I got the 50 non water caches and yes that was what I expected…but it wasn’t easy by any stretch of the imagination and most of the day I didn’t think it would be possible.

Our family did 20 of the event caches between 11:00 and 4:30. Got a bit of a late start as I volunteered at the WGA geocaching training class to help with the hands-on cache hunting.

Even more amazing is the new caching family that I helped them “learn the ropes” found 16 of the event caches with a garmin nuvi. Now that’s cool no matter how you slice it.

Looking back, it’s amazing just how many caches I “skipped” that were literally .1 from all of those I found. Minus the “competition” I would have had a huge numbers day.

As for what I expected, I expected our family to find 5 or 6. They were troopers and held up much longer than I expected. I did end up dropping them back at camp and heading back out to tackle some longer hikes solo.

I think the goatman caches were my favorite of the 20 we did. Mostly because I went back and read up on the topic not being familiar with that local lore. There sure were some neat areas with caches for this event.

-cheeto-

We found 14 of the new ones on Saturday and 10 more after the Pancake Breakfast on Sunday. We were surprised at how much WB looked like a Ghost Town around noon on Sunday when we were doing P & G’s. Maybe everyone slept in and went out later. We were first or second to sign on all that we did on Sunday. Without the congestion Sunday we found 10 in one hour.

17 finds for the weekend — about what I expected.

Bec

@amita17 wrote:

I found 28 of the event caches, short of my goal of 31, but still better than last year. I would have found a lot more if I had someone to navigate…not wanting to cause an accident, I would read my map before heading out, and then miss my turn or find a traffic issue I would want to avoid, and then change course and go for another cache…I wasted a good hour either not knowing where I was going and pulling over, or even passing the cache and having to turn around. Just a personal frustration having nothing to do with the event itself. The Ba$h was well organized and I enjoyed the caches I found and meeting other cachers from around the state and a few from Illinois. I plan to attend next year.

I take it that you don’t have a road GPS like a Nuvi.

Robin, Lauryn and I spent 4 days in WB, caching lightly to moderately all 4 days, but also taking off long periods of time each day for going out to eat, relaxing, helping out at the event, etc. I ended up with 111 finds for the 4 days. I just finished logging them now.

Highlights were caching with drhaas and trekkin part of one day, and caching with i m n eagle and labrat part of another day. Another highlight was cooking sausage and pancakes Sunday morning. I also got to meet Yawning Dog, owner of some of the best old caches in the state.

My favorite event caches were the ones on the Ice Age trail, Yellow Mile and the 3 together down by Slinger. I thought the corn field lemming trail to be a hoot, as I, like so many others, followed the packed down lemming trail, instead of the Ice Age Trail. That made it all the more fun and interesting, and shows you cant just follow the guy in front of you sometimes.

My favorite non-event cache was grannie’s Earthcache on the top of Holy Hill.

I thought the WB chamber did an excellent job, and my hat is off to Tami, Lauren, Anne and Jeremy for all they did to make this great event possible.

In short, West Bend treated me great.

zuma