Looking back on 2022
I started 2022 within sight of 20,000 finds. By the time we got back from an Alaska cruise in June, I’d picked a place to celebrate getting there. Naturally, it was a geocache.
I finished the year with 2,008 finds, up from 1,502 in 2021. There were four Mega-Events, a lot of miles with friends, and a family trip that took our geocaching from Alaska to British Columbia and Seattle. I still did more regular caching in Illinois than anywhere else.
Big things and familiar trails
April took me through southern Illinois and Missouri, including Welcome to Popeye’s Hometown, v. 2.0 (GC4JY78) in Chester. Later that month, bapierson, Cache_the_GeoDog and I headed out for MOGA 2022 Big Things Small Towns (GC9BX4C). In my event log, I put our goals about as plainly as possible: good burgers, big things, and a few Illinois counties we still needed. More than 550 miles later, we’d made a full day of it.
In May, the bow-wow series was one of the reasons to keep looking close to home. Even CanisMinor had a name in the series at 043 bow-wow: CanisMinor (GC9DV9M). After a spring spent driving to caches, there was plenty to find back in Illinois.
From Alaska to headquarters
The cruise with bapierson and LEGOexplorer put Alaska and British Columbia on this year’s map. My Juneau logs include Mendenhall Glacier (GC1A34J) and Nugget Falls (GC1EHCT). In Victoria I logged You Rock, Victoria! (GC5EY5A). The trip finished back in Seattle, where we visited Geocaching Headquarters (GCK25B).
My official running total went from 19,997 at the end of May to 20,099 at the end of June. I chose HQ as my honorary 20,000th, which suited a place I’d wanted to visit for years. There’s a longer story about that last day and what we did with our luggage.
July weekends and a busy day in Wisconsin
July was my busiest month with 606 finds. CanisMinor, djpd1023, Team Darkseid, theshyguy83 and I made it to WorldWide CacheFest (GC9E5GX) in Memphis, and the month also took me back to Midwest Geobash 2022 (GC995HR). Both weekends left time for some finds away from the main event. In Memphis, that meant a stop for Elvis.
On August 6, my GPX record shows 170 regular finds and event logs in Wisconsin, the largest regular-cache day in my archive for the year. We were at West Bend $1000 Cache Ba$h 2022 (GC9FB4E). The records include finds in the Pac-Man series and a collection of Multis, alongside the chance to see people at the Bash.
2022 by the numbers
Geocaching.com records 2,008 finds for the year. I counted 1,350 regular finds and attendances in My Finds. The difference is 658 Adventure Lab locations. The state and province chart uses the regular logs, which have a location attached to each listing.
View the data table
| Month | Finds |
|---|---|
| Jan | 43 |
| Feb | 56 |
| Mar | 49 |
| Apr | 358 |
| May | 298 |
| Jun | 102 |
| Jul | 606 |
| Aug | 241 |
| Sep | 40 |
| Oct | 111 |
| Nov | 53 |
| Dec | 51 |
View the data table
| Type | Finds |
|---|---|
| Traditional | 722 |
| Adventure Lab locations | 658 |
| Mystery | 389 |
| Multi-cache | 125 |
| Virtual | 29 |
| Letterbox Hybrid | 26 |
| Event | 24 |
| EarthCache | 15 |
| Community Celebration Event | 8 |
| Wherigo Cache | 4 |
| Mega-Event | 4 |
| CITO | 2 |
| GPS Adventures Maze | 1 |
| Geocaching HQ | 1 |
View the data table
| State or province | Regular finds |
|---|---|
| Illinois | 739 |
| Ohio | 177 |
| Wisconsin | 172 |
| Missouri | 88 |
| Tennessee | 82 |
| Alaska | 30 |
| Michigan | 27 |
| Washington | 12 |
| British Columbia | 11 |
| Indiana | 10 |
| Mississippi | 1 |
| Arkansas | 1 |
The numbers will probably remind me which months were busiest. The things I’ll remember without looking them up are finding a glacier EarthCache with the family, rolling suitcases through Fremont, and getting back together with the guys at another Mega. That was a pretty good year.
Field Notes
- 2022 total: 2,008 finds, including 1,350 regular finds and 658 Adventure Lab locations calculated from the difference
- Year-end running total: 21,201
- Busiest month: July, with 606 total finds
- Regular archive: 92 days with a find or attendance, eleven U.S. states and British Columbia
- Largest regular day: August 6, with 170 regular finds and event attendances
- Sources: Geocaching.com monthly statistics and the original My Finds GPX
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