Cache in each county in the USA?

[+coachstahly]

project gc query

[+Ladybug Kids]

I doubt this has ever been done. Only a few people have done the Texas all counties challenge and it takes like over 3,000 miles of driving or something insane like that to complete.

I believe its more than that.I heard a guy put around 30k on his truck just do the challenge. The state is huge for sure, but the counties are small.

 

I need to add, I dont think the whole USA counties had been done since nobody finished the Alaska challenge.

I'm currently at about 4000 miles driven for 90 of the 254 Texas counties and the mileage would be higher without the benefit of open-jaw flights into one city and out of another.

 

The Alaska Borough and Census Area Challenge hasn't been completed yet because only eleven of the boroughs are on the road system connected to Anchorage and Canada. Additional boroughs are earned by flying to Southeast Alaska and hopping on and off the State Ferry. Finally, one has to rack up a bunch of additional airline miles to reach the boroughs in Western Alaska. I have conservatively estimated it will cost $20,000 in commercial and bush plane airfare alone to complete the challenge. I suppose if someone had a small plane they could complete the challenge for less cost, but incur a lot more risk since a lot of the terrain is nortorious for eating small planes or unwary pilots (there are old pilots and bold pilots, but no old bold pilots).

 

Why make a challenge no one can do ?

or at least it is so insane hard no one ever want to even try,

is there not a rule ? the co must pass the criteria him self ?

at least I vote for such !!

The Alaska Borough and Census Area Challenge was published before the Challenge guidelines were written. It would not be publishable today as written. Edited October 28, 2014 by Ladybug Kids

[+zoothornrollo]

We are currently at 1,138 counties and have completed all 254 counties in Texas (there are 78 cachers who have managed to do this so far, we were #26), Oklahoma, Louisiana (parishes), New Mexico, and Arizona. We travel almost exclusively by car (pick-up with camper shell on the back) and typically travel 8,000 miles over a 6-week period each summer (being a teacher, we have time, but not much money, therefore camping is the way we roll and we love it!) We started keeping track of counties on outline maps as a result of a conscious decision we made when faced with so many caches on our "along a route" PQs so we decided to stop for the next cache each time we crossed a county line. I just love shading in a new county on the outline map of a state as we drive around this country! We enjoy planning our routes to pass through new counties before starting on any road trip. We never tire of looking at the U.S. counties map on our profile page:-)

[+zoothornrollo]

Update on the Texas County Challenge: at least 90 cachers have now finished it and lots more working on it. We are very close to finishing the Mississippi County Challenge and will be heading that way in two weeks to get the last 12 counties done. I just retired and hubby is already retired and we are itching to get on the road and head to New England and maritime provinces of Canada with our county outline maps ready to go!

[+coachstahly]

Congrats to IndyMagicMan for finding a cache in every county in the continental US.

[+hzoi]

Congrats to IndyMagicMan for finding a cache in every county in the continental US.

That's pretty amazing.

 

I have enjoyed going back to his profile from time to time to watch the animated GIF and see the counties fill in bit by bit.

 

One wonders what next? Does Canada have counties?

[+NYPaddleCacher]

Congrats to IndyMagicMan for finding a cache in every county in the continental US.

That's pretty amazing.

 

I have enjoyed going back to his profile from time to time to watch the animated GIF and see the counties fill in bit by bit.

 

One wonders what next?

Create another one of his infamous Shelter caches?

Does Canada have counties?

 

Depends. Using terms like "county" can get very confusing when looking at geographic locations internationality. A good way to look at these how Geonames describes geographic locations. It identify every location as an administrative division. In the U.S. (an independent political entity), the "first order administrative region" is what we call a State. In Canada the first order administrative division is a province, while in Italy they're just called a region. In the U.S. the second order administrative division is a county. In Canada, it seems to depend on the province. Alberta, for example, only has one second order administrative division (called Wood Buffalo), while Ontario has quite a few. Some of them are called Counties awhile others are called "Districts".

 

IndyMagicMan found a cache in every second order administrative division (according to Geonames). There a *lot* fewer second order administrative divisions in Canada (and only 13 first order administrative divisions: aka Provinces)

 

Geonames has a nice feature called a "Geotree" that provides a real good visualization over ever continent and the hierarchy of administrative entities. For example: Here is the geotree for Bruce County, Ontario, Canada http://geotree.geonames.org/5910071/

 

 

[+coachstahly]

Create another one of his infamous Shelter caches?

 

He hasn't been hiding much, if at all, recently. Too busy on the road? Also, our area is pretty saturated with hides. There are spots to place, but not the type of spots he likes to hide. Sadly, there are only two of the shelter hides left as the others have been archived.

[+CanadianRockies]

Does Canada have counties?

Depends. Using terms like "county" can get very confusing when looking at geographic locations internationality. A good way to look at these how Geonames describes geographic locations.

I'm not so sure that GeoNames is a good source, at least in Canada. See below.

 

It identify every location as an administrative division. In the U.S. (an independent political entity), the "first order administrative region" is what we call a State. In Canada the first order administrative division is a province...

GeoNames lists 13 Canadian first-order administrative divisions, which are provinces (10) and territories (3). They aren't synonymous.

 

In the U.S. the second order administrative division is a county. In Canada, it seems to depend on the province. Alberta, for example, only has one second order administrative division (called Wood Buffalo)...

While GeoNames only lists a single Alberta second-order administrative division, pretty much everybody else would agree that there are far more than one. Alberta has ten types of incorporated local governments: cities (17), towns (108), villages (93), summer villages (51), specialized municipalities (5), counties/municipal districts (they're synonymous)(64), improvement districts (8), special areas (3), First Nation reserves (137), and Métis settlements (8).

 

The Regional Municipality of Wood Buffalo is one of Alberta's five "specialized municipalities." As far as I know, its administrative powers and responsibilities are basically no different than those of any other specialized municipality. More generally, I don't know why GeoNames would include just Wood Buffalo as a second-order administrative division and ignore Alberta's other 493 incorporated local jurisdictions.

 

It should be noted that one also could reasonably categorize such jurisdictions as Canada's First Nation reserves more properly as first-order administrative divisions.

Edited September 16, 2016 by CanadianRockies