Mingo (GC30) was a red-letter moment. But when I think back on our May 2019 road trip, the part that stands out most is meeting another group of geocachers on a Texas GeoArt trail and spending the rest of the day caching together.
We had planned a trip around famous caches and a big gathering. Somewhere along the way, the people we met became just as much a reason to remember it.
Three Bald Guys & Steve Head West
I left Chicagoland with CanisMinor, djpd1023 and mjholley, bound for GeoWoodstock XVII (GC7NBWQ) in Fort Worth. My original logs describe more than 3,000 miles, seven states and five days of adventure. We signed many of the cache logs as 3BG&S—Three Bald Guys & Steve. A practical abbreviation, and apparently the best branding department we could assemble.
A direct drive to Texas would have been entirely possible. It would also have missed Mingo (GC30). That was not going to happen. Our route took us west through Iowa and Nebraska into Kansas before we turned toward Oklahoma and Texas.
There were worthwhile stops before the famous one. GO BIG RED (GC943) in Nebraska gave us another early geocaching landmark and a photograph with an elaborate little cache. This was already becoming a trip where the next stop could look completely different from the last.
A Kansas Detour and an Oklahoma Original
On May 22, we found Mingo, the oldest active geocache in the world. A container near a Kansas fence might seem an unlikely reason to bend a road trip out of shape, but this one had been there, in one form or another, since May 11, 2000. I was very happy to add my name to its history.
That visit deserves its own story. It was a major goal, but it was also one stop in a much larger adventure. Later, in Oklahoma City, INFERNAL DEVICE 2.0 (GC6XJQA) showed what a very different kind of memorable cache could be.
The creativity, theming and work that went into that experience impressed all of us. My log wished I could award more than one favorite point. I will leave the surprises to the cache owner; explaining every detail would take away part of the fun.
TnT Meets 3BG&S
The Texas GeoArt searches brought us to An A-Maze-Ing Adventure #74 (GC852KN) and to five new friends: 5472, MsPatt, Nov64, Netinator and Rambetta. They were signing as TnT, for Texas and Tennessee. Our group name required an explanation about bald heads. Theirs came with geography.
We joined forces and finished the rest of the day together. That is the part I remember most: a planned series of searches turning into a shared day with people we had only just met.
Their logs bring it back nicely. 5472 wrote about running into cachers from Chicago and continuing along the trail together. MsPatt described a day on the Texas back roads with ladders, extension poles, grabbers, gloves and her favorite perfume: DEET. Evidently, this was a well-equipped social gathering.
CanisMinor was glad he had brought the ladder. His log says we climbed more trees that weekend than he had all year up to that point. Our photographs certainly suggest that the ladder did not spend the entire trip resting in the car.
There is something easy about meeting people this way. You already have a shared reason to be standing beside a tree, looking upward and wondering how somebody managed to put a container there. Introductions can happen around the next search.
Ten Years After the Lamp Post
The main gathering was May 25 at Fort Worth’s Will Rogers Memorial Center. That date also marked ten years since my first find, Getting Numbers (GC1RAJZ), back home in 2009. From a lamp post with the family to a road trip with friends and a major geocaching event in Texas: the hobby had grown a little.
I chose GeoWoodstock as my honorary 14,000-find celebration. There were events, GeoArt searches, a GeoTour and historic caches around the trip, but being surrounded by people who understood why we had driven all that way was a fitting way to mark the occasion.
On May 26, we also visited the GPS Adventures Maze at Texas Wesleyan (GC82ZPV). The exhibit supplied another kind of geocaching experience—and another group photograph. We were doing rather well at collecting those too.
The Part We Couldn’t Put on the Itinerary
We did not manage everything. CanisMinor’s log admits that our eyes had been bigger than our stomachs when we planned the weekend. That sounds about right. Give us a map full of interesting caches and a limited number of days, and restraint is unlikely to be our strongest skill.
Mingo gave us a piece of geocaching history. Fort Worth gave us a gathering worth the drive. And a Texas GeoArt trail gave us a day with new friends that I still think about.
There were plenty of smileys on the map when we headed home. The photograph of nine of us beside that road explains the trip better than the final count ever could.
Field Notes
- Adventure: May 2019; Mingo May 22, GeoWoodstock May 25, GPS Adventures Maze May 26.
- Road-trip companions: CanisMinor, djpd1023 and mjholley.
- New trail friends: 5472, MsPatt, Nov64, Netinator and Rambetta (TnT: Texas and Tennessee).
- Seven states: Illinois, Iowa, Nebraska, Kansas, Oklahoma, Texas, Missouri.
- Distance and duration: more than 3,000 miles and five days, as described in my original trip logs.
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