USA (California-Nevada-Arizona-Utah) roadtrip 2012

Tomorrow (June 3rd) the plane lifts from Linköping airport to take me, torado and Swerker to Amsterdam, Schiphol, and from there over the Atlantic Ocean and all of the USA to Californa, and Los Angeles. That is the start for a two week road trip to do some serious geoCaching! We will be in USA from June 3rd up to June 18th, and be back home (after flying LA-NY-Amsterdam-Linköping) late afternoon June 19th.

The plan

• June 3rd, we start the trip in Barstow, right between LA and the border to Nevada, with a small PowerTrail (PT). Our first night in USA will be spent in Barstow.
• June 4th-5th, head to Las Vegas, where we will be chasing some "ghosts", that is virtuals, and do some sightseeing.
• June 6th, gonna be a long day as we will take a trip to Grand Canyon in Arizona, and then head up to Zion park in Utah.
• June 7th, Cedar City in Utah for another PT.
• June 8th-13th (maybe) Alamo in Nevada, here is the major goal of this trip as it is where the big ET PT is placed. It will take a couple of days. During this period there is also an event in Rachel and there is rumour that 500 caches (to extend the PT) will be released during this event.
• June 14th-18th is spent in California, north of LA. We start with Ventura by the Pacific ocean. Possibly we will be visting the Sequoia National park as well.

So, a lot to do, with many trads to be found. But there will be a bunch of virtuals and earthcaches as well, and possibly a few letterboxes. Might be just one mystery and one multi, but we have not concentrated on them. Usually one go for the trads when travelling abroad and do the serious stuff back home...

Quite a trip.  I will be bringing a netbook so maybe I will write some blog entries during the trip. If not I am sure to write some when I get back.  

What about challenges?

Wont be much of that in the US. Did find one challenge where you could log if you have logged any with "The" in the title!  () But there are some challenges or achivements that I expect to accomplish during this trip:

• I will of course pass 3000 found (as I have less than 100 left for that), for sure even 5000, and possibly even 6000. The Black Belt has 3000 as its first requirement but I am still lack some.
• Have 300 meter as my top height before. This trip has a whole PT (ET) with caches over 1000 meter. There is even one nearby at 3000 meter! But still not enough for Black Belt.
• Two continents in one day. Before I leave to the airport I will log a cache nearby home, and later the same day I will log at least on in California. So, that will take care of that challenge.
• I will likely double my finds and the majority of them will all be more than 8000 km from home! My previous record was just under 4000 km (Egypt). Of course, I will get a new Westernmost cache, probably near Ventura, California.

To sum it up

This will be quite an effort. Both due to the sheer amount of caches, but also due to the weather. 

Here it has been just around, or even below, 10 degrees Celsius.  In Nevada it seems to be more in the line of 40 degrees Celsius and no rain. So, sun blocker and lots of water to drink....

Here the worst you can encounter is a tick. In Nevada you can find rattle snakes, black widows, ... So I will try not to put my hand into any black hole looking for geoCaches ;-)

Anway, this will include a lot of geoCaching. This might be, as Swerker said, THE geoCaching trip of our life!  Even so I hope to see a lot of sights and get a feeling on how it is to live in that part of the world. I wont be moving there, but it is always interesting to get to new places to get a feel for how the people there work.

Soon I celebrate 2 years as a geoCacher

Have been very inactive on this spot so I thought I should improve on that. Maybe even more than that... But more on that in a future blogg entry.

Soon I have been geoCaching for 2 years

I an entry July 2011 I wrote about my first year of geoCaching, and also compared with the plans in one of my first entries. It might be time to do a comparision with the results for my second year but I will wait with that one more month.

Statistics for Östergötland

Have also used this space to publish statistics for Östergötland; is there anyone that like to see this again? The plan was to do this about once 6th month and it should be time again for a new one; it should be interesting to see how the "competition" between Linköping and Norrköping progresses. And if The Smokestoners have put up Ödeshög into third place?

Events

One of the best things with geoCaching is its social aspect. You can always have something to talk about when you meet a geoCacher out in the field as we all are united by a common interest. This aspect is very present in the Event geoCache, where geoCachers meet, and sometimes do some activity, or hunt some newly released geoCaches.
Up to this day I have attended 28 events (and one Mega-event), which means more than one per month. I intend to keep the ration of one per month in average. Here is a brief recollection for each of the events I attended since November 2011 (with FAD 2011 and 11-11-11 being the ones that took place in that month)

Pröva på långfärdsskridsko

Bo&at;Elisabeth have hosted a couple of tryout events. At this one one had the chance to try out skating on the ice in Motala football stadium. My sister is a fan of that kind of activity.
It was nice, but you needed skating shoes that fit exactly, otherwise it was very demanding. Had problems to look as relaxed as the experienced once. Maybe I'll try this again another year. It might also be a nice way of getting to the minor islands in the archipelagos during winter...

Vem åt upp pepparkaksdegen

At this event LelleRoos invited us to central Norrköping, to tryout to make things with gingerbread! Of course some had to make some gingerbread cookies with geoCaching touche. Me, I did not make any, but just floated around.

Julcaching i Katrineholm

Malaren invited us to come up to Katrineholm and do the traditional In-between (Xmas and NewYear) caching in, or near, central Katrineholm. Yes. even a tradition for me as this was my second visit to that event. Brought torado with me, and at the event Mr Ofi joined us and contributed with some local knowledge. Have visited this surrounding several times so it is good to add a few more logs from here.

MYSterie event

When Mr and Mrs Höögarna invites me I really try to make it. This time they had joined forces with Hurbies and hosted a mystery event out in the countryside. The building we were in was some kind of hotel, and we had access to wifi, and computers, which is nice when you are to work with mysteries. We did get some practice mysteries, and some new ones, and people split up into smaller groups and tried to solve them. We did also get some instruction booklet with hints on good techniques for solving mysteries. As always some other mysteries was discussed and we all had a great time. It was interesting to watch people at action, as they was often very focussed on solving problems, so maybe less social than usual?
I headed home from central Sörmland in the car. After coming 10-20 km I had a close encounter incident with a large elk... but I was lucky to escape hitting that one; and probably the elk was even more happy with that.

Sedan år 2000 infaller skottårsdagen 29 februari

2012 is a leap year, and that is special for geoCachers, as 29th of February is often "white" in their caching matrix. So I hosted a smaller event with social focus.
The main focus during this event was the meet-then-dinner during the evening, but me and some others released some leap-year related caches during the day. This is a form that works quite nicely, and gives an extra spice as you often don't know when or where the caches will appear.
I had decided that we should meet at Trädgårsföreningen at 6 pm, to chat some and to sign the log book. After that the ones that wanted walked over to a nearby restaurant where we had dinner. The show-up at the restaurant was perfect as the crowd filled up the inner section of the restaurant to the last chair.

To be continued! I have 6 more events to write about so I will write more in the next blogg entry.

Statistics for Östergötland

In June I did publish some statistics from Östergötland. Time to recalculate these after quite a few new caches. One change from the previous statistics is that Events has been removed. Note! Archived caches are not counted.

The most interesting change this time is the explosion of caches in Finspång. From 60 to 190 in less than 6 months! patojen is the major contributor to this and now appears high in the top CO lists. The increase also meant the Finspång pop up to 4th place among the counties in Östergötland, passing Ödeshög. I suppose The Smokestoners soon will rectify this ;-)

Today there are 2097 (+421) active caches in Östergötland. Of these one (http://coord.info/GC1TG25) is not placed in a Östgöta-county, but in Hallsberg...

The top list, caches per county, are:

Place	County	GeoCaches	Count diff
1	Linköping	577	111
2	Norrköping	530	99
3	Motala	297	30
4	Finspång	190	130
5	Ödeshög	168	0
6	Mjölby	105	24
7	Kinda	54	6
8	Söderköping	36	7
9	Valdemarsvik	32	3
10	Boxholm	30	6
11	Vadstena	29	2
12	Åtvidaberg	26	1
13	Ydre	22	1

Count per cache type in the state:

Place	Type	Count	Ratio
1	Traditional	1561	74.4% (+1.5)
2	Unknown	378	18.0% (-0.6)
3	Multi	139	6.6% (-0.7%)
4	Earthcache	9	0.43%
4	Whereigo	9	0.43%
6	Virtual	1	0.05%

Traditionals per county:

Place	County	Trads	Count diff
1	Norrköping	440	78
2	Linköping	343	87
3	Motala	184	19
4	Finspång	170	118
5	Ödeshög	154	2
6	Mjölby	76	17
7	Kinda	47	40
8	Valdemarsvik	32	2
9	Söderköping	29	4
10	Vadstena	24	1
11	Boxholm	22	2
12	Ydre	21	3
13	Åtvidaberg	20	0

Multis per county:

Place	County	Multis	Count diff
1	Linköping	52	0
2	Motala	32	5
3	Norrköping	19	7
4	Mjölby	16	2
5	Boxholm	3	1
5	Finspång	3	1
5	Söderköping	3	1
5	Ödeshög	3	0
9	Kinda	2	-1
9	Vadstena	2	0
9	Åtvidaberg	2	1
12	Valdemarsvik	1	0
12	Ydre	1	0

Unknown per county:

Place	County	Unknowns	Count diff
1	Linköping	175	25
2	Motala	76	6
3	Norrköping	67	14
4	Finspång	16	11
5	Mjölby	13	5
6	Ödeshög	10	0
7	Boxholm	5	3
8	Kinda	4	0
8	Söderköping	4	2
8	Åtvidaberg	4	0
11	Vadstena	3	1
12	Valdemarsvik	1	0
13	Ydre	0	0

Top list, cache placement, are:

Place	Owner	Placed	Place diff
1	Bo & Elisabeth	140	+1
2	The Smokestoners	139	-1
3	Patojen	93	new
4	LHCper	71	-1
5	Fjärderlös Tvåfoting	70	-1
6	RDun_Swe	52	-1
7	androsen	48	-1
8	target888	43	new
9	Christer & Christina	37	=
10	kejomot	36	-1
10	LelleRos	36	=

Placement of traditionals:

Place	Owner	Trads	Place diff
1	The Smokestoners	133	=
2	Bo & Elisabeth	92	=
3	Patojen	84	new
4	Fjärderlös Tvåfoting	53	-1
5	androsen	42	-1
6	target888	39	new
7	Christer & Christina	30	-2
8	LelleRos	29	-2
9	Helnot	25	-3
10	Nkpg-ekologerna	23	new

Placement of multis:

Place	Owner	Multis	Place diff
1	Bo & Elisabeth	22	=
2	LHCper	19	=
3	BHJ	7	=
4	RDun_Swe	5	=
5	esso	4	=
6	Aggbjörn	3	new
6	LelleRos	3	+1
8	androsen	2	new
8	Eisander	2	-1
8	Fjäderlös Tvåfoting	2	-1
8	hej pappa	2	new
8	iskatt	2	new
8	lodola	2	-1
8	Kentka	2	new
8	Pelena	2	-1
8	Team Flex	2	-1
8	The wolftracker	2	-1
8	Venedig	2	new

Placement of unknowns:

Place	Owner	Unknowns	Place diff
1	RDun_Swe	41	=
2	LHCper	29	+1
3	kejomot	28	-1
4	Bo & Elisabeth	22	+1
5	Team Fetchez La Cache	19	-1
6	Fjäderlös Tvåfoting	15	=
7	m1m3r	10	new
8	Patojen	8	9
9	Aggbjörn	7	new
9	Queeg	7	new

So, I suspect the next installment of these statistics will appear in May or June 2012.

Smokestoner influence in Linköping

Have not been very active in GeoCaching during the last month. Was up to Grytgöl to clear the 3 PTs there, just to find one week later that 3 new PTS had been published. Ah....

Back home I have had good control of cache situation. In a triangle of Kappelån/E4, Linghem/E4 and Ullstämma (south of Linköping) at one time I had about 20 caches, of which 90% or so was Mysteries. Recently some more mysteries have popped up, of which only a few was suitable for me. So, mysteries keep piling up. Have to save them for the long, dark winter. At least RDun have not appeared with new mysteries in this area, although the new Mystery Master (m1m3r) seem to give us work enough.

So, multis, wherigos and other unusual caches have been few, and those I try to solve as soon as they appear, at least if they are less then T4... That leaves the Trads. Here a few difficult ones have appeared, like MMR-23: 128 (http://coord.info/GC32NGT) which a group of 7 geoCachers spent almost an hour looking for the FTF. And a devilish one near Tinnerö, which I went out 2:30 am to look for in the dark. So the trads are starting to pile up as well.

Today I took a trip to Nyköping, but not for caching. Although an excellent day for that activity I spent all day indoors, playing Bridge. But I managed to logg two caches, one before the play, and one during the lunch break: Agnes - Cecilia and Tvålfabriken, the later in a part of central Nyköping I had never visited (on the other side of the rail road, going as a bridge from the railway station). There are several difficult city caches in Nyköping, but these caused no problems at all.

I did check my e-mail and as expected several caches had been published! Why do this always happen when I am away from town! This time it was even a forrest power trail, inspired by Smokestoner's PT caches. And this near Glyttinge camping, which is between Ryd and Skäggetorp. Oh well, I will have some easy pickings to do the next couple of months.

Have had my own plans for a power trail of some kind, but I am thinking more in the line of Höögarna's style. We'll see if I ever get round to make such a trail...