2012 Caching Heaven Geocaching Awards!

Hello everyone! Yes it is I! I do still exist! Any rumors of my demise have been greatly exaggerated! Honestly, I must apologize for the lack of posts over the last month. Work and family commitments have dominated the bulk of my time and I have not had any time to devote to writing a post. To make matters worse, January was my second month in which I found no caches. Since I have no Caching Three Stars again, I have decided to highlight some of my most favorite caches of the past year along with a few cachers that Caching Heaven has determined to stand out amongst the local Geocaching community. Without further delay, let’s get started.

____________________________________________

Best Traditional Cache

What a beautiful view! (click to enlarge)

Our best traditional cache of 2012 happens to be the winner of the first star for September, and was featured in our blog article entitled Milestone Marker 1500!. The cache is called View For The Gods (GC1YRJQ) and was placed by Ron 30207. Once you finally navigate the streets of Clarke’s Beach to find the entrance gate leading to the cache site, you will find that you are fairly close to the cache. Not so! Unless you plan on climbing some really dangerous terrain, your trek to ground zero will involve a 2.4km hike up a dirt road and through a windy trail. The long walk is well worth the trip. We were treated to a magnificent view of the Clarke’s Beach and surrounding area. It took us 40 minutes to make the trek in and 30 minutes to make the trek out. This cache provides a spectacular view accompanied by some great hiking. There was evidence of several types of berries along the way and the trek was very quiet. You could hear the birds chirping in all their splendor. If you go, make sure you bring a camera. I received a new camera for Christmas and wish I could make the trek in to get this one again.

____________________________________________

Best Event Cache

A great turnout for the event. (click to enlarge)

The vote for the best event cache of 2012, again, comes from our caching three stars for September. It was the second star and is special to us for the simple fact that it was an event hosted by our friends with a small bit of logistics assistance by us. The event was hosted by Diego and Dora and was a true geocaching event! The event was called Cabin Fever — Caching Meet and Greet — 2012 (GC3V1A6) and was held at Dora’s family cabin. For a detailed description of the event, please see our blog post devoted to the event called Cabin Fever: An Event To End The Summer!. The event struck the right balance of caching, food and fellowship. It started with a few hours of meet and greet, then a BBQ, followed by geocaching. There was even some more fellowship after some cachers finished finding the caches.This well organized event gets our nod as the top event cache of 2012!

____________________________________________

Best Geocacher

By far, the best geocacher of 2012 has to go to magicdog. The guy doesn’t know the meaning of taking a break. In 2012, he found 4774 geocaches and hid 100+ of his own caches. He currently sits at a whopping 7499 caches found since he started in 2010. He is often seen on the trails with his good friend, the Trailwalkers. He is also ready, willing and able to help other cachers in time of need, lending his time to accompany other cachers on finding caches he has already found. He has cached in multiple countries and has taken in many events over the last year. He seems to be an unstoppable force in the geocaching world and is rightly deserving of the award!

____________________________________________

Best Rookie

Our award for the best rookie geocacher goes to a pair of individuals that, most of the time, cache together. They go by the geocaching names Doctor Tee and RubyEmm. According to their profiles, they have currently racked up 347 and 213 caches respectively and attended 5 and 3 events respectively in 2012. Doctor Tee started geocaching in May of 2012 while RubyEmm started exactly one month later. I first started noticing them when, more often than not, they were beating us to some first to finds that were in my immediate neck of the woods. After doing that for a few months, I later realized that I knew these geocachers from outside the geocaching world. Imagine that! They seem to have caught the geocaching bug and I suspect that they will be a force to be reckoned with in the future.

____________________________________________

And there you have it! The 2012 Annual Caching Heaven Geocaching Awards. We hope to make this an annual thing so please keep those hides coming for us to find. You never know, your cache might make it to our top. Also, if you see us out and about, introduce yourself. We might just feature your accomplishments in a future blog or next year’s awards.

Happy caching!

Frank (Jewel)