Objectives
The 2014 Caching Diary – back on the caching trail for another year. This year I was armed with a new Garmin Montana, which it took a while to figure out. The only question really was what kind of targets to set.
Well, I ended 2013 on 3624 total finds and I did 1500 caches. So the obvious target would be to attempt to get to 5000. Oh ! And to fill in those two remaining slots on the matrix. And some other stuff. Well, as I originally wrote this on the 5th of January I probably hadn’t really decided. I maybe never did.
As the year started I had just two days to fill in on the “Days Found”. One was March 26th, which I failed in 2013 through not allowing enough time and not having enough options. The other was June 17th, which I simply forgot about in the middle of a 4-day streak. Both days for 2014 were already booked as holiday as the year started. This was a “must-do” challenge for the year. If I hadn’t finished the matrix on June 17th I’d have been upset. Or surprised.
Highlights
Two undoubted highlights were holidays I took.
In early August we had a family holiday in The Netherlands. That might seem a bit weird, but it was lovely. We stayed at a Center Parcs in the Delta Works and I showed the ladies of the house around some of the places I used to haunt when I lived there away back in the late 1980s.
Then practically as soon as we got back from The Netherlands I jumped on a bus and spent a long weekend going to the first ever Giga event, which was being held in Munich.
Monthly Statistics
So here’s a summary of days I went caching, and places I went.
- January – 83 finds
- February – 171 finds
- March – 118 finds
- April – 162 finds
- May – 158 finds
- June – 172 finds
- July – 122 finds
- August – 173 finds
- September – 133 finds
- October – 147 finds
- November – 169 finds
- December – 112 finds
Summary
So there we have it, my 2014 Caching Diary. So what did I actually achieve:
- A total of 1,720 finds, made on 97 different days – my best total so far
- The last two days ticked off the “days found” list
- Sixteen days ticked off my Shifty Fifty Challenge
- No days with over 100 finds, but 14 days with more than 50 finds
- Six new countries – Belgium, Netherlands, Luxembourg, Austria, Liechtenstein and Switzerland.
That was an excellent year of geocaching. I completed the “Days Found” matrix, added shed-loads of new counties and countries, and pushed the total numbers up a bit. I also found my first ever Adventure Lab caches and attended the first ever Giga event, so two new icons to the tally.
