July 24, 2021 · Midwest Geobash and the icon hunt
The name’s 82… spierson82. Our assignment: fifteen different geocaching icons in one day. Our operating area: Fort Wayne, Wauseon and Midwest Geobash. Our cover story: a completely reasonable way to spend a Saturday.
On July 24, 2021, I was out with bapierson, CanisMinor, djpd1023, KC_11, LEGOexplorer and .MikeyB. We signed as ourselves, our initials, or Team Cache ’n Bash. My logs leaned enthusiastically into the spy theme, complete with encrypted communications and self-destructing messages. The invisible ink was part of the joke; the finds were real.
A Mission with More Than One Kind of Find
Midwest Geobash 2021 (GC88QKK) had chosen GoldenCache as its spy theme, with Inspector Pigeon—James Bird—as mascot. Returning to Wauseon after the missed 2020 event was enjoyable in its own right. The unusual collection of available cache types gave us another project for the weekend.
A fifteen-icon day takes a different approach from a high-find-count day. Twenty Traditional caches still supply one type. We needed variety: physical containers, a Webcam, a Virtual, EarthCaches, different event types and the GPS Adventures Maze, with Adventure Labs adding another way to explore.
Breakfast and an Unexpected FTF
In Fort Wayne, Meet, Greet, Eat, Clean, and Smile for Breakfast (GC9CXT4) gave us an Event icon and a gathering full of geocachers. It also provided an opening I had not expected.
I slipped out to search for Texas Toast (GC977HK) and recorded an FTF at 7:35 a.m. Sneaking away from a room full of cachers to be first to a nearby cache felt reasonably appropriate for our secret-agent theme.
The day also included PezGremlin’s Indiana CITO (GC9CX27). That supplied a separate event type, while Let’s improve the outdoors—Locationless Cache (GC8NEAT) recognized making our outdoor game board a little cleaner.
A Wave for the Webcam
Smile for the Camera (GCHB57) took us to northwest Fort Wayne. A Webcam Cache has no container to open: the find depends on getting into the camera’s view and saving the image. In this case, that meant a group wave beside the road.
The companion logs make this stop sound as enjoyable as the photograph looks. CanisMinor singled out the audio, .MikeyB was impressed by the sound quality, and djpd1023 directed readers to my photograph of the group. KC_11 also recorded it as part of our fifteen-icon day.
Johnny Appleseed and Some Actual History
Apple Of My Eye (GC890MY) brought us to the Johnny Appleseed memorial. The man behind the familiar name was John Chapman, a real nurseryman rather than simply a character from a childhood story. Fort Wayne’s parks department identifies the site as the remnant of the Archer family cemetery.
We took a photograph together at the fenced memorial. It is a useful reminder of what can happen on an outing built around a checklist: one of those icons turns into a place worth stopping to appreciate. The nearby Indiana Spirit Quest #637: Little Red Apples (GC1EP63) was another find on the day’s record.
Other Indiana stops included the Multi-cache Messick Micro #7: Memorial Park (GC6R01R) and Letterbox Hybrid In Memory of the D-Dog (GC9DYDK). Each contributed something different to the mission.
Another Fort Wayne find, The Summer Game No. 3—Fort Wayne Daisies (WIH) (GC85QT3), gave Memorial Park a baseball connection. The Daisies played in the All-American Girls Professional Baseball League from 1945 through 1954, as documented by the league’s players association. We were chasing icons, but there was a piece of women’s baseball history along the way too.
Stonework, Wherigos and Spy Games
In Wauseon Union Cemetery, the EarthCaches changed the nature of the search again. Weathering Types in Wauseon Cemetery (GC97EWE), Weathering. What’s in a Name? (GC97KYG) and Grave Stones—Wauseon Union Cemetery (GC97KMA) focused our attention on stone materials and the way inscriptions and surfaces deteriorate over time.
The cemetery photographs show why it was worth looking closely. The differences in the markers were the subject of the visit, rather than scenery to walk past on the way to a container. I will leave the specific observations and logging answers for the next visitor to work out.
The coordination mattered as much as locating the right markers. KC_11’s log says one member would send the group’s answers; .MikeyB’s account of the lettering cache nominated me. Apparently, even secret agents have paperwork. Meanwhile, djpd1023 joked about the number of waypoints giving an “old timer” something to keep track of.
We also logged Adventure Lab Bonus—Wauseon-I Did Not Know That! (GC95HEW) and the Wherigos Reverse Wherigo—Doxie Style (GC94Q98) and Reverse Wherigo—Is it a fly or a “bug” (GC9CFMW). The spy theme continued through the Letterboxes and the Spies ❤ EGGs Traditional series. It was a busy day for both the checklist and the log stamp.
The Maze, the Frog and the Fifteenth Type
GPS Adventures Maze—Wauseon, Ohio (GC8FYA6) supplied one of the less common icons. The exhibit at the Fulton County Fairgrounds combined GPS and geocaching education with activities to work through. Our photograph at the display is from Friday; my attendance log for the Maze is dated Saturday, July 24.
The Mega itself and MWGB 2021—Celebration Party! (GC8HMW3) contributed separate event types. Then there was a meeting with Signal for Find Signal the Frog®—Locationless in 2020 (GC8FR0G). The cache kept “2020” in its title, but our visit and photograph were very much part of July 2021.
There were two Locationless finds, but they still count as one type. My regular geocaching logs document fourteen different types that day. Adventure Labs brought the day’s variety to fifteen, and both CanisMinor and KC_11 explicitly recorded completing the fifteen-icon goal in their own logs.
CanisMinor had an additional reason to celebrate: he recorded the Mega as his 20,000th milestone. That is his milestone, not mine, but it was a good day to share with him.
Mission Accomplished
We finished with a rather satisfying collection of icons, but the day had also given us breakfast with cachers, a little cleanup, a webcam photograph, local history, geology and plenty of teamwork. A fairly ambitious checklist had made room for a lot of different experiences.
In my Mega log, I called Midwest Geobash my favorite Mega and thanked the people who make it possible. That is a more lasting assessment than the spy writing around it. After missing the previous year, it was great to be back among familiar faces and new friends.
This message will not self-destruct. I would quite like to keep the photographs.
View all 47 regular finds from the mission
Field Notes
- Adventure: July 24, 2021; wider Bash weekend photographs are individually dated
- Locations: Fort Wayne, Indiana; Wauseon and Fulton County Fairgrounds, Ohio
- Companions named in my logs: bapierson, CanisMinor, djpd1023, KC_11, LEGOexplorer and .MikeyB; other cachers joined stops along the way
- Team signature: cachenbash / Cache ’n Bash
- 47 regular finds, including attended events, across 14 types; Adventure Labs supplied the fifteenth type
- Fifteen-type completion independently recorded by CanisMinor and KC_11
- The two Locationless finds represent one type, not two
- My original spy-themed logs use fictional agent language for humor
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