Geocaching December 2023

The month of December started with a find in the heart of Baltimore. In front of Penn Station (yes, Baltimore has one too!) is a statue named Male/Female. A virtual cache named Intersection references the statue. I sent off an answer based on information from the statue's base to get credit for the find. The statue is quite controversial since it is a bit underwhelming and doesn't fit with the classier look of the train station. At fifty-one feet tall it is hard to miss and it is an unfortunate first impression for people who come to town by train.

Me and GZ

I found two caches in the fog one day, Welcome to Blandair Park and Romantykes1. The fog helped provide cover for caching, especially since the park's soccer fields were in full use on a Saturday.

Blandair Park

Nearby lake

The fog didn't let up the next day but I continued on with Heaven Cache and an Adventure Lab that doesn't have its own web link.

Fog on Lake Kittamaqundi

I found a multicache that required me not to take a picture, We Haven't Looked Everywhere Yet. It's based on Gary Larsen's comics, so a lot of fun.

The oddly-named Black Athletes on Cereal Boxes... does indeed have a display of Wheaties covers on the outside. Nearby I also found Red, Blue and..., which was out in the open so I hid it a little better.

OK, the images are on the inside but they are still visible outside.

On my 99th day of caching I found The Up High Cache... in a MARC parking lot. It was in the far end of the lot, so no cars around but mine.

On the 100th day of caching, I went to Lake Kittamaqundi since there were plenty of caches around it, including the Whereigo cache Columbia's Poster Trees. The plan was to find two caches and then have the Whereigo as my 1000th find. Unfortunately, I had 3 DNFs and wound up just finding the Whereigo (which was fun but time consuming). I had to run errands afterward and saw two on the way to the stores. I did find A Day at the Office.... (a regular cache) and the mystery cache A Series of Unfortunate Events, which was a good summary of the day and a fun name for my 1000th find.

Picture of a cool bird in a tree by the lake

Zoomed in on the bird

Me at the 100th cache

The next day I started working on filling in every calendar day with a traditional find and located Say A Prayer for Me. To avoid being caught in an unending cycle, I took two days off from caching, so my longest streak stands at 101 days.

View from the cache, almost

Inexplicable Guard Rails of Central Maryland #2 is a spooky spot. One guard rail cuts off a bit of road and another guard rail is at the end of the bit of road. I guess they didn't bother to take it out when they put in the other rail?

Glad I can't drive down here

My next cache was also a sequel, Free State in the Springtime #2. I tried to find the first one but it looked like it was missing.

Less spooky sequel

Another sequel, Crash's Lunchtime Cache #2, was found on the next day. I swear I didn't plan this mini-series! Maybe I will pick up the originals later?

Not a good spot for lunch, if you ask me

Two new caches showed up in King's Contrivance. I found them both, RWLS: Timothy Turtle's Tatooine Triple Tignanello and Monarch's Land Grant. The trail includes a bridge!

How did this get in the middle of the woods?

My wife wanted to shop for a lamp, so we went to 2nd Chance, a warehouse full of house decor that have been brought in for sale. In the parking lot is Do You Need a 2nd Chance to Find It? which was easy to find. We did not take a photo and we did not find a lamp. We wound up making a purchase at Home Depot.

In the interests of acquiring the 2023 Winter Solstice souvenir, I found four caches in one day. I had gotten the final coordinates for KRAKADOOOUM! before setting out, so it was an easy find, though the cache container was not liftable (see the picture below). The Working Man was an easy, more traditional find. On my way home, I found two at a southbound rest area on I-95, South Bound Roadtrip and Woodshop Fun. The second has a very cleverly disguised container. I gave it a Favorite Point, something premium members can do for caches that they think are especially good.

The tree is worthy to wield?

View from the rest area cache

I did have a tragedy in one of my own caches. The log got too wet and needed replacing. All that I have left is this picture of the original, mushy log.

King's Power first log

The next step in acquiring the Solstice souvenir was completing the Adventure Lab at the NASA Goddard Space Center's Visitor Center. I was able to find all but one bit of information which I think has vanished, so I let the cache owner know. 

To fill out the last two caches required for the souvenir, I found Name That Store! and GSFC-MKH-LPC. They were both in a strip mall across the street from NASA. I was surprise to see Papa John's Pizza and Ledo Pizza in the same mall. The "anchor store" for the mall is Zion Church! An odd spot indeed.

Also popular spot

I made a find on Christmas Eve to get the end-of-year souvenir. Geocaching Symposium 2015 is a Wherigo cache just outside the Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory. The cache is hidden across the street in an unremarkable parking lot.

Typical view for a not-too-far-in-the-woods cache

I ended the month, and the year, crossing the 1000-cache milestone overall, and 300 in a single year. I have only two days left on my calendar to fill in for caching, February 5 and 29, which luckily will happen this year. What will my projects be in the coming year other than making finds on those two days?

Click to enlarge