Geocaching October 2023

My geocaching month started off with finding the final Adventure Lab on Main Street in Laurel, Maryland. On the second of the month, I visited the weekly Monday morning meetup, which is turning into a habit for me. It's an easy way to get credit for a find and a chance to be sociable and to get advice on geocaching in general. No photos for either.

My next find was Dorsey Cemetery at Arcadia, a mystery cache requiring some information from the graveyard to find the hide by one of the shopping centers nearby. I had just been to the shopping center, so I probably should have gone for the cache first before making purchases. Priorities!

Spooky start for October

I avenged a DNF (that's a Did Not Find) at Cricket's Cache. I really think the container was changed because it was very easy to find and I don't think I could have missed it.

Typical bit of road near the cache

I found another pair of the sports-themed caches in southern Laurel, TYGR402: Baseball and TYGR402: Soccer. Showing the baseball sculpture/statue is not a spoiler, so I took a picture.

Go Orioles!

The next day I found TYGR402: Hockey, which was off in some woods with a creepy container. Sorry there is no picture, you'll have to go get creeped out on your own. 

For the earthcache weekend I went to Fort McHenry to find the earthcache MD - Fort McHenry Earthcache and the virtual cache A Great Big Liar. The Liar cache involves a statue of a Greek god with a lyre (nice pun) and the earthcache involves the preservation attempts of the bay around the fort.

Great big statue

Entrance to Fort McHenry

I went back to that business park and found TYGR402: Frisbee, a nice and easy multicache, especially on a Sunday afternoon. After a little math, I was on to the find. Some landscaping guys were there on a Sunday, so I had to wait a little for them to clear out.

Fetch!

We went to the former town of Daniels, Maryland, which was wiped out in the 1970s by Tropical Storm Agnes. We visited a cave which was the location of the earthcache The Camel's Den. Further up the hill from the cave is Stoned Cache. 

Relaxing by the cave

Taking shelter

Some ruins, not where the other cache was

I went back to the business park and found TYGR402: Lacrosse without much trouble (or a picture). The next day I found TYGR402: Equestrian, also without picture. I did not find the Fly a Kite cache, even with the hint.

I solved another Random Wiki Puzzle: Captain Andrew Offutt Monument in Odenton and found the cache in a business park. Unfortunately, the log was barely signable. I had to go back to the car for a pencil, which made more of a dent than left a mark.

The wet log

Next up was Non-traditional Traditional?! not too far from home and very close to grocery shopping that I planned to do anyway. There's a fun puzzle and I picked up a Travel Bug, which is an item that travels around from cache to cache, sometimes with a specific destination or certain activity from the TB owner. Super Duck wants his picture taken, the sillier the better. What's sillier than UFOs?

They need a hero!

On a cold and blustery day I found Ice Cubes... just off a road that has plenty of caches on it.

Typical geohiding area

Catch as Cache Can is an old geocache, first placed in 2001. I found it to qualify for a challenge cache which requires fifteen caches older than the twentieth oldest currently available cache in Howard County. This one makes fifteen!

Geocontainer

Nearby waterway

I had a two-for-one find in Baltimore at the memorial for Pride of Baltimore, a sailing ship that sank on its way back home in 1986. Lost Pride is a virtual cache which requires information from the memorial; Baltimore's Pride in Texas Pink is an earthcache about the Texas granite used to make the memorial.

Memorial

The Star-Spangled Banner - Maryland Style is a cache that asks a bunch of questions about Francis Scott Key and the attack on Fort McHenry in 1814. I knew most of the answers to the puzzle and was able to make the find, which was under an American flag! It was not anywhere near Fort McHenry. I didn't take a picture--just imagine a flag on display.

I Can't Drive 55 is next to an indoor racetrack and a very easy find to fill in a day for my current streak.

We went on a dance competition trip to Lancaster, Pennsylvania, and found some virtual caches there to keep the streak going. Virtual Reward 3.0 The Eavesdropper is located on King Street and is where a second story eave has a sculpture of a human face listening in on passersby. Nearby is Hot Off the Presses!! which involves another statue, this one being a man with his morning paper. Finally, we found Soldiers and Sailors Monument which is in the city's central square. The memorial was originally dedicated to locals who fought in the American Civil War, though it has expanded to other American military engagements from the War for Independence to the Iraq Wars. 

Catching up on the news

Soldiers and Sailors Memorial

Waterfront Confections is by a pond near the closest Scout Shop (back in Maryland), so I returned an item to the store and found a geocache nearby. The pond is pretty, the GZ is a nest of thorns and undergrowth.

Photogenic lake

Bird at lake

My Birthday Hide: Cruising On.... is another quick cache that kept my streak alive on a busy day.

After finishing the Laurel Main Street Adventure Lab a while back, I found the bonus mystery cache. Adventure Labs typically have coordinates to a physical cache as a bonus. This final find was another historic site on Main Street.

St. Philips Episcopal Church, Laurel, Maryland

Having qualified earlier in the month, I found Historical Caches of Howard County Challenge out in a park.

Typical hiding area back in the good ole days

My son had a debate competition at Calvert Hall College High School. I went as judge and during a break found Easy Cache and Dash 2 in a parking lot and TLB - Remember the Best?, a multicache based on a mall that has changed several times in its over fifty years of existence.

School patrons

Library patron

Random fun wall decoration

I discovered a new series, the Random Word Letterbox Series. RWLS Rey Reisling Royals Ruby Revelation Swiftly is in a local park. I dropped the Super Duck Travel Bug there since this cache is new and will probably get a lot of traffic.

Super Duck and the Letterbox of Doom!

X did not mark the spot

I found Time Will Not Dim... on a day that needed filling. It's just outside of the Baltimore Orioles stadium and is a virtual with some easy questions to answer. A photo would have been a spoiler for the answers, so no picture.

The month ended with a total of 945 caches found overall and 42 in October. My current streak of days caching is 63 (with the hope of making 100) and I only have 6 empty days on the overall calendar.

Not too many white spots left!