Geocaching July 2022

I found a cache on the first day of July because I had to kill some time between dropping my daughter off to make some vacation Bible school decorations and picking up books at the library. I found The White Band Cache... which indeed has a white band around the container. The timing was perfect, I got to the library just as it opened and picked up a big stack of reserved books.

View from The White Band...

As a follow up, I found The Red, White and Blue Cache... which was placed on July 1, so it is a very recent cache. The hiding spot was typical and it got another day filled in on my caching calendar.

Another view from the cache

On a trip to Virginia, I found Hokies in Blackstone near an agricultural school that's part of Virginia Tech. The find is right by the sign.

VT in the hinterland!

Not far away was Smiling back at you hidden in a location that is "not quite an LPC but more of the big brother to them." An LPC is a Lamp Pole Cover, the liftable covering at the bottom of a lot of parking lot lights. It's a very common hiding spot. This particular hide was much trickier and required a tool to get out of its spot.

No cover for this post

In Blackstone proper, I found amongst all the trache. A little side road has a section where people dump junk. The cache is hidden among the junk! The find took a bit of creative searching.

A spot for CITO (Cache In, Trash Out)

My last find on that day was Don't Stop Believing.... near a small, independent ice cream and fast food shop. The cache is hidden in the parking lot. The owner knows about it and I had a nice, short chat with him as I was making the find.

Outdoor dining area was Ground Zero

On the way home, we stopped off briefly in Richmond and visited the grounds of the Capitol. We found the virtual cache The Doctor Will See You Now. Virtual caches are location that do not have a physical hide. Typically, cache finders have to take a picture or gather some information that can only be found at that location. This particular spot, a statue of Doctor Hunter Holmes McGuire, is in a nice, tree-shaded area. Dr. McGuire was personal physician to General Stonewall Jackson. After the American Civil War, he lobbied for medical care for the indigent and for former slaves. He helped in rebuilding Richmond and founded the University College of Medicine there.

McGuire Statue

Back home I found Down by the tracks, a mystery cache that had an interesting solution to find the final coordinates. The find was a little harrowing because it is located in a business park with a lot of business going on during weekdays. I should have gone on the weekend or after hours but I needed to fill a hole in the calendar.

Tracks are definitely visible from here

Just off of Main Street in Laurel, Maryland, is a series of caches that are tough until you get used to the cache owner's style. I've found plenty by him, so When You Need One #5 was a quick find for me, which was nice since the temperature was in the low nineties!

Not a good location for a hide, ya think?

Fore!!! is a mystery cache near a mini-golf/driving range/batting cage complex. The hide was nice but the container was rusted shut, so I did not sign the log. Hopefully the cache owner will be able to replace it.

A view from the cache area, I guess I should have included the complex

Out shopping, I found A Rock In A Bag... which is just like the name says. The location had two rocks to choose from, neither of which was the right rock (because they weren't in bags!).

Choices, choices...

I found another one of the Random Acts of Kindness caches, RAKMD27:call your grandparents.call them! Maybe the cache owner is a grandparent? I had two of the kids with me, so they finally made it into a picture.

Showing their enthusiasm!

While on a visit to Historic St. Mary's City (the original capital of the colony of Maryland), we found the virtual cache Church Point. It's down by the water from the historic area and the college.

The church point

The next day we took a boat to St. Clements Island (where the first Maryland colonists landed in 1634) and found another virtual cache, Ever changing island. The island went through many different changes, from an initial settlement to a lighthouse location to a tourist destination to its final (so far) purpose as a historical site.

The re-created lighthouse

This month featured the hundredth cache of 2022 and now only has two calendar days of non-caching.