Dick figured out how to log the 83 Counties of Michigan cache - evidently you get credit for three - the Upper, the Lower, and the whole State. Here's Dick's log:
11/12/2007 You found Linda's Cache all of Michigan
We won't repeat the stories we related in our other posts. We began Geocaching in June of '03 with no goals in mind other than to explore the various facets of the game. Our first find was a micro. On our second outing we discovered a virtual as well as the true ammo can in the woods. We placed our first cache, a multi involving Round Barns in October. When he logged it, ABX Guy informed us about Reverse Caches. In January of 2004 we attended the "Convergence", our first event cache.
Our first Geocaching "goal" was to average one find a day for the first year. In order to do that we farmed the reverse cache pages and logged a few from home or after a short drive. They kept us on the lookout for unusual features. Of course we kept after the local caches as well. We learned to love the challenge of Whitard's Al Quacka and puzzle caches. While pursuing an Al Quacka cache that spring, we met the Dino Duo and formed a friendship that has expanded beyond caching.
In July of '05, we met Dar and Linda of Photo Bug 2. He told us of a cache where you got credit if you found caches in each of Michigan's 83 counties. We saw it as an interesting concept but could not comprehend how one would tabulate finds on a county by county basis.
I guess we just stumbled onto our next goal which was to reach 1000. We were at 998 and decided to do two events in one day, on June 6 2006, just days before our 3rd caching anniversary, we attended "Go Get Outdoors" at Interlochen State Park followed by "Something Twisted This Way Comes" which was put on by Sandrich.
This past spring, we stumbled upon the website "It's not about the numbers" and figured out how to load our finds. The result was a map that showed what we had to do. Our next goal was clear, color our map a solid blue. In the fall, when we saw that the Wolverines had 6 home games in the first 7 weeks, we decided to rent an apartment in Ann Arbor and save the 500 mile round trips. Living down there gave us the time to finish off our Lower Peninsula counties. One final northern run in October and we were finished. The only challenge left was to provide our information to Linda. With some help and coaching we got that job done but I'd rather hike a couple of miles to find a cache.
We have thoroughly enjoyed our first four years of this activity. We have met some great people and enjoyed their stories. We are constantly being impressed at the time and creative effort that some folks put into their cache containers and placements. We have been taken down some exciting roads, some we probably should not have attempted but what the heck. We have accumulated some scratches and dents, even put a few on the cachemobile, but nothing serious. Best of all, we've had fun! Lots of stories, lots of laughs. Our thanks go out to all those who've placed tupperware out there for us to find and to those we've met and shared good times with along the way.
What's next? Well there are 50 states and the District of Columbia. We've got 16 down, only 35 to go.
Here are our Stats from the website "It's Not About The Numbers":
Stats for basswoodbend
Total: 1539 finds on 1537 unique caches (List Multiple Finds)
Total days since first find: 1614 - Overall find Rate: 0.95/day, 6.68/week
Total days with a find: 431 (Every 3.7 days or 26.7% of your total days) - Average finds per caching day: 3.57
Best day: 4/08/06 - 26 finds
Most consecutive days with a find: 10 from 3/03/07 to 3/12/07
Longest caching drought: 44 days from 6/18/07 to 7/31/07
Average total cache difficulty: 1.61 - Average total terrain rating: 1.52
Average physical cache difficulty: 1.68 - Average physical terrain rating: 1.58 (Traditional, Multi, Unknown, Project APE, Letterbox)
Approximate cache-to-cache distance: 41205.91 miles (66314.48 kilometres) (Excludes locationless and known traveling caches)
Active Caches: 1028 of the caches you've found are still active (66.9%)
Average log size: 76.2 words - Biggest log: 511 words - Shortest log: 0 word - Number of one-word logs: 1
More stats:
Milestone Cache Date Found Days Since Previous Milestone
1 Lone Pine Micro (Log) 6/15/03
100 The Queen City (Log) 11/03/03 141
200 Old Historic Log Cabins (Log) 1/25/04 83
300 Clio Veteran's Memorial Park (Log) 5/06/04 101
400 Micro Adventure (Log) 8/17/04 103
500 Old Friends (Log) 1/09/05 145
600 Boughey (Log) 5/07/05 117
700 Nate & Kaye's Cache (Log) 8/23/05 108
800 Life's a beach in Lake City (Log) 12/03/05 102
900 Toll Gate (Log) 4/08/06 125
1000 Something Twisted This Way Comes... (Log) 6/10/06 63
1100 MLT -- Hatton (Log) 10/08/06 120
1200 The House That Barney Built (Log) 3/06/07 149
1300 Hanging around Hayes Twp Park (Log) 6/10/07 95
1400 Podunk Michigan (Log) 9/18/07 100
1500 Stockade (1815-1817) (Log) 10/10/07 22
Based on your overall rate of 0.95 finds per day, you'll find number 1600 around 1/17/08 and the big 2000 around 3/13/09. However, over the past few months, your find rate has actually been 2.23 finds per day. Based on that, you'll find number 1600 around 12/11/07 and your 2000th around 6/07/08.
