Geocaching: California County Caching

After adding a new Arizona county last month, I added two more counties on our trip to California.

The first was a virtual cache inside of Disneyland (Orange County). It's also the 9th oldest cache I've found. (More on cache ages in a future post.)

The next day, we went to see friends in LA County. On one of the many bathroom stops on the way home, I found another one outside a Starbucks. Well, despite the fact it was almost identical to the one I found in my parents' retirement community, Christina found it for me. So that's now 4 counties in California.

That's still 54 I haven't found. Maybe three of those are within a couple hours of a future trip to San Diego, but the rest would wait for trips to other parts of California. Still, I enjoy seeing the map changing. California is only one of three states (with Maryland and Arizona) that I've actually caches in multiple counties. But I still enjoy the maps!

25 total counties. How does that compare? Well, one way to look at it is My Geocaching Profile has a ranking page. As with similar pages I've mentioned in the past, this only represents people who have used that site in the past year. I am currently 4716/5798. That's the 18.7th percentile, which is pretty low, but I am 7724/8074, the 4.3rd percentile in number of finds. (I assume the difference in total cachers comes from excluding those who haven't cached in the U.S.)

Finding caches in all the counties in any one state is already probably going to be too much for me, so why keep track of progress towards America's 3142 counties? Well, it's easier to make incremental progress, even when visiting new states. Also, finding all 3142 counties is tricky for anyone.

I recently heard a podcast mention someone who had that as a goal (along with his son). He stated that nobody had even visited all of the county-equivalents in Alaska, let alone the U.S.  According to My Geocaching Profile, the top county finder is at 2703. The guy is at #16 on the list, but looking at his map, I have hit 14 counties he hasn't so...counties are really difficult I guess.

(I'm in the 86.1st percentile for countries caches, so look like I am more of an international traveler anyway.)