Slim Pickings

This is a geocaching story so if you're not interested in geocaching, you can stop reading right now and move on with your life.  I only say that as a public service announcement since I know many people are probably tired of listening to me go on and on and on about geocaching.

At first, I was at a loss for words on what to write about with this prompt today of slim pickings.  But then I thought about what I have been trying to accomplish this year as one of my geocaching goals.  Last year, I started a consecutive day streak, mainly because there was a challenge cache to find a month of non-traditional finds.  For you geocaching muggles, a non-traditional cache would be any cache that doesn't have that green box icon on the map.

Challenge caches are pretty straightforward in their approach.  They challenge you to do certain geocaching things before you can find the cache, or at least log it on line.  As I noted above, the non-traditional challenge cache was for a month, so I found at least one non-traditional cache for each day of June.  Then, I thought about trying to extend my streak a little bit further.  I'd never gotten a streak beyond 56 days in the past, mainly because it became tedious to go out and find a cache every day.  But I got through July, then worked my way through August, getting at least one cache per day.

The problem is in my area I've found all the nearby ones.  The second map shows all the caches I've found near where I live.  That's the big donut hole in the top map that only shows the caches that I haven't found.  To keep my streak alive I have to keep going a little further out each day, mainly because I've already found almost all of the caches around my house.  I was talking to my son about this a couple of days ago and I told him that if someone wanted to do a one year consecutive day streak (which is what I'm attempting to do for a challenge), then they should start it early in their caching career before they find all the caches near them.  If I had just started geocaching, the lower map would represent almost 70 caches that I could find within a half hour walking distance from my house.

I'm pretty sure I'll be able to keep this streak up, but I really need to plan out my after school days carefully, because of the slim pickings.