Travel bug tags

AirTransat Travel Bugs

One night my sister, from Alberta sent me a link about something to do with Geocaching she said. It was a link to a webpage from AirTransat about some geotours including the one in Richmond. They had placed lots of TB tags in one of the caches and gave a hint as to which one, and were asking cachers to move them around.
Oliver and I headed out the next day and found the cache with all of them in it. There was still 35 of these tags still in the cache box. We took one and started it on its journey. Not sure if there are any prizes for doing so, but I thought it would be interesting to see how far it travels to. The webpage for the info can be found by clicking "HERE"

That's a lot of Travel Tags!!!

After we walked the trail at the place we found the tags, we went and did a couple more caches on the Geotour.

Can you see the cache??

Spoiler Pic!!

FTF

Oliver and I were lounging around one morning when all of a sudden a new cache got published less than a kilometre away from home, so we raced out the door and went and made the find. We even got a starbucks gift card for being the First to find!! YAY!!!

Oliver after the FTF

NOTE: The highlighted or underlined words in my blog can be clicked on as they are links to other cool stuff!! Also if you click on any of the pictures they become bigger!!!

PS: On the right hand side of this webpage is where you can find my YouTube, Twitter, Instagram, and Google Plus links. Please feel free to check them out and follow or subscribe!!!

One warm sunny Saturday we went over to North Vancouver to grab a few caches. The first one we got was an Earthcache (I need 9 more to complete a challenge I did in Las Vegas) It was a cool one called Nephrite Jade Earthcache

The next one was a puzzle cache that I solved online a couple days before, but I wont give you the name as I don't spoil it.

Oliver is up the creek without a paddle

 We then headed away from North Van and headed to Burnaby to grab a couple challenge caches that I have completed called "31 for 331Challenge" and "41 for 441 Challenge"
These were challenges for having certain amount of finds in certain Difficulty/Terrain categories.

 We then headed over to New West Quay to have a nice walk down the waterfront. As you can see from the pictures, Oliver likes to have his pic taken on top of rocks.

Geochallenge of the Month

The Geocaching Vlogger has a monthly Geochallenge that he puts out to the caching community, and when you complete it, you email him and then your name goes into a draw and you have the chance to win a cool geocoin. I was lucky enough to win one several months back for one of the monthly geochallanges he put out. For the month of April, the geochallenge was to find a cache either in a Front Yard or inside a building or business.
Oliver and I went out to Maple Ridge one day to do a Multi cache called "CHC150-Memorial Peace Park"

We had to find 3 different locations within the park and gather clues to reveal the Dewey* Decimal number of a book in the nearby Library.

It was a cool cache and we made a video of us doing the stages and finding it in the Library. We have actually been making several movies of our caching adventures which I will be putting online on YouTube as a GeoAdventures YouTube Page.

Note: As you can see, I like doing challenge caches which are defined below:
A challenge cache requires seekers to find an associated physical cache, and to find an additional set of geocaches as defined by the challenge owner. Challenge caches encourage geocachers to set and achieve fun goals. Examples of challenge caches: find a cache every day of the calendar year, or find one for every Difficulty/Terrain combination.

*The Dewey Decimal Classification System is the most widely used method for classifying books in the library. This system is a general knowledge organization tool that is continuously revised to keep pace with knowledge. It is named after Melvil Dewey, an American Librarian who developed it in 1876

Well that's it for this month,

Keep on caching!!

Chris Yuill

Magicman65

VEGAS BABY!!!

February Vegas Trip

On Feb 19th I headed down to Bellingham and grabbed several caches including a Challenge cache, while there before heading to the airport for my flight to Las Vegas.

The following 2 pictures are the caches I was planning to do in Vegas and the caches after I was done. As you can see I did not get all of those I planned to get, but still did pretty good. Even found a couple extra ones I did not plan on including a second to find(STF)

 

Vegas Day 1: Arrived in Las Vegas, but did not do any caching as I got there in the evening and checked into hotel and then headed out to meet up with friends to go see my friend Marc Savard's, hypnosis show.



Vegas Day 2: Rented a car and headed out caching for the day. I headed after 3 challenge caches first, but 1 of them I didn't even search for as it was a lamppost cache(easy find) but if you look at the pic you will see why I decided not to look. lol

They are watching!!!

Got a cache called "Elevator Operator" next. Good thing I had my selfie stick with me to retrieve this cache and place it back. The sign in the pic was about 12 feet tall!! See it in the top??

I then headed out of the city to Red Rock Canyon, to do some cool caches, and the weird thing was there was snow in Vegas!! Check out the pics below. I only found 11 caches this day, but it was also a 7 icon day(7 different types)

Virtual Cache

Vegas Day 3: Today I headed across the border to Arizona to grab one cache over there. I then came back towards Vegas, and grabbed several really cool high favorited caches. I even went down a power trail just to grab one specific cache that had a D/T rating that I needed.

 Can you see the cache?

How about now??

 This doesn't look possible??

 Just a normal sign post!! Or is it??

Vegas Day 4: Found several cool puzzle caches today, that used smartphone technology. Each one was a different method of finding the cache final. They all started off with using a QR code, but then you either had to watch a video or call a phone number and listen to a recorded message to find the cache.

Vegas Day 5: This morning I took the rental car back and headed down the strip for a bit, but still grabbed 4 caches.

Vegas Day 6: Today I would leave Vegas and fly back to Bellingham, but I also grabbed a cache heading back over the border back into Canada.

NOTE: The highlighted or underlined words in my blog can be clicked on as they are links to other cool stuff!! Also if you click on any of the pictures they become bigger!!!

PS: On the right hand side of this webpage is where you can find my YouTube, Twitter, Instagram, and Google Plus links. Please feel free to check them out and follow or subscribe!!!

All in all I found a total of 35 caches out of the 50 that I had planned on, but have only logged 34 as I need to complete a challenge before logging 1 of the challenge caches.(will complete soon) I also got 4 other challenge caches that I could log right away. I also completed another 7 Icon day (7 different Icons) Which included a Traditional, a Multi, a puzzle, an Earthcache, a Letterbox, a Virtual, and a Wherigo cache which was actually about caching for Icons. I got 3 more spots filled in on my Difficulty/Terrain chart, and I got 5 more of the most favorited caches in Vegas as I talked about in last months blog.

Las Vegas was a blast because besides geocaching, I also saw 8 shows while there for the 5 days.
I look forward to the next time I go there which will be in August when I head down for a Magic Convention called Magic Live. I wonder what caches I will find then??

Well that's it for this month,

Keep on caching!!

Chris Yuill

Magicman65

Caching my way into the New Year!!!

Caching the Quay

A great start to the New Year, on Tuesday, January 1st my little boy and I went caching and found 7 caches close to home, the following weekend he woke up, on a Saturday and said "Can we go geocaching Daddy?" (he loves caching with his daddy)
So we went to the New Westminster Quay for a few caches and some breakfast.

Can you see Oliver??

Virtual Cache on the Quay

Salish Sea caching

On January 12th, Oliver and I did a 8km walk and went to 18 caches, but I had already found 8 of them in 2012, but I needed the clues from inside them, to use towards finding the Final cache, we also DNF'd (Did Not Find) 3 caches. They have been DNF'd by the last few people, so I assume they may be missing. (Update: They were missing but have now been replaced)

Can you see Oliver?

 

In Magic News:

On January 17th I was honored to receive the "Leon Mandrake" award for Excellence in Showmanship and Creativity from the Society of American Magicians Assembly #95
you can read the news article here

Port Moody Magician wins "Mandrake" award

Groundhog Day Caching

 Oliver and I went and found this cool Lego cache called "Legggooo to the Woods!!" on Groundhog Day(Feb. 2nd)

It was a very cool field puzzle cache where you had to count specific colored Legos on the cache box to get the numbers for the combination lock. He loved it!!! Well worth the trip and I gave it a Favorite point!!

February Vegas Trip!!

I decided to take a quick trip to Las Vegas in February for a little getaway. I went to see several shows, and also grab several caches. When I travel, I don't just go for every cache in my path, I always seek out ones that have several favorite points or specific caches such as Virtual caches or challenge caches, or caches to fill in my difficulty/Terrain or other charts, or cool looking puzzles. I have already got most of the Virtual caches in Las Vegas from other trips as you can see in the pic below.

So this time I decided to go after some cool challenge caches, where you needed to have found 100 of specific kinds of caches called, Virtuals: Challenge of the Century, Earthcaches: Challenge of the Century, and Mystery/Puzzle: Challenge of the Century. The cool thing is 2 of these challenge caches had a 5/5 difficulty, terrain rating, because of all the 100 caches you would have had to find and the possible difficulty and Terrain ratings they had.

These were the caches I had planned to get while there. Several Traditional's, Puzzles, and Challenge Caches, plus 3 Virtuals, 1 Earthcache, 1 Letterbox cache, 1 Wherigo, 1 Multicache, and 1 DNF'd cache.(from a previous trip) A total of 44 in Vegas and area that I will be trying for, plus several on route to the airport in Bellingham.

The following pics show the 24 most favorited caches in Las Vegas and area:

As you can see, there is only 9 out of 24 I have not found of these highly favorited caches. I am hoping to change that during this trip. Wish me luck!!

Plus I may try to do another 7 icon day while there. (Get 7 different Icons in one day) Have done this a couple of times already. Looking to break past the 7 icon day and go for more at some time.


PS: On the right hand side of this webpage is where you can find my YouTube, Twitter, Instagram, and Google Plus links. Please feel free to check them out and follow or subscribe!!!
NOTE: The highlighted or underlined words in my blog can be clicked on as they are links to other cool stuff!! Also if you click on any of the pictures they become bigger!!!



So, it's Monday morning and here I sit at the airport in Las Vegas waiting for my flight home, putting the finishing touches on my blog before hitting the publish button. Next months blog I will let you know how I made out with the caches I had planned to get here in Sin City!!
Vegas was a blast.....More about my trip in next month's blog.


Well, Back to Reality...........

That's it for this month,

Keep on caching!!

Chris Yuill

Magicman65

Travel Bugs and Souvenirs

Caching souvenirs

So recently Groundspeak (Geocaching Headquarters) has been giving virtual souvenirs' for doing certain things, such as finding caches with more than 10 favorites, etc. This months challenge was to move some Travel Bug's around and you will get points toward the newest souvenir.

From the "Geocaching.com Blog":

Introducing the next challenge in our four month series “You might be a geocacher if…” From December 3 at noon UTC through December 31 at noon UTC, use the Friend League to individually earn points towards the “Trackable Lover” souvenir. Keep reading to learn December’s challenge below!

In December, you might be a Trackable Lover if…
You’re all about getting those digits; you can’t see a tracking code and not log it! You own several trackable t-shirts, bring your whole (very organized) collection to every event you attend, and take the extra moment to look up the trackable’s mission.

As you can see by the pics, I have gotten all 4 of them.

Panama Eh!!

So, speaking of Travel Bug's, there was a TB, I activated in Panama back in Feb, 2011 and then he traveled back to Canada with me. He is a wooden person key chain from Panama.

Panama Eh!!

He traveled around BC for awhile and then he headed to New Brunswick over 4000 km away. In Feb. 2012 he came back to BC, and a few months later headed to California. From California he got brought to Australia over 11,000 km away. WOW!!! While there he moved around a bit, and then a newbie cacher retrieved him from a cache in December of 2012. That cacher hung on to him until just recently in December of 2018 it was placed into another cache. 6 years that cacher held onto it. Wow, I assumed I would never see my TB again.

Another cacher has been moving him around from cache to cache and now he is logged into an event.
Many have discovered him, but unfortunately when a TB get dropped into an event, they sometimes become lost within the system. Lucky someone has retrieved him and hopefully he will start moving around again soon.



NOTE: The highlighted or underlined words in my blog can be clicked on as they are links to other cool stuff!! Also if you click on any of the pictures they become bigger!!!

PS: On the right hand side of this webpage is where you can find my YouTube, Twitter, Instagram, and Google Plus links. Please feel free to check them out and follow or subscribe!!!

The End is Here!!!

The End of 2018 that is, and the start of 2019. So as we say goodbye to another year and Hello to a New one, Groundspeak has rewarded us with 2 more geocaching souvenir's. (See pics below)

My little boy and I went and found 7 caches on New Years Day, as it was a sunny beautiful day. I really enjoyed his enthusiasm, as we found a cache and then he was like, "Let's find another Daddy"

Happy New Year to all!!!

Well, that's it for this month,

Keep on caching!!

Chris Yuill

Magicman65