Geocaching: County 26

Last month, I made it up to 25 of the United States' 3142 counties (or county-equivalents). I'm pleased to say I've added Fairfax County, Virginia to that list, so I'm now at 26!

This cache was also the first one I've found in West 77° 17', so that gives me the 10th minute in the West 77 Degrees Longitude Challenge. I am one-sixth of the way there!

Speaking of longitude challenges, I also logged a cache in Beltsville that was the first one I've found in 76° 53'. (Although the second one I've found while visiting the Beltsville MVA.) That's the 30th minute in the West 76 Degrees Longitude Challenge. Halfway there! (I have none of the minutes from 0 to 26, so my ability to fill in gaps will be limited -- on the other hand, it gives me incentive to visit some new counties to the east.) I now have a neater map to look at when figuring out where I can go to help me with degree challenges. (I'm not extending this snippet west of 77° 04' because I have so little filled in there.)

In terms of another geocaching goal, how am I doing on increasing my difficulty and terrain? Well, I realized my last post on the topic didn't include the actual averages, but they rounded to 1.49 difficulty and 1.42 terrain. The two caches referenced above were 1/1.5-rated, which brings me to a 1.48/1.42 average, or more precisely 1.484756/1.423780. The combined ranking now puts me 7818/7834. I am now at the 0.8th percentile on terrain, instead of the 0.7th, but I am still at 0.2nd combined and 0.36th on difficulty. This goes against my plan to increase my D/T average, but it accords well with my "don't waste too much time looking for geocaches" plan. (Speaking of percentiles, I have crept up from the 18.7th percentile for counties to the 19.1st.)