Are distant, isolated caches worth the drive?

[+niraD]

Can I ask what this "Delorme" task that i see people mention and is there a place I can go to look for things like that?

Here you go:

http://cacheopedia.com/wiki/DeLorme_Challenge

[+hzoi]

I was just out of town for work. On one day of the trip, I caught a 750 mile flight (3+ hours on a small prop plane) to an island with three caches on it, one of which had not yet been found and which was a 4-mile hike from the airstrip. Getting that one was my main goal for the day, though I did have just enough time to grab a second while I was there, just before my flight left.

 

Then again, the island in question was Iwo Jima, so it was a destination in and of itself, the caches were just a bonus. You may want to seed a few more if you want to get folks coming your way.

[+popokiiti]

For our 5th Anniversary of Geocaching today, we drove to Port Renfrew...a 60 km round trip. Heavy rain and winds, and a cache that didn't make sense made us head to the only restaurant open in the tiny town at this time of year. Used their WiFi and found that the cache was actually an ex-multi and now only the final remains. The start point is near another cache on rough logging roads....and the vehicle we were in doesn't have much clearance. After lunch we came back and got a cache we DNFd on on Christmas Day.

We have driven a 3 hour round trip for a cache...on more than one occasion. Turns out it was never there.

Was it worth the drive? Yes - waterfalls in full flow, a cool light over the ocean, a great lunch.

Edited January 4, 2012 by popokiiti

[+Team Dromomania]

I made a 435 mile round trip drive then hiked 10 hrs in the wilderness bushwhacking most of the way to grab a DNF. Still, I had a blast.

My Log

[+sholomar]

I like them. What I find might be somewhat annoying is... well just look at Watertown, South Dakota and see for yourself. I don't know if it's a good or bad thing to have so many placed randomly...

 

http://coord.info/map?ll=44.890775,-97.096705&z=11

 

Of course if I ever plan to take a walk or bike ride around lake kampeska, which I have done already (biked around the lake) I can see myself enjoying getting every single cache going around the lake. I don't think I'll get any of those random ones on random roads north of town though.

Edited January 8, 2012 by sholomar

[+Viajero Perdido]

I will go to the ends of the earth for a well-aged FTF; it's my particular goal in this game. So far that's taken me to Central- and South America, though I won't rule out places even farther afield for future attempts. Yes, I actually build international trips around a single cache. The ones I seek are quite rare.

 

See my profile for some of my past attempts. (There's a high failure rate.)

[+W4G_SOTAGoat]

Flew from Anchorage to Barrow Alaska to get the Northern most cache on the continent.

 

Did you get to meet any of the Tweto family when you flew up there?

[+KBfamily]

I volunteer to rescue TB's listed on the TB rescue website. We drove 150 miles round trip just yesterday to rescue a TB that was stuck in a cache for over 140 days. I LOVE memorable caching days....it is about the adventure for me....

[+BlueDeuce]

Are distant, isolated caches worth the drive?

 

If the cache is distant and isolated from the general geocaching public will it probably be worth the bragging rights to find. If it is distant and isolated I don't see why it shouldn't be there.

[+releasethedogs]

I flew to Japan from Korea where I live and then took a bus for a few hours for a webcam cache. I needed it for a milestone.

[+Rich the Bushwhacker]

I took about a 350 mile round trip ride to find this one. It was a nice day, and my motorcycle needed a good run.

 

Lots of Zero's

 

It was the nearest Degree Confluence to the House with a cache. I ended up wandering in the woods for about a half hour before I gave up trying to get my GPS to show all Zero's on the longitude and latitude.

[+metal-bijou]

I drove 2,000 miles with three others just to get a TB let alone a cache. It was the O.C.B. and it was a Mega abroad. But still it was a mad driving weekend.

[+hzoi]

I like them. What I find might be somewhat annoying is... well just look at Watertown, South Dakota and see for yourself. I don't know if it's a good or bad thing to have so many placed randomly...

 

http://coord.info/map?ll=44.890775,-97.096705&z=11

 

Of course if I ever plan to take a walk or bike ride around lake kampeska, which I have done already (biked around the lake) I can see myself enjoying getting every single cache going around the lake. I don't think I'll get any of those random ones on random roads north of town though.

 

Give it time. You've found three caches so far, obviously you have your choice of which ones to get next. But every time you grab one, that's one less in your local area you can grab. And someday, you'll get the itch to go caching, and it'll mean either going for those random back road caches, or driving an hour in the other direction to Sioux Falls.

[+dfx]

I will go to the ends of the earth for a well-aged FTF; it's my particular goal in this game.

 

http://coord.info/GCDFB is waiting for ya

[+SwineFlew]

I will go to the ends of the earth for a well-aged FTF; it's my particular goal in this game.

 

http://coord.info/GCDFB is waiting for ya

Here another one...its newer but really out of the way for sure. http://coord.info/GC2424F

[+SwineFlew]

This is one cache I will go WAY out of the way to find. http://coord.info/GC2101 Its a virtual at the ID,NV and OR line. Its really out of the way to get to and the road is very rocky. Its offroad driving for sure. Only 18 finds since 2001.

Edited January 9, 2012 by SwineFlew

[WashoeZephyr]

We drove about 200 miles out of our way a few years back to go to the "Original Stash" plaque. Probably the furthest to specifically grab a cache. I'd like to finish the NV Delorme this year That will be at least a thousand miles of driving.

[+Viajero Perdido]

Thanks for the tips on 4.5lb Walleye and Temperance Creek Cabin Cache.

 

The Walleye is on my radar, but I'm not likely to attempt it because it's just too remote for a safe solo trip. (I rarely expect I can convince people to join me on these crazy windmill hunts.) Besides, I'm half afraid your Ontario reviewer will yank the cache for inactivity just before I get there, doing it via Retract (I've seen it happen elsewhere) so I can't even log it.

 

The Cabin is intriguing, but it needs to age. It's only a 2010, still young in the bottle. I'll check back in a couple of years.

 

But to keep it on topic, yeah, caches like these are worth a bit of a detour.

[+NYPaddleCacher]

Thanks for the tips on 4.5lb Walleye and Temperance Creek Cabin Cache.

 

The Walleye is on my radar, but I'm not likely to attempt it because it's just too remote for a safe solo trip. (I rarely expect I can convince people to join me on these crazy windmill hunts.)

 

Perhaps that's what online forums are for. I haven't investigated the logistics of trying to find 4.5lb Walleye but perhaps if you spelled out a possible plan of attack you might find someone else that is interested in sharing the adventure. It sounds like "Connie&Keith" are pretty determine to find it and have done some of the legwork.

[+SoonerL8R]

I would have to say that as I spend more time acquainting myself with caching, I would drive to a distant cache possibly hundreds of miles away but it needs to have something going for it. I've seen some with over 50 favorite points, or read about some incredible puzzle cache that only a select few have been able to figure out, or maybe if it's just located in a place that I know without a doubt that whether i log it a find or a DNF, the scenery and experience is gonna be awesome!

Edited February 7, 2012 by SoonerL8R

[+CanadianRockies]

Flew from Anchorage to Barrow Alaska to get the Northern most cache on the continent.

You found the northernmost U.S. cache (at the time). To find the northernmost North American (and world) cache, however, you'd have had to have flown to Canada's Ellesmere Island. As North As It Gets! has been around since May, 2002. In 2011, a couple nearby caches were placed even farther north.

[+uxorious]

Not if Iran block the Strait of Hormuz and gas shoots to $6/gal. That might put an end to driving out of the way ANY distance to get a cache for most people.

 

Six dollars a gallon gas might change how often I use the motorhome, over how often I take the CRV, but it wouldn't change how often, or how far I would drive to cache.

 

My favorite finds are out on the Forest Service Roads. I have driven 60 or more miles to find a new cache in the mountains.

[+Andromeda321]

1) When in Mendoza, Argentina I went on a 5-6 hour drive one way to nab a virtual. To be fair, the virtual was Mt Aconcagua, the tallest mountain in the Americas, so it wasn't so much the destination as the glory of the ride Left an Earthcache on the way though so it's not as long a drive for just one cache now tho.

 

2) In Zanzibar I ended up picking the beach I went to because there was a cache there and no real other options. It was a 2.5 hour drive on a dalla dalla, ie local transport crammed with maybe 25 locals in an old Chinese bus with proper seats for maybe 15, but hey it was like US$5 and a really nice beach at the end...