A Look into my Life

Well, once again, it's that time of the month where P.J. has his monthly photo blogging challenge. This month's theme is "A Look into my Life." I figuredwith the amount of photos I took this past month, I should be able to come up with five photos that sort of personify me.

1. Geocaching and travel

As you all know by now if you've been paying attention, I love to geocache. I also love to travel which works out well since they go hand in hand with each other. Last month I attended two geocaching Mega Events, one in the Los Angeles area (Spring Fling) and the second one which was in Flagstaff over Memorial Day weekend (GeoWoodstockXX). Both of the events were put on by the same individuals, so there was a lot to compare and contrast but if push came to shove, I'd say the GeoWoodstock was Spring Fling on steroids. It was just bigger and better all the way around and that's to take nothing away from the Spring Fling. 

Let's just say over the course of five days in Arizona, I got to see a lot, find a lot of geocaches and just have a really good time enjoying this crazy hobby that I've been doing for over 23 years. With the two events and other geocaching excursions I did this past month, I found 430 caches, which was my second best month ever. 

I've said in the past and I'll say it again here; geocaching takes me to places that I wouldn't necessarily visit were it not for geocaching. I mean, I got to stand on the corner in Winslow, Arizona while the store across the street played "Take it Easy" in a loop all day long. Unless you make it a point, a lot of these interesting tourist spots just get driven right by, but because I have an interest in travel and geocaching, I've gotten off the main highway and done some scenic byways that I might have missed otherwise. Watch the Pixar movie "Cars" and I think you'll understand perfectly.

2. Hiking

I also really enjoy hiking along all kinds of trails, but I have a big interest in longer trails, trails like the Pacific Crest Trail (PCT), the Continental Divide Trail (CDT) and the Arizona Trail (AZT) to name a few. I've hiked portions of all of these trails in my lifetime and while my age is starting to become a factor in how much backpacking I can actually do, I haven't ruled out the possibility of doing some section hikes on any of these trails. I've just become more accustomed to the finer things in life, like an actual bed to sleep in when I travel as opposed to a sleeping bag and sleeping pad on the ground.

While in Flagstaff, I was able to hike a portion of the AZT. Once again, geocaching was involved. We'd gone up to finish off a geocaching adventure up in the mountains north of Flagstaff and we'd noticed this cache just off the road at a turnout. We decided to find that cache after finishing off the Adventure stop and I am really glad we did. We pulled off at the trailhead, then took a side trail, which took us down to the AZT, which then took us up to the junction that led us out to the meadow you can see in the distance. Eventually, we found another side trail, which led us to the geocache we were looking for, one that had been hidden in July 2001. It's always cool to find caches that are 23 years old. As time goes on, these old caches are becoming rarer and rarer and so they become valuable in the game for different challenge caches out there that want you to find old caches.

3. Photography

If you're still reading along, you're probably noticing a theme for this entire entry, but you knew that was going to happen anyway, didn't you? Anyone who travels knows to bring a camera along to record their journeys and refresh their memories when they get back home and I'm no exception. 

This particular shot wasn't taken on any trip I took, but I happened to spy this ladybug right outside our community center about two blocks away from our house. I really loved the large amounts of yellow and green with that little splash of red thrown in which made for a very pleasing image in my opinion.

My photographs tend to lean heavily towards the natural side of the earth as opposed to the cultural side of things and so I have lots of landscape type photos in my galleries and photo albums. I will also tend to have lots of animal photos both large and small. Looking back on this blog entry however, I think I've actually achieved a good balance between nature and culture this time around. Sometimes that's just how it goes.

4. Food

When I'm out and about traveling, I tend to lean toward more local cuisine, especially when I'm eating at the dinner hour. This trip to Flagstaff last month was no exception. We had Mexican food, we had Neapolitan Pizza, and then we had some American comfort food in the form of this Texas burger with sweet potato fries and a stout chocolate porter. And yes, there's bacon in there too. Just looking at that photo makes my mouth water. This meal, for the most part, was the perfect ending night of that weekend.

Please also understand that for lunch I'll usually eat at a place that's tested and true for fast food, mainly because I have an agenda that I like to complete. We ate at In-n-Out for lunch one of the days on this trip. It was quick and easy and I can now say I've eaten at the highest elevated In-n-Out at just around 7000 feet above sea level. In fact, it's the only in-n-Out I've eaten at where they didn't have the crossed palm trees (a corporate symbol) out in front of the restaurant. It's just too cold for the palm trees to survive. So it's fast food for lunch but breakfast and dinner are really supposed to be savored when I'm traveling.

5. Family

I really couldn't go an entire blog entry about myself without talking about my family and particularly, this little gem. I found myself getting to hang out with my favorite tiny human in the middle of the month in Paso Robles so her parents could attend a wedding there. We got to hang out all weekend together, play in the park, go to a farmer's market and then enjoy each other's company in the evening while her parents were at the wedding.

I don't know if you've ever heard the sayings about being a grandparent, but everything you've heard is definitely true. Being this tiny human's Papa is one of the best things that has ever happened to me. We're fortunate enough that we live only a half day's drive away from them, so I get to see her on a regular basis. That, plus the technology of the day where we can FaceTime at meals really allows me to see her grow up. And yet I'm still amazed when I look back at videos from six months ago and see how much she's grown. Let's just leave it at, I'm really enjoying this part of my life.

And there you have it, my take on the theme "A Look into my Life." Please feel free to comment and check out the other entries to this month over at P.J. blog.

Geocaching Goals for 2021

This post will once again, be about geocaching, so if you're not interested, you can stop. Trust me when I say I won't be offended if you leave.

Last week, I reviewed my geocaching accomplishments from the previous year. In this post, I'm going to write about goals that I'm going to set for myself for the upcoming 2021 geocaching year. Nothing really exciting or eye opening, but I want to put them down in writing so to give me something to shoot for. 

1. Have fun - I always put this as my first goal. I'm a firm believer that things that you do in life should be fun, challenging possibly, hard possibly, but they should also be fun. If they're not fun, why do them?

2. Average 100 cache finds per month - Last year, my goal was to find at least 100 per month, and average 125 per month overall. I didn't reach either of those goals, mainly due to the pandemic. I'm not sure how long before I can get in line for a vaccine, which will allow me to take some longer trips again, so I'm committing to just an average of 100 per month. That will put me above last year when I found slightly over 1000 geocaches in the entire year. Granted, the first 500 were found in the first two months, so I was off to a roaring start, but as noted above, the pandemic hit and everything shut down.

3. Hide good quality caches, including more non-traditional caches - This is a continuation of two of my goals from last year. I hid only 5 traditional cache hides last year, but I also hosted 5 events, and hid 6 Multi-caches, 4 Wherigo caches, 8 Mystery caches, and 2 Letterbox Hybrid caches. So I want to continue with this, probably less Mystery caches and more of the other types listed above. Once events are allowed again, I'll start back up hosting them as well, but I suspect that that won't happen until most of us are vaccinated, so perhaps in the fall?

4. Color the grid - If you look at the grid, you'll notice the bottom half of the calendar has all of the dates in a darker shade of green than the top half. There are several challenge caches out there that challenge geocachers to find a certain number of caches on each calendar date, the obvious first one is to find one on every day of the year. The geocaching grid, changes colors at the following number intervals, 1, 11, 26, 100, and I believe 500, but I'm not sure on the last one. Anyway, after the pandemic set in and a lot of outdoor activity was curtailed originally, most of my goals went out the window, so I set up new goals in my mind, one being to get all of the numbers up to at least 26 find per date, since I'd already accomplished 11 per date several years ago. As you can see, I started working on this in earnest sometime in late July. The next date to color is this Friday and Saturday, the 22nd, and 23rd.

This is, in my mind, a challenging goal since there aren't a whole lot of unfound caches close to my house anymore, so I have to travel farther to find caches, either up to the high desert, or east to Redlands, or south into Orange County. I don't mind that, but when there are 4 or 5 days in a row, where I'm going to need to find caches if I want to accomplish this goal, then the logistics of finding areas where there are enough caches to find comes into play. The end of this month, or the months of April and May will be more challenging if I'm going to complete this goal. It's a game though and if I don't complete this goal, it's not the end of the world, but I'd like to complete it on July 28th, which would be the last date I need to color. There are at least two challenge caches south of me that want 20 or 26 finds per date for all calendar dates. I'm close to that, so it would be cool to finish that goal this year, then plan a trip down to San Diego County to get those two caches.

4. Find some caches in new counties - As you can see on the map, I've found at least one cache in every county in California, Arizona, and Nevada, so this will involve some travel, which I'm OK with, once I've gotten vaccinated against COVID-19. One of the goals I had last year was to complete my Jasmer Challenge (finding a cache hidden every month since geocaching started), and to accomplish this, I'll have to travel to Oregon. So I figured, I might be able to accomplish last year's goal and this year's in a similar trip. This is all contingent on getting the vaccine in the near future, but I'm confidant this will happen sooner as opposed to later.

5. Complete at least 2 challenge caches I've already signed - The beauty of challenge caches is you don't have to wait to sign the log until you've accomplished that particular challenge. You sign the logsheet, post a note on the cache page and then work toward that particular goal. Up in Kern County, there is a series of challenge caches, of which at this time, I've only not signed on of them, but I haven't qualified for all of them (got that?), so I can work on any one of those. The easiest to accomplish would be to go up to Kern County and find 17 more caches there. One of the challenges I've signed is to find 500 caches in Kern County. I'm at 483 right now, so once I can travel a little bit more freely, that one should be easy to complete. Then I need to start working on some of the others that I don't qualify for yet.

6. Have fun - As noted last year, and above, I've already posted this, but I just want to reiterate that if it's not fun, then I shouldn't be doing this.

So there you have it, my geocaching goals for this year. Comments on this page are, as always, welcome. Thanks go to my friend Monica, who took the first photo of me finding a cache this summer.