Challenges

In the past, I've written about the 58 California County Challenge.  This past weekend, Chaosmanor and I worked on two other challenge caches that we'd like to accomplish sometime in the near future.  The first is called Alphabet Soup.  It's a relatively easy challenge.  Find a cache beginning with each letter of the alphabet.  When Chaosmanor showed it to me, I figured, hey, not a problem.  And it really wasn't.  I read a little more closely and found out the caches had to be found after the date of publication for Alphabet Soup, July 30, 2008.

So I went back and checked and discovered I only needed an X cache.  Not bad I thought.  Chaosmanor came out the next weekend and we found a local cache near me beginning with the letter X and figured we were done with it.  The cache is up on the central coast of California between my house and where my son will be attending school.  A trip down Hwy 1 and I could get the cache.  When I was logging that last X cache, I discovered one flaw in my theory that I was done.  All the caches for the alphabet had to be placed before publication date.  This latest X cache had been placed in 2009 so it didn't count.  Fast forward to this weekend, and we found a cache down in Orange County beginning with the letter X.  Now, I'm ready to get Alphabet Soup.

The other challenge is a little more daunting.  Find a cache in each USGS quadrangle in Los Angeles County.  When we first decided to go for this one, I had almost half.  I got three more quads off of my map this weekend, El Monte, San Pedro and Long Beach.  All three of which I've already found caches in, but they didn't count because once again, they had been found before publication date for that particular challenge.  All of the rest of the quadrangles that I need are to the north of me in the mountains and deserts of Los Angeles County, much of which is on fire right now, so we'll see.  I had plans on making this one my 3000th find.  We'll see if that pans out or not.

The 58 county challenge cache I didn't work on this past weekend, but did work on while on our trip this summer.  Since I needed virtually all of the Northern California Counties, any finds up there would be gold for this challenge.  Ten counties later, I'm just 16 counties short of making the requirements for that challenge.  Next summer, the planned trip is up the eastern side of California to Lassen National Park and then south through the central valley to get the rest of the missing counties.  There is a GPS maze exhibit planned in Redding, CA for next summer, so that's also high on our priority list to see as well.  These next few months should be enjoyable from a caching standpoint.