January–December 2024
I ended 2024 with 3,999 finds. Yes, I noticed the missing one. There was a birthday party at a fairground, a family day in Wisconsin, my first finds in Mexico, and enough Penny Farthings to make me wonder how much windshield time I’d actually signed up for.
What changed from last year
I finished 200 finds ahead of 2023, but the mix changed more than the total suggests. I logged 1,914 geocache finds and event attendances, up 707. I also logged 2,085 individual Adventure Lab locations, down 507. July was my busiest month at 982, with 602 geocache finds and attendances and 380 Adventure Lab locations.
| Month | Geocaches and events | Adventure Lab locations | Total | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Jan | 91 | 165 | 256 | |
| Feb | 29 | 177 | 206 | |
| Mar | 58 | 183 | 241 | |
| Apr | 66 | 131 | 197 | |
| May | 88 | 101 | 189 | |
| Jun | 53 | 433 | 486 | |
| Jul | 602 | 380 | 982 | |
| Aug | 140 | 98 | 238 | |
| Sep | 345 | 169 | 514 | |
| Oct | 22 | 41 | 63 | |
| Nov | 408 | 132 | 540 | |
| Dec | 12 | 75 | 87 | |
| 2024 | 1,914 | 2,085 | 3,999 |
| Type | Count | |
|---|---|---|
| Mystery | 698 | |
| Wherigo | 645 | |
| Traditional | 387 | |
| Letterbox Hybrid | 81 | |
| Multi-cache | 50 | |
| Event | 27 | |
| Virtual | 13 | |
| EarthCache | 9 | |
| Cache In Trash Out | 2 | |
| Mega-Event | 2 | |
| Total | 1,914 |
| Location | Count | |
|---|---|---|
| Illinois | 1,245 | |
| Wisconsin | 441 | |
| Ohio | 205 | |
| Mexico | 8 | |
| California | 5 | |
| Missouri | 5 | |
| Indiana | 3 | |
| North Dakota | 1 | |
| Nebraska | 1 | |
| Total | 1,914 |
The type and location charts cover 1,914 geocache finds and event attendances. The Nebraska find was a challenge I had signed earlier. Listing locations describe the records in the year, and some finds were logged after the trip.
The Penny Farthings kept calling me back
I logged 1,069 finds in the series across four outings. July brought the largest weekend in my conventional logs, with 372 finds and attendances over July 13–14. The series was 362 of those. Then there was the September day with Team Hotdog, where we found 330 in the series and got to put our name first on a share of the logbooks. The team name stuck even though the debate over whether a hot dog is a sandwich was still going strong.
Two events, two kinds of family trip
Midwest GeoBash 2024 (GCAA9KK) turned twenty, so bapierson, LEGOexplorer, and I went back to Wauseon and the J-Block crew. I like a caching weekend that can accommodate a poker run, birthday cake, and a tin-foil hat. Two weeks later, the three of us took Cache to West Bend Cache Ba$h (GCADMQT). It was a day trip with parks, trails, and enough places to look that we had no reason to rush.
A first in Mexico
The Carnival Firenze trip added my first Mexico finds. I tucked two EarthCaches into a sightseeing day in Puerto Vallarta, climbed in the heat in Mazatlán, and saw the coast from the water in Cabo San Lucas. I came home with eight Mexico finds, a lot of photos, and the same geocaching hat I left with. That last part took a little help from our driver.
When I look back at the year, the four digits come to mind first. Then I remember that every part of the year had a different reason to get out. Some days I wanted to see how many caches we could find. Other days I was happy to take a walk with the dog or fit a little geology into a vacation. I’d take another year with room for all of that.
Field Notes
- 3,999 total finds. 2,085 Adventure Lab locations and 1,914 geocache finds and event attendances.
- 1,883 Found It logs and 31 attendances.
- Busiest month: July, with 982 combined finds.
- Statistics: Geocaching.com and Project-GC.
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