How many geocache finds per outing?

[Moun10eer]

Given how physically close some geocaches are, how many do you find in an outing?

 

In another thread SenselessThing mentioned there are 24 geocaches in a 5 mile area. If you were in an area like this would you try to find all 24 in a single outing?

[+sbell111]

It depends. Some days I will only find one (or less). Other days I'll find several. Some people have found hundreds in a day.

 

I realize that 24 in a five mile area sounds like alot, but an area with a five mile radius could be a honking lot of room to explore in a day.

[+ThePropers]

It also depends. In that thread, he said within 5 miles, which actually covers a 5 mile RADIUS, so it's actually a lot of area.

 

Using my calculus skills (finally it pays off!) that's a good 78.5 square miles. That's a lot of area to cover in a day. It's not like they'd all be on the same 10 mile trail....

 

I've found as few as zero, and as many as 30+...depending on what kindof caching I'm in the mood for.

Edited January 3, 2007 by ThePropers

[+briansnat]

I'd say most of the time I'll find anywhere from 1-3 caches in an outing. I've had a few outings with more, but they are not the norm.

Edited January 3, 2007 by briansnat

[+ThePropers]

I have this annoying thing with clearing out areas of my map. My PQ is set up for a 30 mile radius, so I'll open it in Google Earth, find an area, and just plan out how to hit up everything there. I usually will plan out about 40 or so, and then just do them until I run out of time. So I guess in theory I might attempt to do all of those in one day.

 

Anyways I'll end up in my chosen area and do everything, regardless of whether it's a 5 mile hike, a 20 part multi, a puzzle that requires tons of online solving, or a a lame parking lot micro.

 

For example, the other day I decided to go down the east side of the river with another cacher. We did everything, and ended up with 32 caches for the day, but it was a wide variety of cache types, terrains, and difficulties.

 

Sometimes I make it to one cache, sometimes I'll make it to 30. All depends on what kindof caches are there.

 

Of course, my obsession with clearing out my map leads me to drive 20 miles to get one lame micro that pops up in an already-cleared area. Yeah, I'm stupid like that. What's it to ya?

Edited January 3, 2007 by ThePropers

[+mrring]

Hey - another cacher just like us. We'll work an area till we have it done and then if a new cache shows up we run back and get it. Sometimes we'll drive 75 miles to get into an area that has 15 or more caches, and cache along the way of course. Our neighbors (fellow cachers just moved in from Oregon) think we need a 12-step program. They even challenged us to see who could reach 200 first. Naturally after we spent the weekend in Cedar Rapids with my sister, coming home with 42, we won!! (The prize was supper in the restaurant of our choice.)

 

We've taken up to 25 caches in one day, midnight to midnight. We've in it for the fun so we'll go wherever to continue the adventure.

 

Stay happy and keep caching.

[+Renegade Knight]

1-20. Usually around 6 is my guess.

[+fox-and-the-hound]

Like most others it really depends on cache terrain and type. If we can finish a multi and a traditional or two in an afternoon that would be great as long as we get a few miles of hiking in. Many caches in our area involve a lot of vertical movement so it's all relative. Our low: no caches + a cold + wet feet Our high: a half dozen maybe + good weather + good pictures!

[vagabond]

We did a cache run last Sunday with a group of cachers and it was called assault on twopoms in orange county Ca. We started about 8 am I left about 1:30pm with 51 caches others cached I guess until dark and ended up with around 100. and we found no lamppost, guardrail, although most were hidden in bushes in 4x4 containers.

The main thing is I think we all had a ball.

Other days I may go out and just find 1 or 2 caches, it just all depends.

[+9Key]

I generally pick an area with some good quality caches regardless of the cache density. Recommendations and favorites lists help me locate a likely spot to start.

The most I ever found was 34, my age at the time. Haven't been close to that number since though.

[+FamilyDNA]

The most we ever found in a day was about 50. We cached our way to a breakfast event, spent a couple of hours there, and then hit a pretty dense area we'd never cached in before.

 

Yesterday, I hit the three closest unfound to my house, which felt pretty satisfying.

 

Some days we'll plan a route, start early, and stop way after dark.

Some days we'll hit a random one or two on the way somewhere.

Some days none at all...

[+Natureboy56]

I prefer caches in a series. If there are 24 caches in one series, I might do them all in one outing but the most I have done that are not in a series is only 15

[+StarBrand]

Usually no more than 1 - 3 in a day but my record is 15. Sometimes we take Geocaching "vacations" and then we average 10 or so a day. We try to look for good quality and take time to enjoy the area.

[+Stunod]

According to ItsNotAboutTheNumbers.com my average finds per caching day is 5.92

[+wimseyguy]

Between 1or 2 and 112. No really.

Some days I'll take a detour on the way home from work and just grab 1-2. Some days (OK long weekends) I take a road trip with my geopals Team CHB, and we'll plot out a route through very very dense areas and run for 14-16 hours and find over 100. It just depends.

But an average day is probably somewhere around 25-40. I'm not much for the six mile hikes. I'd rather do a bunch of .5- 1 mile walks. Besides, there aren't a lot of places around here where you can go for that long unless you opt for very inconvenient parking to make the hike longer.

[+Gator Man]

Most in a day for me is, I think, 63, found from 7:00 AM to 8:30 PM. I was out with one of the very top cachers, and it was a BAD day for him. He wanted 100+ caches for the day. LEAST for a day is ZERO (lots of days with no caching). Average caches per day since day one, (5 years ago) is 0.9 caches per day.

 

GM

[+GRANPA ALEX]

My experience has been from 2 to 96 in a day . . . some days are 24 hours of non-stop caching or as little as 5-6 hours.

 

One day I found five caches in 6 hours on what became a 14 mile mountain hiking trail in VA and was happily exhausted . . . another day there was the mindless micro hunt that raised scores of caches over 24 hours.

 

What I am saying is the it is not simply the numbers per day but the type of hunt(s) in which you are engaged coupled with the density & terrain that more acurately measure production. No matter, it is all good and fun, whatever the numbers!

[+johnboy11171]

The most I have found in one day has been 3.I hope to change that this weekend.

Have a nice Day.

johnboy11171

[Neos2]

We were with a group and found 12 "ammo cans in the woods" over a tough four mile hike once; with some other people another day we found 27 variety-type caches in a town we hadn't been to before (some micros, some ammo cans in woods).

 

We took another couple around to get 40 caches in one day--we had already found most of them before. And no, we didn't 'help' them find the caches, they were just that good at spotting caches. I suppose that our knowing exactly how to get to the caches cut down on the time, though.

 

When we go out by ourselves, I usually plan 40 caches--and almost invariably--we end up finding 12 caches before we call it a day. Of course, we like best to do a mix of caches. I almost always pick one or two that involve a nice stroll, several in a cluster near each other, and then a few caches on our way to and from those other spots. I guess it's just my version of "a little bit of everything, cheaper by the dozen" caching!

[+Blaidd-Drwg]

Back when I started caching, a day with 7 finds was a biggee. Now a full winter day will see 35 or more caches found. Most days, I'll do around 15 caches by noon and call it quits for the day. My big number days are normally when I'm out with a caching partner.

[+Kealia]

Between 1or 2 and 112. No really.

Some days I'll take a detour on the way home from work and just grab 1-2. Some days (OK long weekends) I take a road trip with my geopals Team CHB, and we'll plot out a route through very very dense areas and run for 14-16 hours and find over 100. It just depends.

But an average day is probably somewhere around 25-40. I'm not much for the six mile hikes. I'd rather do a bunch of .5- 1 mile walks. Besides, there aren't a lot of places around here where you can go for that long unless you opt for very inconvenient parking to make the hike longer.

 

I'm just the opposite. I usually go for 2-6 miles hikes for a cache or two and then on accasion go and grab 20 or so on one LONG trail (10+ miles).

[+viking66]

The cat who go me hooked on this is a bit of a number 'ho. We cache together often, and we usually are not satisfied with less then eight to ten in an outing. The peak I think was fifteen in a day. When Im on my own or with my son, Im happy with one. Id guess that I avg. about 1.3 or so per day since Nov. '05.

[+Bad_CRC]

if it's a full day's trip, we'll get 3-6 probably.

 

I'm not into awful or boring parking lot / micro type caches. I like caches that require a lot of effort, or are in beautiful scenic areas. Spending an hour or two on a single cache is great in my book.

 

http://www.geocaching.com/seek/log.aspx?LU...9e-231aaec1ce12

 

to each their own, but I think those who are number hounds are really missing out on the best parts of caching.

[+The Leprechauns]

I can go on a numbers run with a friend one weekend, find 50 caches and have a blast. The following weekend I may do a solo five-mile hike to grab two caches and have a blast. I am open-minded. If I am having fun, I will do it, and if it stops being fun, I will stop.

 

I thought this was a thread about average finds per outing, not what kind of caching was better, or what types of caches were awful?

 

Anyhow, thanks to The Cheeseheads' marvelous "It's Not About the Numbers" site, I know that my average finds per day of caching stands at 6.41. But if you cut out my highest day, 240 caches, the average drops to 5.7. What a difference a day makes!

[+Moore9KSUcats]

We had a lot of fun this summer (August) driving back from Baltimore, MD. We drove through 5 states in one day, and cached in 4 of them, picking up 10 caches. This wasn't really planned ahead of time, just spur of the moment. Our day started in West Virginia, where we picked up 2 more caches (we had gotten one the previous day in WV), drove into Kentucky, finding three caches in that state, and as we neared the northern border of Kentucky, we realized we were just a mile from Ohio, where there were 4 caches convienently located near the border, got those, dashed back into Kentucky, drove into Indiana, where we picked up one, and then turned south into Tennessee.

 

We had picked up a cache in Tennessee 3 years ago, so we just found a motel for the night. The next day we drove for home, going through Arkansas which we had already found a cache in, so we didn't try for more. (When we travel, which really isn't very often, we make a goal of hitting at least one cache in each state, if we haven't gotten a cache in there yet.)

 

The caching day was fun, though... broke up the monotony of a long drive! We didn't have good computer access on that trip, but did find a couple of wireless spots we could look for caches. Not having planned all of that caching prior using the caches along a route made it a bit more difficult. We sure did appreciate the rest area caches, though... many of those rest areas were very nice places, with trees and a spot to stretch our legs and go hunting.

[dsandbro]

My most is 10 in one day, but I seldom go out just for geocaching. I go hiking, biking, etc and search for caches along the way. Since the purpose of my outing that day was a hiking to a backcountry lake and my driving and hiking just happened to pass by the caches, 10 is a pretty good day's work.

[+rhelt100]

My attitude is similar to the Leprechauns. I have two distinct types of caching trips.

 

 

One is to get as many as possible in the time alloted. This requires some advance planning and usually consists of a lot of CnD micros clustered a ways away from home base. This is much more fun with a partner, but enjoyable alone too. I have made several caching trips with my wife to the local caching mecca, Erie, PA, one in particular we found 41 caches in about a 10 hour day. I also just made a trip a different direction last week with a local area cacher that netted 43 finds. Interestingly enough, this 43 find day was mostly regular/small containers. It was a trip to a large park in Ohio which is basically a stream with a gorge on both sides. Several of the finds were 3+ terrain and worth every bit of it.

 

 

My other type of caching trip is generally a much shorter drive and I'm lucky if I can pull out more than 5 caches. These are the ones where I pick caches that are on my closest 20 list and try to get them off of there. The way it usually works is that as a result of the CnD trips, I get clusters of harder caches that were skipped for the sake of speed. These are very enjoyable, you just have to go into the day knowing that there isn't going to be an abundant amount of finds when you're done. These tend to garner the best stories...and length caching logs.

 

 

I've yet to meet a cache I hated. I'll admit I've done a few that I didn't much like (the micro on the restaurant dumpster was a good example. Luckily I found it quickly.), but I happily logged each and every one and will continue to do so.

[Deego]

Mine is 3.511627906 per trip (604finds /172days) and my most is around the 16 mark.

[+Lovey Pigs]

Normally 2-3, we will pick an area and make an afternoon or morning of it. No all-day treks for us to this point.

[+wesleykey]

I have had days with only one find, and then there was one day last spring I got 52 caches in one day. Probably my average is about 5 on a caching trip.

[+yoda_2_yaddle]

We've only been seriously caching since July 06 and I have 3 young kids. We reached 6 finds in a day on 3 separate occasions. Last week we tried for a dozen but lost daylight (and the kids attention) but we did find 10. For some reason we spend a lot of time around the park caches.

 

I'm worn out putting in 6 to 10 finds plus TBs. I can't imagine 50 to a 100!

Edited January 6, 2007 by yoda_2_yaddle

[+Team Henzlik]

Just moved to a new area so 10-15 per hunt is the norm. Ask me in 6 months, and I will probably tell you 4-6.

[+Woodlit]

My average per outing is probably 2 or 3. But there were plenty of times I only planned 1. I think my all time best day was 11 finds. That was only because I was at an event with about 20 plus people, and all the caches were in one area, probably on two different trails. That wasn't even very fun, I was at the back of the group, so by the time I reached the cache, it was found already.

When people go out and find 100 in a day, just how long does it take to log all of those online?

[+mgbmusic]

Given how physically close some geocaches are, how many do you find in an outing?

 

In another thread SenselessThing mentioned there are 24 geocaches in a 5 mile area. If you were in an area like this would you try to find all 24 in a single outing?

 

I ussually get 1-3. That prolly accounts for my 34 finds...I don't like to "Burn out" an area on one trip. There's also the getting lost factor. The first Time i go to an area, I'll scout it out a little and grab the ones closest to the parking lot. The next time, I'll venture a bit further out. There's a forest preserve within 1 mile of my house that has, I think, 10 or so caches. It took 4 visits for me to get them all with a couple of DNF's along the way. Most of the time, I'm grabbing a quick cache while I'm already out, so it'll ususally be just that one so I can get home and make up a plausible story as to where i've been....

 

Uh yeah, I was at uh....Home Depot...yeah that's it....looking at the uh...geraniums....yeah that's the ticket....geraniums and uh....fertilizer! Yeah fertilizer for the garden we don't have...

 

--MGb