+Sagefox Posted October 13, 2012 Share Posted October 13, 2012 Last week we finally completed all three California DeLorme Challenges. Having previously completed the Washington and Oregon DCs means we have now cached in every DeLorme page of the US west coast. It appears that we are the first to accomplish this task. Perhaps this post should be in Wienerdog’s Congratulations topic but after so much work for so many years I… well, you know, wanted to say something about this great adventure and maybe it might be of some interest here. California has three Delorme Challenges because DeLorme originally divided the state into Northern and Southern books. In 2008 DeLorme dropped the two book concept and now publishes only the “California Delorme” that covers the entire state. The pages of the new “California” atlas do not align with those of the original two books and this creates some confusing intersections and overlaps. It takes careful planning to prepare routes and then keep track of the finds. Qualifying cache finds that are used for the original underlying books cannot be used for the new book so after years of prowling around the state we had to revisit some areas. My thanks to Jester for providing some GSAK assistance to help with the difficult process of filtering the California finds in order to run the GSAK macros that California cacher Hynr created to help folks keep track of their DeLorme finds. Washington State is unique in that Mou10bike keeps track of our page progress for us and provides those excellent lists and maps on the WDC page. WDC cachers are very nicely spoiled! This has been an amazing adventure. We’ve been caching in all three states since 2001 but we hadn’t committed to any of the DC challenges until 2008. I didn’t know it would take five more years but, then again, in 2007 I thought our chances of completing any one of the books were slim. I found it interesting to note that participation in the DC challenges appears to be greater the farther north the book is located: Washington 109 found Oregon 56 California Northern 35 California Southern 11 Golden State (the BIG book!) 11 Some reasons for this certainly could be that Oregon’s population is less than Washington and that the California books all include six-months of hot summer and low elevation valleys and deserts. It was 108 degrees in three different geographic areas of the state we traveled in last week (in October!) and during our May trip it was 95 most days. The Golden State challenge is roughly the equivalent of any two of the other DC books. All of the DC cache owners are very enthusiastic about their challenges as are the people participating. We got to meet with four of the five DC owners for some very enjoyable story telling. We missed Moose Mob – rats! Completing a DeLorme Challenge cache is a remarkable adventure. DeLorme challenges are very rewarding in that we get to see every part of a state. The west coast has some amazing geology and to be out on the ground in it and finding geocaches is a great joy. Northern California Southern California Golden State Oregon Washington Quote Link to comment
+hydnsek Posted October 13, 2012 Share Posted October 13, 2012 Wow, that's amazing! Congrats, Ed and Suzanne, on a huge accomplishment! Quote Link to comment
+Sagefox Posted October 13, 2012 Author Share Posted October 13, 2012 Wow, that's amazing! Congrats, Ed and Suzanne, on a huge accomplishment! Thanks Abby and thanks, too, for connecting me with Craig for that GSAK help. Quote Link to comment
jholly Posted October 13, 2012 Share Posted October 13, 2012 Congratulations Ed! Quite an accomplishment. You realize I'm green with envy on the California ones. Well, I'll make sure I check the logs when I do some more. It is always nice to see Team Sagefox in the log. Quote Link to comment
+Sagefox Posted October 13, 2012 Author Share Posted October 13, 2012 Congratulations Ed! Quite an accomplishment. You realize I'm green with envy on the California ones. Well, I'll make sure I check the logs when I do some more. It is always nice to see Team Sagefox in the log. Hey Jim, we saw your sigs in many California caches during our travels! We knew you were having some out-of-state adventures. Quote Link to comment
+benandjayme Posted October 14, 2012 Share Posted October 14, 2012 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? Quote Link to comment
+Sagefox Posted October 14, 2012 Author Share Posted October 14, 2012 Congrats again! What's next? A rest!!! We will have NO new challenge plans for quite some time to come. We made seven California trips during the past three years. Prior to that we had about 1/3 of the big book, 1/4 of the Southern book and 3/4 of the Northern book completed. We visit California two to three times a year anyway so the geocaching was easy enough to slip in. Only one trip was dedicated to geocaching only and that was via a flight to Southern California and a five night stay. Quote Link to comment
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