taking in the sights (and smells) of Seattle, the HQ GeoTour, and all the city has to offer. After an amazing weekend of caching, I amassed something like 50,000 favorite points and I swore I'd never go back to Seattle again. There were so many highlights, and obviously HQ is a bucket list item, but the Seattle Museum of Flight (looking at you, partnership attribute) was well worth the price of admission. The Fremont Troll was quite popular, and I was too cheap to go up inside the Space Needle. We wanted to get to the coveted APE cache, but it wasn't the right season for a hike in the mountains!
I hit the ground running in 2018 fresh off the high (literally and figuratively) from being in Seattle. With GeoWoodStock in my old stomping grounds of SW Ohio, of course Theophi1os and I had to make the journey down to North America's first (and so far, only) GIGA event. The event actually wasn't one of my favorites, but as rare as GIGA events are, it was a must-attend. In true "cheapskate" fashion, Theophi1os and I camped in his cousin's back yard because we didn't want to pay for a hotel! Boy how times have changed, though the rest of 2018 was spent mostly close to home.
2019 picked up where 2018 left off...traveling for MEGA events. This time, I teamed up with CCSquire to travel to the Dallas/Fort Worth area for GeoWoodStock. We both volunteered to help with the GPS Maze Adventure that was being put on and thoroughly enjoyed that event. If you were there, you undoubtedly saw me. I wore a supersized foam trackable cowboy hat the entire weekend. (photo right)
I have two major highlights on this trip, neither of which I'll ever forget. The JFK50 Geotour was incredible. This series features a few dozen caches that follow President Kennedy's last day alive.. From Dallas Love Field where he touched down that day to the X in the road where the bullet ended his life. As a bit of a history buff, it was a pretty sobering part of the trip, but we didn't let that slow our caching down!
The second big memory for me was a happier one. I'm not "technically" allowed to say what I did, or show any pictures to prove that I did it, but the photo to the right is taken of me at a side event at the Fort Wayne Stockyards leading up to the MEGA event. No, I'm not in the background, and I'm not dressed up as a middle aged woman, but I'm definitely in the picture. This was quite literally one of the coolest moments of my life, and one I'll never forget. There's about 50 pictures on the cache page taken of me that people have no idea I'm even in!
As a final note, on the way back from this trip, CCSquire and I laid over in St. Louis which presented another new state for my geocaching resume, Missouri.
In the fall of 2019, I had an uncle get married in Maryland which allowed my family and I an opportunity to explore Maryland and Washington DC. I visited the DC area in middle school, but this gave me an opportunity to show my son some of the cool history of the DC area including the Lincoln Memorial, Vietnam Memorial, Washington Monument, The White House, and the National Mall.
The next month, I got sent on a work trip to Nebraska (boringggg), but I got to cache on the company dime for a few days. Omaha has lots of challenge caches, which are one of my favorite types.
As most cachers know, 2020 was the year of the shutdown. You couldn't hardly leave the house without folks passing judgmental glances your way. The Geocaching 20 year celebration was postponed, and MEGAs around the country shuttered. Coincidently, I suffered a freak injury in 2020 that kept me home most of the year unless someone was willing to drive me somewhere. That happened a few times, but it was by far the most deflating year of caching for me. I couldn't leave the house if I wanted to, and when I did, people were scared to see each other.
Once I recovered from the reconstruction on my ankle, I was anxious to get back on the trail! The spring of 2021 saw the return of MEGA events, and folks out in Kansas were planning a big celebration. I joined forced with CacherX4 once again as we made a pilgrimage to Mingo, Kansas, home of the oldest cache in the world! This was particularly fun for me because it CacherX4's first time EVER in an airplane. We flew into Denver and made a big 7-state loop. That allowed for us both to find caches in New Mexico, Oklahoma, Kansas, and Wyoming for the first time. It also gave X4 Colorado and Texas, both state I already had. That trip was full of memories; the best is when X4 tried to kill us in Cheyenne, Wyoming by driving the wrong direction down a one-way road. It was also home of the best hamburger I've ever had in my life. It was at Sanford's Grub & Pub, and was a burger patty topped with a quarter inch of cream cheese, ham, and barbecue sauce. I guess you just had to be there! To the right is my photo at GC30 (Mingo), the oldest cache in the world!
Of course later that year I daytripped down to MWGB, which is kind of an annual tradition for me. The event is close enough to home to get everything good done in one day, but far enough that you want to make sure that you dedicate the whole day to it. Then later in the year, I took another road trip to a new MEGA event for me to West Bend, Wisconsin for Ca$h Ba$h (or whatever it is they call it). It gave us both another new state, so that was exciting and it was another new MEGA to check out. One of the highlights of the trip for me was the flash mob event the day before the MEGA. At the flash mob they had a paper airplane contest to see who could create the "best" paper airplane. The goal was distance, and the field was setup about 20 yards across with distance markers measure out for some 30 or 40 yards I would guess. Well, all those years of paper airplane building paid off as I threw my airplane further than anyone at that event. In fact, it wasn't even particularly close. I won by a good 5 or 6 feet if I had to guess. What made it even cooler was some of my West Michigan friends (CacherX4, CCSquire, Mrs Squire) were all there to cheer me on. They even gave me a $100 gift certificate from the local chamber of commerce which put some nice food in our bellies after a long day of caching. On our way back out of town, we grabbed Wisconsin's oldest cache, which was a short, but tough hike with some serious elevation gain on the way up.
We were barely home a month before we decided to take another trip! This time, it wasn't about a MEGA, but more about cheap, direct airfare. Allegiant recently announced a direct flight from our home airport to Boston Logan, so we though, "why not". We can make a weekend out of that and add some new states to our caching resume. Using the power of Cachetur (one of my favorite caching tools) we planned a route from Boston back to Boston via Connecticut, Rhode Island, New York, Vermont, and Maine; all of which were new caches for X4, and all but one (NY) were new for me! We grabbed the state oldie in Massachusetts, Connecticut (right), Rhode Island, and Vermont on the loop, and found a cache in each of Connecticut's 8 counties and Rhode Island's 3 counties.
Boston's 9/11 Memorial
Connecticut's Oldest
Vermont's Oldest
Massachusetts' Oldest
2022 was just as eventful as 2021, and started with a visit to southwest Indiana for a visit to MOGA (only one week late). While we weren't able to attend the actual event, the event staff kept the GPS Maze up and running for a week after the event, so we paired X4's first GPS maze with a few Indiana caches he needed for his Jasmer. It was also the last remaining unfound webcam cache "in my area" and it was inside a haunted library to boot!
As spring turned to summer, a new MEGA event was hatching down in Memphis, Tennessee called "CacheFest". While X4 and I both have already visited Tennessee, neither of us had been to Memphis, or any of the other states that border that area. What to do? Hatch another Cachetur plan of course! This time, we flew into New Orleans. We spent the day caching from New Orleans up through parts of Mississippi, which were both new states for us. We traveled east across Alabama all the way to Atlanta, where we grabbed a couple more Jasmer fillers for X4. After staying the night in Atlanta, we cached our way to Nashville where we grabbed the illusive partnership attribute (X4's first, my second), and stayed the night in just south of Nashville. From there, we proceeded west to Tennessee's oldest cache, and then on to Memphis for the big hurrah, or as I like to call it, the big letdown. The Memphis event in 2022 was all hype, with little execution. The "MEGA" was nothing more than a few vendors in a very small exhibition space, but they did do a good job of creating new caches for visitors to find. We visited Graceland (see photos right), and then popped over to Arkansas for another new state before flying back home the next day.
CacheFest in Memphis wasn't the only big trip for 2022. With Covid wreaking havoc on MEGAs around the globe, cachers were all in suspense waiting for the twice-delayed HQ Celebration event in Seattle. Well it turns out that 2022 was finally the year of the big party. Similar to our spur of the moment Boston trip, Allegiant was also offering direct flights to Portland from our home airport, so Oregon seemed like a good place to start our plan. Flights to and from any other part of the Pacific Northwest were absurd, so it seemed like we had two options. A short two day trip to get some oldies in Portland, hit the HQ celebration, and fly home OR consider a much longer trip to explore more of the area, get more states, and get closer to that double Jasmer that X4 and I had both been focused on. Once we started looking at the price of a 2 to 3 day rental car compared to a full week, the decision was easy: we're staying a full week.
As our plans began to get clearer, our travel party started to grow. CCSquire, whom I'd traveled with previously, decided to join our plans in the 11th hour. After many long hours in CacheTur, a 7-day, 8-state trip was hatched. We flew into Portland (along with Woofer & Tweeter) on a Thursday, and spent the entire day focused on old caches as Portland has some of the best Jasmer fillers available in one general area than anywhere else in the globe. Friday we drove to Seattle, visited HQ, and picked off a few of the highest-favorited caches in Seattle (many of which I had found previously), and attended the HQ celebration event the following day. We opted to arrive very early, almost an hour before the event, as we had some very loft plans for the rest of the day. We were able to get in, sign the log (photo right), and be on our way within about 30 minutes of the event actually starting.
As I alluded to above, the first day had really just begun when the event started. Our next big target was one of only two remaining APE caches in the world (if you're curious, the other is in Brazil). The Washington APE cache has two routes to it. A 4-mile round trip hike mostly through an abandoned train tunnel, or a 3-mile round trip hike up the west side of the mountain featuring significant elevation gain on the way up. We opted for the flatter, but longer hike through the tunnel which, looking back, is one of the coolest but creepiest places I've ever been. Imagine 45 minutes of sheer darkness each way. No ambient light, no artificial light, just darkness, and all you can see at the other end is a tiny dot of sunlight where the tunnel eventually ends. I now see why this cache is such a unique experience, though the find, while quite rewarding, is really nothing more than a large ammo can hidden in some rocks (photo right).
The trip continued on down from Washington, crossing Idaho, south through Montana, back to Idaho, and into Utah. From there we turned west across the Nevada desert (BORRRRRRINNNNNNNGGGGGGGGG), and then north through California, and back to Oregon. We ended up getting to our hotel in Montana Saturday night, and the subsequent portions of the route I just laid out took us from Sunday morning until the following Wednesday night. On Thursday, we awoke early and scampered back home on that same direct flight. We had some other folks from Michigan there too! Though they weren't part of our travel plans, Woofer & Tweeter joined us on our flight back, just the same as they had on the way there. After all was said and done, we had gotten a double Jasmer for CacherX4 and myself, as well as a triple Jasmer for CCSquire. We found the oldest cache in Oregon, Montana, and Utah giving me my 20th, 21st, and 22nd state oldest cache.
That brings us to 2023. Early on, CacherX4 and I decided it was the year of the MEGA. We started with MOGA which was Michigan's first MEGA. Then we went to GeoWoodstock in Kentucky for Memorial Day weekend. For Father's Day, we went to New Jersey for the Metro Gathering. We both added Delaware to our official stats and added the oldest cache in Maryland, Delaware, and Washington DC. We hit our usual MEGA, Midwest GeoBash, as well as Going Caching in Rome, GA. That put me at 7 MEGA events attended in 2023. More importantly, I completed a third loop on my Jasmer grid!
Oh, and if you're here to solve my geocaching puzzle that led you here, well, you're in the right spot! Hopefully you've gathered the info you need to solve the puzzle and make the find! And if you read all of this asking yourself why certain words or letters in special colors or underlined, well; check out this puzzle! (IN SUMMARY...MIKEY MAC LOVES TO CACHE!