Looking back on 2021
In May, CanisMinor, djpd1023, Team Darkseid and I headed out for another MOGA road trip. In June, geocaching fitted around a family vacation in Florida. By July, a group of us had given ourselves the entirely sensible assignment of finding fifteen different icons in one day.
That gives a fairly good picture of my geocaching in 2021: trips with friends, family time, events returning to the calendar and plenty of reasons to get outdoors. Cache even made two appearances on Geocaching HQ’s Instagram account. The dog was having a good year too.
MOGA and a Busy May
Our Memorial Day road trip brought us to Owensboro, Kentucky, for MOGA 2021 The Hunt for Bigfoot (GC91060). I traveled with CanisMinor, djpd1023 and Team Darkseid, finding caches along the way and attending the weekend gatherings.
The event’s Bigfoot theme offered an entertaining excuse to go searching. The weekend also included MOGA 2021 Friday Night (GC91062) and BBBGT: Barbecue, Bourbon, and Bluegrass GeoTour (GC8HMYD) at Smothers Park on the Ohio River. The organizers had built a busy weekend around the hunt, the local setting and the people coming to take part.
May ended with 604 finds, including 142 Adventure Lab locations. It was my busiest month of the year by a considerable margin. Geocaching can turn a long weekend into a rather substantial contribution to the annual graph.
A Family Vacation, with Geocaches Along the Way
June took bapierson, LEGOexplorer and me to Florida. The vacation included Universal, the Everglades, Biscayne and the Keys, with caches and Adventure Labs fitted around the places we wanted to see.
At Flamingo Rock Virtual (GC5694), my log mentions the manatees. Biscayne was a shore visit, and the trip eventually brought us to the Southernmost Point buoy in Key West. There was also a visit to Sloppy Joe’s, because not every vacation stop needs a container or a logging requirement.
One of the unexpected geocaching opportunities was Key West Sunset Meet up (GC9BV4H) on June 14. I went on my own; it simply happened to be the right place and time for an out-of-towner to meet some local geocachers.
The family also found Elizabeth Street Cache (GC9CN7Z) for an out-of-state co-FTF. A new cache near our hotel supplied a very good reason for a walk, even if the weather immediately had other ideas. That adventure, and the rest of the Florida trip, deserve their own story.
Fifteen Icons and a Return to Bash
July brought Midwest Geobash 2021 (GC88QKK) back into our plans. My logs went all-in on the spy theme: agent 82, covert missions and messages threatening to self-destruct. The underlying project was real enough—fifteen different cache-type icons in one day.
Our July 24 outing combined Fort Wayne stops with the activities around Wauseon. We waved for Smile for the Camera (GCHB57), visited the Johnny Appleseed memorial for Apple Of My Eye (GC890MY), worked through different physical cache types and logged GPS Adventures Maze—Wauseon, Ohio (GC8FYA6). Adventure Labs were part of reaching the fifteen-type goal.
CanisMinor and KC_11 both recorded completing the icon day. CanisMinor also marked his 20,000th milestone at the Mega. Getting back together after the missed 2020 event was already enjoyable; sharing a day like that gave us something extra to celebrate.
Cache and the Outings Close to Home
Cache appeared on Geocaching HQ’s Instagram account on March 16 and July 6. Both features credited @cache_the_geodog. I do not think the dog was keeping track of the publicity, but I enjoyed seeing photographs from our outings shared with the wider geocaching community.
There was plenty of local activity too: walks, searches, ice-cream gatherings and familiar people. The photographs from our March visit to Matthiessen State Park show another part of the outdoor year. Its sandstone canyon and waterfalls are a good reason to bring the camera; Illinois DNR describes the canyon as the work of water erosion. That visit is not being counted here as an additional geocache find.
In September, FLOAT YOUR BOAT 9 (GC9DTTK) put CanisMinor, djpd1023, Team Darkseid and me back on the water. My log remembers beautiful weather and good company. In November, familiar faces and autumn colors supplied another enjoyable day out.
2021 by the Numbers
The official annual total was 1,502 finds. That includes 1,127 regular geocaching finds, with attended events included, plus 375 individual Adventure Lab locations. Those 375 are locations, not 375 complete Adventures.
Project-GC records 80 active geocaching days when Adventure Labs are included. My running total at the end of the year was 19,193.
Green: regular finds, including attended events. Gold: individual Adventure Lab locations.
View the data
| Month | Regular finds | Adventure Lab locations | Total |
|---|---|---|---|
| January | 58 | 15 | 73 |
| February | 8 | 5 | 13 |
| March | 55 | 30 | 85 |
| April | 56 | 20 | 76 |
| May | 462 | 142 | 604 |
| June | 60 | 20 | 80 |
| July | 235 | 78 | 313 |
| August | 54 | 22 | 76 |
| September | 38 | 7 | 45 |
| October | 38 | 30 | 68 |
| November | 31 | 6 | 37 |
| December | 32 | 0 | 32 |
| Total | 1127 | 375 | 1502 |
Attended events and 375 individual Adventure Lab locations are included.
View the data
| Type | Finds |
|---|---|
| Traditional | 626 |
| Adventure Lab locations | 375 |
| Mystery | 259 |
| Wherigo Cache | 72 |
| Letterbox Hybrid | 70 |
| Multi-cache | 26 |
| Event | 24 |
| EarthCache | 20 |
| Virtual | 17 |
| Community Celebration | 4 |
| Webcam | 3 |
| Mega-Event | 2 |
| Locationless | 2 |
| GPS Adventures Maze | 1 |
| CITO | 1 |
| Total | 1502 |
Adventure Labs are excluded from this chart. Nebraska includes later claims for 2020 signatures. Washington represents Locationless listings. This chart does not count states visited.
View the data
| Listing state | Regular finds |
|---|---|
| Illinois | 480 |
| Indiana | 367 |
| Kentucky | 113 |
| Ohio | 97 |
| Florida | 57 |
| Missouri | 7 |
| Nebraska | 3 |
| Washington | 2 |
| Michigan | 1 |
| Total | 1127 |
The state chart needs a little explanation. Three Nebraska challenge finds were claims for containers I had physically signed on the July 2020 road trip, once I qualified in 2021. Two Washington entries are Locationless cache listings, not evidence of a trip to Washington. Puzzle-cache posted locations can also differ from their final locations. The chart shows where listings are assigned, rather than claiming that I traveled to every state shown.
The Part I Want to Remember
A busy May and a fifteen-icon Saturday certainly made the statistics interesting. But the photographs bring back a broader year: our family in Key West, friends at the Johnny Appleseed memorial, Cache beside an ammo can and autumn outings closer to home.
Those were good reasons to keep making plans. Sometimes the plan called for an ambitious caching day. Sometimes a handful of finds fitted into the vacation, and sometimes the event was a chance to sit down and catch up. I enjoyed having all of those in the same year.
We finished at 12th Annual New Years Eve Celebration (GC9HWN8) with bapierson and LEGOexplorer. Familiar faces, another gathering and a new year ahead: a good way to close the logbook on 2021.
Field Notes
- Year: 2021
- Total finds: 1,502 = 1,127 regular finds, including attended events, + 375 individual Adventure Lab locations
- Regular log types: 1,092 Found it, 32 Attended and 3 Webcam Photo Taken
- Active days including Adventure Labs: 80
- Busiest month: May, 604 finds
- Running total at year-end: 19,193
- Official Geocaching.com statistics and Project-GC agree on the annual and monthly totals
- State chart uses cache-listing state, not a claim about travel; Adventure Labs have no assigned state breakdown here
- Original photographs and contemporaneous logs support the narrative; no inferred thousand-find milestones are assigned
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