World Heritage: Historic Centre of Rome

Still catching up...

Also, last year, I went to Rome and saw my 71st World Heritage Site. Technically, the complete name is "Historic Centre of Rome, the Properties of the Holy See in that City Enjoying Extraterritorial Rights and San Paolo Fuori le Mura." 

It was already going to be an extremely short trip, but it got even shorter when my inbound flight was a few hours late. I can't wait to go back when I have more time.

At the time, that gave me 71 out of 1223, for 5.81% of all sites worldwide. New ones were recently inducted, so I'm at 71 out of 1248, or 5.69%. I've been some neat places this year, but unfortunately no World Heritage Sites.

World Heritage: Historic Town of St George and Related Fortifications

I have kind of abandoned this blog. It occurs to me, though, as the social media landscape gets more fragmented, I might want a place independent of any one corporate site to share my musings. So I'm starting with catching up on some long-running features.

Last year, on a cruise with Robyn, I visited my 70th World Heritage Site, the Historic Town of St George and Related Fortifications in Bermuda.

World Heritage: Hopewell Ceremonial Earthworks

 

UNESCO just finished inscribing new sites into the World Heritage List, bringing the total to 1199. Earlier this month, I visited the Hopewell Culture National Historical Park, which was part of the Hopewell Culture Earthworks, which were just inducted.

The earthworks were constructed in what is now Ohio almost 2000 years ago. While not as visually impressive as some of the other sites, the earthworks offer an intriguing glimpse into a fascinating culture that influenced this continent long ago.

This is my 69th site, representing 5.75% of the total sites.

World Heritage: Giant's Causeway

In April, I visited Giant's Causeway in Northern Ireland, my 68th World Heritage site. That's out of 1157 total, with more due to be inscribed at next month's meeting in Saudi Arabia.

World Heritage: Historic District of Panamá

 

Catching up on my World Heritage posting, last November I went to Panamá. The one World Heritage site I visited there was the Historic District of Panama City, part of the "Archaeological Site of Panamá Viejo and Historic District of Panamá" site. I took a bike tour of it. (I also took a pub crawl of it, but that's a different story.)

World Heritage: Belem Tower

 Last month, I visited my 65th World Heritage Site, Belem Tower in Lisbon, Portugal.

Above is not a picture of Belem Tower; it's what the Stable Diffusion AI drew when I gave it the prompt "Belem Tower".

Here's what Belem Tower actually looks like. It was built in the Lisbon Harbor both as a defensive fortification and to commemorate all the voyages of the Age of Discovery.

It was neat to climb the stairs and enjoy the views of the harbor.

The other part of the World Heritage Site is a monastery. I did not visit it, but here I am holding some pastries in front of it.

Country 33: Hong Kong

My slow climb towards membership in the Travelers Century Club continues, as I added Hong Kong this month. If I had planned better, I could have made it to 34, as Macau was an hour away by hydrofoil. Oh, look, Macau is a World Heritage Site. Sigh.

Geocaching Tennessee

As noted in my previous post, I went to Tennessee recently. This was an opportunity to find some geocaches and generate some geocaching stats.

My first stop on the day of the trip was a geocache near Dulles airport (and my kids' school) that I had been saving for this occasion. It was easy to find, and it set me up to break my maximum per-day distance record, a task that eluded me last year. As a reminder, this is the old record:

I had the chance to break a few more personal records. I could have driven to Kentucky after landing, to get 3 states in a day, but seeing the World Heritage Site seemed more interesting. I could have found a cache near the hotel after checking in, to get 4 counties in a day, but I was tired, and I figure I will save that record for the next trip.

The Knoxville airport is in a different county from Knoxville itself. Rather than stop right by the airport, I drove to nearby Maryville College. My grandfather spent a year there, and played on their 1932 JV football team. It was a nice place to stop, and there I found a geocache. It was my first September 2016 geocache. That completed 2016 for me, and gave me Month 141 (still at 68 missing months because of the addition of September 2017), State 13, and County 34 (Blount County).

After that, it was off to the Great Smoky Mountains. There was a virtual cache there at the John Ownby Cabin. That is in Sevier County, County 35 for me.

And there's a new maximum distance!

The next day, on my way back from lunch to the conference, I found a cache on campus, giving me Knox County, County 36.

World Heritage Update: Great Smoky Mountains

Last weekend, on a trip to Tennessee, I visited Great Smoky Mountains National Park, a World Heritage Site. This was the 62nd World Heritage Site I've visited.

I went to the Sugarlands visitors center and hiked a short trail.

Since my phone captures everywhere I go, this is what it looked like. My phone knew (though I didn't) that I hiked to the John Ownby Cabin and back.

I couldn't tell at the time what made this more special than other National Parks and thus worthy of being a World Heritage Site. It turns out it's the biodiversity, so it makes sense that doesn't jump out at me. (Though I did see some nice trees.)

This is the first site I've visited since I was in Brussels almost two years ago. None of the sites inscribed in 2016 or 2017 were ones I had already visited, so my percentage has dipped from the all-time high of 5.92% sites visited in 2015 to 5.78%.

I don't have any more visits I can see coming soon, and the Frank Lloyd Wright Buildings won't make it in before 2019, so I don't see a path to 6% right now. But you never know!

Geocaching Vermont, Canada and Northern Virginia

Geocaching, particularly with the aim of generating particular statistics, is a bit of a strategy game, and like any game, it's best when you can make moves that fulfill more than one goal at the same time.

One stat that always jumps out at me is the "maximum distance in a day." I enjoy seeing this because it reminds me of a day on my most-recent cross-country road trip. And yet, it seems silly that with all the flying I've done, I haven't managed to get more miles than that in one day.

It's actually hard to coordinate with flying, because if you have an early flight, or a late flight, it's hard to cache on both ends. Overnight flights kill this, and time zone changes can leave you with a short day. But I had a trip to Ottawa planned for late afternoon, so I figured I could bump this up (flight miles from Dulles to Ottawa: 451).

I first found a cache in Reston before my flight. That cache gave me my first November 2015 cache, filling another month in that grid -- Month 122. Unfortunately, when I got to the airport, my flight had been canceled. It was rescheduled for too early the next morning for me to cache both ends, and my return flight was a late flight, dashing my hopes of updating this statistic.

I still had plans for finding Canadian caches, and the next day gave me an unexpected opportunity to set a different personal record. My flight circled the Ottawa airport before diverting to Burlington, Vermont. The airline gave us a choice of returning to Dulles or renting a car and driving to Ottawa.

On to Ottawa! My colleague and travel companion "Bill" indulged me by stopping for a cache before we left Vermont. He was underwhelmed by the cache's location (in a guard rail near a highway underpass), but my statistics were updated. That gave me my 12th state, and my 30th county (Franklin County). The cache was also the first one I found placed in July of this year -- Month 123.

An underpass in Vermont

Additional payoff came on the other end. It was a cold, wet Ottawa night, but there was a park down the block from my hotel with a cache. That was my first Ontario cache, and allowed me to break my record of most countries in a day (previously, it listed the day I started geocaching as my record day).

I had another cache in my sights for Ottawa, though. Fortunately, I did not have to walk all the way out to it that night in the cold, but I headed there the next night. It was a virtual cache, the first I had found in Canada. It was too cold to walk across the bridge to find my first Quebec cache, however.

At the virtual cache, with the lights of Quebec in the distance.

What did that do for me? Well, upon return to the US, I was now allowed to claim a find for a challenge cache that requires the finder to have found virtual caches in six countries.

Took a while to make it from five to six, didn't it?

That was also my first find in Falls Church (County 31), my first find from June 2014 (Month 124), and my first Difficulty 5, Terrain 3.5 cache (Combo 26) -- the D/T ratings for challenge caches are somewhat subjectively based on the difficulty of completing the challenge. While I was in the area, I found another challenge cache that required me to find caches 25 degrees of longitude apart. Estonia to California is 144, so I am way overqualified. That was my first Arlington cache (County 32), and my first D/T 2.5/2.5 cache (Combo 27). There was another challenge cache nearby that would give me a 3/3 combo, but my phone was not getting data from the network, so I had to head back.

I looked up a D/T 1.5/3 cache in Reston that would give me Combo 28, but when I got there, the cache turned out to be about 12 feet up a tree -- and I'm not a climber. But with all the challenge progress I had made lately, I didn't feel too bad.

Nope.

Geocaching North Carolina

Looking back on my last few geocaching posts, they've been mostly dry sifting through numbers. So I'm going to try to mix in more narrative this time. Hopefully, it will help give other geocachers (and non-geocachers) an idea of what it's like to look for caches. (If you are looking for caches in Greensboro, you might not want to read the "spoilers" of the specific ones below.)

I went to a conference last weekend at UNC Greensboro, which provided me the opportunity to expand my geocaching map. I was also looking for other ways to expand my geocaching experiences.

One cache on campus I was particularly looking forward to was "A Little Cacher Told Me". It's what's known as a "chirp cache" or "beacon cache". At the posted coordinates, there is a low-power radio beacon which broadcasts information used to find the actual geocache location. It requires specialized equipment to receive the beacon, but fortunately for me, Samsung loves to cram their phones with every type of sensor known to mankind. Unfortunately, when I tried loading the software, I found out that Samsung had accidentally disabled the sensor in their latest Android upgrade for my phone. Boo hiss. So no chirp cache, and no 4/2 difficulty/terrain combination for me.

Undaunted, I looked up a cache near where I was having lunch. "Corner Garden" was a few blocks away. It was located, as one might surmise, in a community garden on a neighborhood street corner. (I keep forgetting to take pictures, which would punch up these posts.) I read through the logs from the previous finds, and one helpfully said "look for the chain", so when I saw a rusty chain lying on the ground, I pulled it out and found the cache attached. It really points out how many random things we see on lampposts and elsewhere that we don't give a second thought to.

So now I could claim my 11th state. But wait -- it says I found 7 caches in NC. Yes, I decided to do a more thorough job of finding available caches. After lunch I found Peabody Overlook, which was in a quite nice wooded area on campus. It was nice to find an area in what was really quite an urban setting. Unfortunately, the cache was soggy, and one of the "trade items" was a condom, which is just gross. At least I thought to take a picture of the area!

On a busy campus

Then, that evening, I found Hop-Scotch. This is another "in plain sight" cache -- it's a tiny magnet on a handicap parking sign, right over the screw.

The next day I found ATN Where's the Beef while looking for lunch. It was in a Chik-fil-a parking lot, so Sunday was the perfect time to grab it undisturbed. Unfortunately, the container was one of those plastic domes in which you get cheap toys out of vending machines. It was cracked, but the cache was still findable. So I found it and went to Popeye's.

Then there was Off Your Rocker in Greensboro, NC. The "OYR" series consists of geocaches on Cracker Barrel porches, but was discontinued in 2007 due to Cracker Barrel's banning them. This one is from 2005, so it's grandfathered. It was a hide-a-key attached to whatever iron junk was on the porch. At difficulty 3, it was a little trickier than I am used to, so I was happy I was able to locate it.






That day while grabbing dinner, I also grabbed ATN Return to Honey Do Valley. It was near a Lowe's, and it was an Altoids tin painted to look like the light pole it was wedged on. I am not thrilled when people place caches on electrical equipment, since it encourages poking around electrical equipment.

So that's six Greensboro caches -- but wait, it says I found seven in North Carolina. The next day, on the drive back, we stopped at a rest area which I noticed contained two caches. So while Christina got a break, I took the kids to find one of them. It was far enough off the paved surfaces so that it could be in plain sight without drawing too much attention. The kids were excited enough to search for treasure, and I got to add Granville County to my list of counties.

So that's up to 28 counties. Only 3,114 to go!

OK, now on to more dry statistics. Last time I checked, my difficulty/terrain averages were at 1.484756/1.423780. By focusing on slightly harder caches, I've bumped that up to 1.505814/1.427326. That takes me from the 0.2nd percentile to the 0.3rd.

I reached a milestone here in a challenge I had not discussed here -- the Jasmer challenge. The challenge is to find a geocache placed in each month since the start of geocaching in May 2000. In North Carolina, I got up to 100 months (out of 197 so far). That's more progress than I thought I'd been making. The older months are typically the hardest, so I may look for some particularly old geocaches the next time I travel.

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.)

Geocaching Arizona

We spent last week in Arizona visiting my parents, and I found two geocaches to go with the one Christina and I found in 2007. The first was in the parking lot outside a pool we visited in my parents' retirement community.  That gave me my first cache in Pinal County.

The second was a virtual cache outside the surprisingly fun International Wildlife Museum. It pointed me towards a lion statue and required me to gather some information. Roar!

So add Arizona to the list of states where I've found caches in more than one county. (Short list: Maryland and California are the two others.)

These also represent the #8 and #10 highest elevations of any cache I've found.

Geocaching: Caching Bristol

I had a nice week of geocaching in Bristol. I had ambitions of doing some "numbers caching" -- either breaking my record of 5 days in a row or 8 caches in a week. But to get the sixth day would require caching before my 6am taxi ride to the airport (or after midnight), and after 7 caches, I lost my pen and it was getting dark on my last evening, so...I guess I'll settle for seeing the UK pass Canada for #2 country in which I've cached.

All of the caches I found in the UK were what's known as "urban micros". They are tiny caches, just big enough for a tiny piece of paper, and they're hidden in busy areas where you need to avoid being detected finding, signing and replacing the cache.

Ordinarily these are not my favorite types of caches. But in Bristol they ended up being pretty neat, mainly because Bristol is a cool city, and they took me to some interesting places. Also, I think I'm finally getting better at finding these micros.

The first cache I found, shortly after landing, was in a car park. But what a view!

My hotel (and this car park) were right near St. Mary Redcliffe church, known to Elizabeth I as, "the fairest, goodliest, and most famous parish church in England." The hide was fairly clever -- it was inside a bike lock (sans bike) attached to a bike rack in the parking lot.

The next day at lunch I found one in Queens Square. I didn't take a picture, but here's one from 2008 I took of the statue the cache is named after: 

The third day I found my first "Church Micro". Hiding micro caches near churches is apparently a big thing in the UK. They've hidden over ten thousand of them. This one was in a church that was destroyed during the Blitz, which is now a park. Bristol was experiencing a record heat wave when I was there, so the parks were full. I thought it was a bit odd for people to be out in the heat, but I realized they probably were better off in the park since most of the buildings weren't air-conditioned. Anyway, I had to come back four times before the bench the cache was attached to was clear of people.

On Day 4, I found another blitz-related cache on my second try. This one brought me to a spot where a tram rail had been sent by an explosion into the courtyard of St. Mary Redcliffe. They left it there to remind people how close the church had come to destruction.

Then it was another "Church Micro". This was actually pretty far down the street from the church in question, but it was a nice view.

The final cache of Day 4 was in an open area near the water. Previous logs said it was hard to access during festivals and whatnot, but at around 9 at night it was mostly deserted -- but still light out!

My final cache of the trip was in a park. For this one, I'll show you a little bit more about how urban micros work. This one was a fake screw on the underside of a bench. Once you know what to look for, it's pretty obvious. On some benches, this would be trickier, but this screw was fairly obviously not one that belongs to this type of bench.

Anyway, geocaching got me out and walking, which helped (maybe) with the jet lag. Because these types of caches are placed in high-traffic areas, a few of the more interesting ones had gone missing. I've marked them down for my next trip to Bristol.

Countries Visited: Number 32

My path to the Travelers Century Club continues. A layover (it counts!) in Dublin allowed me to add a country for the first time since 2009. 68 to go!

Scotland's UEFA Coefficient: Third-Round Preview

Well, I guess I should be glad there's a third round to preview.

Second-Round Review

After I said, "Celtic has no business being in Europe if they can't dispatch these guys handily," Celtic went to Gibraltar and...lost. Oh, boy.


Well it was time for what this blog is (not actually) known for: on-the-scene (sort of) reporting. I was going to be in the UK for the return leg, so I planed to go...to a Celtic pub. The usual one was all the way across town, so I envisioned an epic walk across Bristol followed by watching the game among throngs of rabid Celtic supporters. By Wednesday, however, I was pretty tired, so I was very grateful to find out that the Celtic supporters were watching at a pub kinda near my hotel. Oh, and the sound wasn't going to be on because it was pub quiz night. Well, anyway, it was a place to have a pint of Guinness and watch with...I'm guessing three Celtic supporters. Celtic scored three goals in rapid succession to put things away, and I left before the pub quizzers showed up. The loss in Gibraltar, I'll remind, knocks 0.25 off the coefficient (compared to a win) for a five-year-period.

For Hibs, I said, "I don't hold out much hope here, but it would be nice to see Hibs grab 0.125 or even 0.25, even if they don't advance." They almost advanced! They let in a goal in the first minute of the first leg, then held Brøndby scoreless for 209 minutes. And then lost in penalties. Sigh. I hate penalties. At least they got the 0.25.

Of Hearts, I said, "I think everyone would expect two wins and 0.5 points." How about no wins and 0.125 points? Versus a team from Malta? Very embarassing.

Finally, Aberdeen had looked rusty. "If Aberdeen can shake off some rust, they are certainly capable of a good result, but the full 0.5 points, or even advancement is not assured." Well, they got the full 0.5 points, and they're Scotland's sole Europa League representative (at least until Celtic gets knocked down from the Champions League).

"I think a good outcome of the second round would be to see Scotland with 1.875 points or more for the year, with three out of four teams advancing. If two (or fewer) teams advance and Scotland only comes out of this with 1.5 points or fewer, things will not be looking up." So it's a split decision -- 1.875 points, but only two teams advancing.

Third-Round Preview

So Celtic is off to Kazakhstan to face Astana. Honestly, while they should win,  it's going to be dicey. I included Kazakhstan in the chart above to show their position in the provisional 2017 rankings. A little below Scotland. If you stretch things out to the (very provisional) 2018 rankings, they're actually poised to pass Scotland. As for Astana, they were in the Champions League group stages last weekend, so a Celtic loss and dropping into the Europa League playoffs is a distinct possibility.

Aberdeen faces Maribor of Slovenia. Slovenia is a couple of notches below Kazakhastan. However, two years ago Maribor knocked out Celtic on their way to the Champions League group stages. It's not going to be easy for Aberdeen, but they've got an experienced squad.

A good outcome would have both teams alive, with Celtic still in the Champions League. Honestly, if that happens, the minimum points (2.375) would be acceptable. If it doesn't, you'd like to see Aberdeen add to the coefficient on its way out, with Celtic's main contribution likely to be in the group stages of whichever competition they are in at that point.

Where We Stand

First of all, my plan all along was that Celtic needs to stay Celtic (or Rangers, but we'll address that next year maybe) and pick up on the order of 12 points (3 after adjustment for the coefficient).  They're at 1, which is not great, but most importantly they are alive.

The other teams need to provide 8 or 9 parts. Aberdeen has 3, so they've done their share and are poised to pick up more. Hearts got 2.5 before exiting, which is close to their share. Hibs, however, exited with 1, which is typical for Scotland, and frankly more than you'd expect for a lower-division team. So 6.5 so far. If Aberdeen can advance, there's every reason the non-Celtic teams can hold up their end of the bargain for the year.

Looking at the chart at the top of this post, Norway is in sad shape and is certainly catchable this year. Denmark is doing great, and will likely pass their Scandinavian neighbors soon. Scotland has come close to catching Poland, but the four countries directly below Scotland have done at least as well and are keeping the pressure on. (He says, pretending that anyone feels pressure related to the UEFA coefficient.)

Geocaching: California Cachin'

I had a business trip to California last week, and it seemed like a good opportunity to get in some geocaching. I thought it would be fun to see some of my statistics change, so I did some thing that would update the numbers. In particular, my previous longest streak of days caching was three (set on an August 2008 trip to another part of California), so I tried to find a cache every day.

Chewed-up log

On my walk back to the hotel from work, I detoured to find a cache called The Musical "Rocks", which led me to one of those only-in-Southern-California things, a Muzak speaker in the middle of a garden. I grabbed the cache and took it to a less conspicuous place. I looked inside -- and it was empty! (Except for a spider!) No log to sign means I hadn't really "found" the cache, so I went back and, sure enough, the log was sitting on the ground. I was afraid I had dropped it, but the condition it was in meant that it had clearly been sitting out for some time. I signed it and replaced it, and I got my week off to a good start. Nothing too exciting statistically, except that my overall find count increased by one, as did several sub-counts (United States, California, San Diego County, etc.) I guess it was my 100th cache in the United States.

Smashed cache, as I found it.

These are some letters.

The next day, after dropping a friend off after lunch, I realized I was near one of the caches I had planned to find. I parked, walked through a park, went to the coordinates and found...a smashed-up cache, just sitting out on the ground. I signed the log, replaced it as well as I could, and logged a note that it needed maintenance. (None has yet been performed.) Why was this cache on my list? Well, it's the Kidz Cache: Nobel Athletic Area. I had never found a cache beginning with the letter "K". Finding a cache beginning with each letter of the alphabet -- and each number -- is a silly challenge, but one of the stats sites I use keeps track, so I figured I might as well try to fill it out. Now I'm only missing X and Z. And 0, 2, 3, 5, 6, 7, 8 and 9. Really, who gives caches names that start with numbers?

Sam & Me

To make sure my trip to California didn't consist entirely of damaged caches, on Wednesday evening I went to see one of my favorite kind of caches, a virtual cache. No new virtual caches have been accepted for over a decade, so it's kind of fun to track down the remaining ones. This one led me to a sculpture of Mark Twain sitting on a bench in a shopping center. The geocache asked people not to post a clear picture, so as not to ruin the "surprise", so I saved my clear picture for the blog.

Another relatively rare cache type is the "Whereigo" cache. Here's my interpretation of what happened with them. Geocaching is, by design, a technology game. The technology required (specifically, general availability of accurate GPS signals) dates back to the birth of geocaching in 2000. The fundamental aspects of geocaching (find a container using latitude and longitude, sign a log) haven't really changed since then. In an attempt to modernize things, Groundspeak, the parent company of geocaching, came up with a type of geocache that would require you to solve a puzzle on your phone. Unfortunately, they did this in 2008, so the phone of choice was the Pocket PC.

Here I went.

For whatever reason, Groundspeak never pushed Whereigo on more modern smartphones, but there is an unofficial app for Android, and there was a cache within walking distance of my hotel, so I gave it a go. The "puzzle" was very basic...start here, walk here, show me a picture and answer a really easy question (which my phone did not enforce answering), then walk to another spot with the geocache. (Though I did appreciate the picture of the geocache, so I knew what I was looking for.) It was just a demonstration of the Whereigo system, so I appreciated that it wasn't too complicated. And it did what I appreciate from geocaching -- took me to a quiet, natural spot hidden right near the busy world around it. And it was my seventh type of cache, the first new one in almost eight years.

Seven types of caches!

Path near UTC

As far as I can tell, I'm unusual in the geocaching hobby for mostly finding one cache per day, but on Thursday I decided to break that habit, and on the way back to my hotel I found a second one. It was on a nice, quiet path near the busy UTC mall that I never would have come across without geocaching. Another success! (Sadly, I did not snap a picture quickly enough to show the hummingbird I saw.)

So at four days, I had a new record streak, and I decided to push it to five. I found a virtual cache near Poway. It was a nice railroad-themed park, what can I say?

Poway.

 

 

 

So what did the week do to my totals? My caches found went up to 121.

Yay.
I did, in fact, achieve my longest "GeoStreak."

I have now found 105 caches in the U.S., 23 caches in California and 15 in San Diego County.

My "total cache-to-cache distance" is up to 103,469 miles, which is pretty good for only having found 121 caches. (It used to be over 1,000 miles/cache, but finds 92 through 115 were in Maryland, which brought things down.)

So nothing too terribly exciting, but it got me some extra exercise on my trip.