benandjayme

Thanks for the reply, TAK. Your answer makes complete sense to us. That's the answer we were hoping for. Phew! Looking forward to finishing up the challenge soon...hopefully next month!

Hey TAK, Thanks for the update regarding Ione. We've been working on the challenge for a couple years and we're finally(!) closing in on completion with only 5 cities to go. We wanted to make sure we're understanding the Ione change correctly. If we logged the Ione airport cache last month (i.e. prior to publication of the new cache) but we won't be able to finish our remaining five qualifiers before 8/31, do we have to go back to Ione for the new cache? Or is our Ione qualifier "locked in" because it was valid at the time we found it? Thanks in advance for the answer and thanks for the challenge fun, Ben & Jayme

Very glad to see that you guys are doing this, GrnXnhams! Visiting folks will certainly be happy to have the company of some friendly and experienced locals heading up there Don't know yet whether our own plans will allow us to join the hike, but we'll keep it in mind.

Ditto what lam said: thanks for the heads up and wish you could adopt it out. Your cache has been on our to do list for quite a while and we'll make our best effort to pay a visit this summer!

Drat! Missed our chance to vote for the 21st Still sounds like fun and still wishing we could join in. Have fun!

Sounds like a great time! Wish we could join up since we'd really like to see the area and get out to Skagit Delta Labyrinth, but unfortunately we've got a conflict that day. We'll keep an eye out for any potential date changes. Have fun!

There's also a new Groundspeak endorsed GeoTour in Washington created by King County Parks that spans the county-owned parks. It was launched about a week and there are geocoins available for the first 190 cachers to fill out their passports with 20 stamps. Details: http://www.geocaching.com/adventures/geotours/conservationfutures http://www.kingcounty.gov/environment/stewardship/conservation-futures/cft-geotour.aspx

Holy moly, Ed! That's awesome and worthy of huge congrats to both of you. We've got all three CA DeLorme challenges bookmarked, so we happily watched your logs rolling in last week and enjoyed the addition of pictures a few days later. It was monumental enough for us to finish the CA counties up, so I can only imagine how much work - and fun! - must've gone into finishing the CA DeLormes. For now, we can only aspire to such caching greatness Congrats again! What's next?

Congrats on the milestone and on getting PP, which is a milestone whatever your numbers are when you get there Good luck on the rest of your trip!

First and foremost, big thanks to Lizzy for maintaining the challenge for 6 years. We're newer to the state (just over a year), but as lovers of geography-based challenges the WA County Challenge was one of the very first caches to go on our mental "must do" list as soon as we got here. We know that it's a labor of love to keep track of all the stuff and we're quite sure that there are many who appreciate that labor even if they don't pipe up on the forums. We usually don't pipe up ourselves, so it's a testament to our estimation of the challenge that we have Very glad to hear that it looks like there's a likely adopter, since we'd echo the comments of others that it would be great to see this one go on as an adoption rather than having a replacement pop up. Speaking from the perspective of folks that haven't finished the challenge yet - 26 counties down, 13 to go - we'd love to have the chance to join the esteemed ranks of those who have finished before us. We always love scrolling through the logs on the older caches, picking out names of folks we've met, and marveling at how long it's been since some our our friends and acquaintances finished the challenges. We probably won't be able to finish the current incarnation before the imminent change; but even if we had finished already, for us the coolness of the history/continuity on the current cache would far outweigh the remote possibility of an FTF or +1 find count on a theoretical replacement challenge. Just our 2 cents, whatever it's worth.

A few more ideas/input to take or leave as you see fit. I'm no good at using the quoting functions for replies, so I'll just use a couple headings instead Potters Pond Highly recommend staying a night at the campground! We tent-camped at site 6 the night before heading up to PP and really enjoyed it. We were happy to have extra time to find some of the other caches within walking distance of the campground and for some of the cool earthcaches, etc on the route in and out. You probably already know this, but speaking of route in and out it seems like the biggest roadblock that a lot of folks hit is trying to head in via Skyline Drive instead of via the much easier Millers Flat Road. With no snow, you could easily drive any passenger vehicle to the campground via Millers Flat. If you're up for making the cache much more of an adventure (like the most recent finder), Skyline Drive may suit your taste, but otherwise stick to Millers Flat and approach the cache from the campground. Coming from the campground, our round trip PP journey was only about 1-1.5 hours, including plenty of time to read through the logbook and to get a couple more smileys on the way up. All told, our early season find on PP was pretty straightforward, albeit only possible with favorable conditions NV Routing/Stop Ideas Looks likes your proposed route is going right by Great Basin National Park, which is worth at least a quick stop, IMHO. You could spent days hiking around there, of course, but even a half day checking out Lehman Caves and/or the Wheeler Peak scenic drive would be very worthwhile if you have the time. Definitely support your intended stop in Ely for the train. Haven't done it for years, but it's fun! If you're not set on ET Highway and/or don't need XKD-380 (Vitreous instead?), you might consider driving the 50 - aka "The Loneliest Road in America" - west from Ely instead. Much nicer drive, IMHO, with plenty of services in the classic Nevada towns along the way. Both Eureka and Austin have interesting boom/bust town history. Eureka has a pretty decent walking tour set up, including the historic Eureka Opera House. If you do drive the 6 west instead of the 50, you might also consider fueling up in Tonopah and backtracking east a few miles to drive north to Austin on the 376 through the Big Smokey Valley. Not the quickest way north, but that is one of my absolute favorite stretches of NV road! It's a well-maintained, paved road, but you'll probably only pass a handful of cars in 100 miles of quintessential NV range-and-basin terrain. Ophir Canyon and the cache there are worth a stop if you drive the 376. If you appreciate big, open spaces you'll probably love that route, but if you're not a high desert person you might find it barren. For me, that landscape is home. Ironically, both my previous routing suggestions would cut out the cache I suggested in my previous post. As cool as that cache is, if I was choosing I'd choose the other routes Probably spouted too much already, so I'll leave it at that. Sounds like you're going to have an awesome trip no matter which route you take! Ben

Thanks guys! We were very lucky to have the company of hydnsek - who also worked very hard to qualify for Jasmer - for our milestone find.

We don't frequent the forums too often, so we're late to the party on this thread As some "local folks" who recently found Potters Pond, we'd be happy to answer any questions about our experience there if it would be helpful. Have tracklogs for sharing also, if anybody wants them. Since B is a native of Elko, NV, we've also been lucky enough to cache all across NV and could probably offer ideas regarding NV routing if that's desired. Didn't look too closely at the proposed route, but one cache in particular jumps to mind that would absolutely be worth a short detour: De Sump "mini Grand Canyon". One of our all time favorite wouldn't-have-seen-that-without-geocaching finds Let us know if any help/input is wanted!