County Challenges

[+zoothornrollo]

We completed the Texas County Challenge (254 counties) back in 2010. When we started out on our summer 2011 roadtrip with PQs just loaded with caches, we realized that we didn't have a plan for picking and choosing the ones we wanted to stop for so we just arbitrarily decided to do the next cache after crossing each county line. Since then, we have planned our roadtrips to pass through new counties and now have cached in 1083 out of 3142 U.S. counties and have completed the Oklahoma and Louisiana County Challenges. I would love to see posts about the experiences of others who keep track of their counties.

[Mr.Yuck]

We completed the Texas County Challenge (254 counties) back in 2010. When we started out on our summer 2011 roadtrip with PQs just loaded with caches, we realized that we didn't have a plan for picking and choosing the ones we wanted to stop for so we just arbitrarily decided to do the next cache after crossing each county line. Since then, we have planned our roadtrips to pass through new counties and now have cached in 1083 out of 3142 U.S. counties and have completed the Oklahoma and Louisiana County Challenges. I would love to see posts about the experiences of others who keep track of their counties.

 

Here you go. I have 66.7% of the Counties in Delaware, and had I noticed at the time, while driving the length of the State, I would have gone for the other one. And there really is a Delaware Counties Challenge, I'll bet you could knock it out, including the final, in about 2 hours.

 

But seriously, this could be an interesting thread. I have no desire to complete the Counties Challenge in any other State. I have 2 of 4 in Rhode Island, and 6 of 15 in New Jersey. Those are my next two best chances.

[+BBWolf+3Pigs]

Five counties in Rhode Island (and there is a county challenge). I plotted a 45 minute route through all five, and if you are selective, you can do it in 1-1/2 to 2 hours, easy.

[Mr.Yuck]

Five counties in Rhode Island (and there is a county challenge). I plotted a 45 minute route through all five, and if you are selective, you can do it in 1-1/2 to 2 hours, easy.

 

Sorry then, I only have 2 of 5. I'll have to look at the map again. Darn you, Project-GC.

 

A pretty small pool of people out there who go for County Challenges, but I think a few should check in.

[+Roman!]

Being stuck in he far corner of Canada picking up counties is not easy and it doesn't help that the counties out west are about 100 times the size of counties out east.

 

When I travel I will try to find a cache in every county I pass through and currently have 164 counties. My closest to complete are 1/4 for Hawaii and 10/15 for Arizona.

 

If I had the cash I'd hop in the car and visit every county in the lower 48 on one big long road trip.

Edited June 15, 2014 by Roman!

[+wimseyguy]

I know of two cachers who are on a mission to get to all the counties in the US-webscouter and hunster. Neither posts here much. I've only got 360something, and would like to get to 500 someday soon just to log that challenge cache.

 

I've only got 2/3 in DE also, but probably have all 5 RI counties as I did the RI Delorme Challenge in one day. And I finally completed all 100 NC counties last fall, but haven't logged the NC County Challenge yet even though it's only an hour away from home.

[+Asgoroth]

It took me just shy of 11 years to find caches in all 159 Georgia counties. Was a real solid feeling of accomplishment when I signed the Challenge log.

[Mr.Yuck]

Five counties in Rhode Island (and there is a county challenge). I plotted a 45 minute route through all five, and if you are selective, you can do it in 1-1/2 to 2 hours, easy.

 

By the way, it still only looks like 4 Counties on the project GC Map. Is that little finger of land where Bristol is it's own County? I could look this all up of course, but why not keep the thead going.

[Mr.Yuck]

I know of two cachers who are on a mission to get to all the counties in the US-webscouter and hunster. Neither posts here much. I've only got 360something, and would like to get to 500 someday soon just to log that challenge cache.

 

I've only got 2/3 in DE also, but probably have all 5 RI counties as I did the RI Delorme Challenge in one day. And I finally completed all 100 NC counties last fall, but haven't logged the NC County Challenge yet even though it's only an hour away from home.

 

I would actually like to hear from someone (most likely not from Delaware) who went there just to get the 3 Counties and the Challenge final, and how long it took. There has to be people who have done that. There's only one rule; stay out of the State, and don't try it on NASCAR days.

[+zoothornrollo]

We only have one of the Delaware counties ... we were short on time because we were expected at a friend's house for dinner. Just shows we can control our obsession when circumstances warrant it.

[+BAMBOOZLE]

We completed the Texas County Challenge (254 counties) back in 2010. When we started out on our summer 2011 roadtrip with PQs just loaded with caches, we realized that we didn't have a plan for picking and choosing the ones we wanted to stop for so we just arbitrarily decided to do the next cache after crossing each county line. Since then, we have planned our roadtrips to pass through new counties and now have cached in 1083 out of 3142 U.S. counties and have completed the Oklahoma and Louisiana County Challenges. I would love to see posts about the experiences of others who keep track of their counties.

 

To have cached in 1/3 of the counties in the U.S. is an amazing accomplishment.....congratulations.

[+Alkhalikoi]

I just hit 100 counties but it's probably the only long-term goal of mine, getting as many counties as I can and complete as many state county challenges as I can. Me and two of my friends just a circumnavigation of Nevada over the course of three days to get all 17 counties (as it happened, we all had Douglas County, at South Lake, so that let us shave about 60 miles off of a 1700 mile weekend).

 

One guy who is really far along into my long term -- win the lotto or sell my company -- plan to get all counties in the US is IndyMagicMan. His graphic of his exploration of the US is really pretty impressive:

 

http://www.geocaching.com/profile/?guid=38506752-8242-4728-b40b-749095f99ec2&wid=5dc78bf3-226e-47ce-ad42-50cefd524dc5&ds=2

[+secondgunman]

I'll chime in on this, just for the sake of providing a datapoint. I've completed the Arkansas counties challenge, and am thinking about working on Oklahoma next. When I did the Arkansas counties, there was a group of four of us who were doing that one, the DeLorme challenge, and the state parks challenge all at the same time. For those keeping score, that's 75 counties, 52 state parks, and 43 DeLorme pages. We figured our best bet would be to knock them all out at once. Sometimes we went solo, sometimes in groups of two or three or four, just depending on who needed what on a particular trip.

 

When all was said and done, finishing up those three challenges in Arkansas took me roughly 117 hours in the car, five nights in hotels, and roughly 5,600 miles driven. It was, by turns, the most fun I've ever had and the most miserable I've ever been. I seem to remember it took six trips to do it all. Some were simple day-trips. One was a three-day trek from extreme western Arkansas to the very south-east corner of the state, then all the way across the southern border to the south-west corner, then back home. The others fell somewhere in between. It could have been done much faster than that and with a lot fewer miles in the car, but I kind of did it as I could. I started the three challenges on 6/11/2011 and finished them on 1/16/2012, so right at seven months in total.

 

A "counties challenge" in a state with just four or five counties seems like a joke after that....

[+Harry Dolphin]

Well, we have done the NJ County Challenge. 21 counties. It took us a long weekend to pick up the south Jersey counties.

Now, I'm looking at the PA County Challenge. We have finds in 21 of 67 counties. A week's trip for State Game Lands #109 and The Spot should get us 16 more counties. Another two week's vacations might get us there. (They way we travel.) But the final is in far western PA! Hopefully, we could work out something with the COs, and log it on our third week's trip, probably sometime next year. Or the year after...

I need three counties in Maine, two in Delaware, four in Rhode Island, five in New Hampshire. But, we'd probably work on New York next. 15 of 62 counties, and picking up two new ones this year...

[RedsSockpuppet]

I'm at 20% done with 637 of the US counties. Yes, I am chasing webscouter and Hunster.

 

Trouble is, I'm in SoCal, so it is like me playing Risk and starting from the Ukraine, and webscouter being from Missouri has Australia locked up. Plus these guys have like a 7 year head start on me, being late to the party and all.

 

No way I will catch these dudes...But, my goal is to hit them all.

 

Oh, you ask, why log as Redssockpuppet? Seems the forums don't support "strange" chars like é.

 

I fly by Réd.

 

And yes, got all 3 in Delaware!

 

Here are the county geocaching profile county rankings

 

http://www.mygeocachingprofile.com/cacherrankings.aspx?sort=14

Edited June 16, 2014 by RedsSockpuppet

[+BBWolf+3Pigs]

Five counties in Rhode Island (and there is a county challenge). I plotted a 45 minute route through all five, and if you are selective, you can do it in 1-1/2 to 2 hours, easy.

 

By the way, it still only looks like 4 Counties on the project GC Map. Is that little finger of land where Bristol is it's own County? I could look this all up of course, but why not keep the thead going.

 

Project GC is wrong. Yes, that finger of land is Bristol County. The others are Providence, Kent, Washington and Newport.

[+BBWolf+3Pigs]

I stand corrected. Project-GC does list all five counties.

[+zoothornrollo]

Cool! Thanks for posting the county rankings. I see we are 11th on the list. IndyMagicMan's county map is fantastic. You can see the out and back routes as each county appears. I notice that he is not on the county rankings list.

 

As I said before, the county thing for us sort of just evolved but now it has become another dimension of this game. We hope to finish the Arizona and New Mexico counties this summer on our drive out to California and back. Prior to caching, we always did long camping road trips to national parks with our 4 kids. My husband and I are both teachers so we had the time and camping along the way made it affordable. Now that the kids are all grown and we started caching in 2007, we have been to all states except Alaska and have visited so many outstanding places in our beautiful country. We have also come to appreciate the small towns and not-so-outstanding places, as well.

Edited June 16, 2014 by zoothornrollo

[+Walts Hunting]

Five counties in Rhode Island (and there is a county challenge). I plotted a 45 minute route through all five, and if you are selective, you can do it in 1-1/2 to 2 hours, easy.

 

By the way, it still only looks like 4 Counties on the project GC Map. Is that little finger of land where Bristol is it's own County? I could look this all up of course, but why not keep the thead going.

Wikipedia lists the five Counties in RI

[+JBnW]

Five counties in Rhode Island (and there is a county challenge). I plotted a 45 minute route through all five, and if you are selective, you can do it in 1-1/2 to 2 hours, easy.

 

Sorry then, I only have 2 of 5. I'll have to look at the map again. Darn you, Project-GC.

 

A pretty small pool of people out there who go for County Challenges, but I think a few should check in.

Checking in here. I had a chance to go to the great northeast for work some while ago, and decided to try to turn it into an extended vacation with the family, and snagging a couple of those "square-mileage-impaired state" county challenges was definitely in the works. But those plans fell through...maybe next time.

 

We did complete the Kansas 105 County and DeLorme (65 pages) challenges. We had been caching for about 2.5 years, but only worked "seriously" on them for about 18-24 months. I think those will always be in the top 5 of our all-time favorite caching adventures! Besides the fun of traveling the state and seeing places we otherwise may not have ever visited, we also enjoyed the logistics of making sure to get the right ones on any of the road trips. Brought a lot of life into trips that had previously just been "5 hours to get from here to there".

[Mr.Yuck]

I stand corrected. Project-GC does list all five counties.

 

No, no. I mean just looking at the map of Rhode Island on Project-GC. It kind of looks to me, at least, that there's one County, the width of the State, that includes Bristol. I said I could look it up, didn't I? Bristol County Rhode Island, 24 square miles. Bigger than my township in NY, but smaller than the next township over to the east.

 

No, I'm not making jokes, I love Rhode Island! Delaware, now that's a different story. Maybe because they have the State Tourism agency supported Power Trail that encourages throwdowns.

[+zoothornrollo]

According to the outline maps I use (sorry, don't remember which website I used to print them out), Rhode Island has 5 counties: Providence, Kent, Bristol, Washington, and Newport.

[Mr.Yuck]

According to the outline maps I use (sorry, don't remember which website I used to print them out), Rhode Island has 5 counties: Providence, Kent, Bristol, Washington, and Newport.

 

Yes, I can (and have) looked this stuff up. Rhode Island most definitely has 5 Counties. My bad, it looked like 4 on project GC maps. On with the topic!

[RedsSockpuppet]

Now this is really in the weeds stuff, but Groundspeak shows 3,143 counties.

 

There are actually only 3,142 US counties.

 

Bedford city in Virginia gave up its "county" status and is now part of Bedford county as of August 2013.

 

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bedford_County,_Virginia

[+zoothornrollo]

Now this is really in the weeds stuff, but Groundspeak shows 3,143 counties.

 

There are actually only 3,142 US counties.

 

Bedford city in Virginia gave up its "county" status and is now part of Bedford county as of August 2013.

 

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bedford_County,_Virginia

 

The outline map of counties we use on our profile page (generated using GSAK) shows 3,142 counties.

[+zoothornrollo]

Just returned home yesterday after being on the road 45 days. We now have finished all of the counties in Arizona and New Mexico. I never tire of seeing this great country of ours from all viewpoints and caches.

[+TerraViators]

I have completed the RI counties only...but have not found the challenge cache. I have most of the AZ counties and about half of the OK counties and about a third of the TX counties.

[+Dame Deco]

You know, one thing that worked great for me one time is that I drove from Ohio to Colorado to see family and just grabbed caches when they were nearby and I felt like it. Then I checked what counties I missed so that on the way home I could pick them up. That worked pretty well, I'd gotten most of them without any plan, so I only had to do a little planning for on the way home to complete my neat red line across the country. Of course, I drove home the weekend of that polar vortex last January and ended up driving straight through without stopping for the poor counties I missed to avoid the storm...true story! lol!

[+nikcap]

...

 

I would actually like to hear from someone (most likely not from Delaware) who went there just to get the 3 Counties and the Challenge final, and how long it took. There has to be people who have done that. There's only one rule; stay out of the State, and don't try it on NASCAR days.

 

I did, I did!!!

 

And I'll be going back in the fall to complete the DeLorme too!

[+SwineFlew]

I just got 200 counties.

 

And 43 counties of Texas and I don't even live anywhere close to that state. Yep, I got that virtual in Mentone, Tx. Love the open space of west Texas.

[+Dame Deco]

One good way to start planning a route is to go from county seat to county seat--you are guaranteed to be in the right county. Then you can take a closer look for some shortcuts along the way, etc. to make the trip more efficient. There are usually fairly major roads between county seats, even in the wilds of the northern tier of Pennsylvania.

[+TerraViators]

One good way to start planning a route is to go from county seat to county seat--you are guaranteed to be in the right county. Then you can take a closer look for some shortcuts along the way, etc. to make the trip more efficient. There are usually fairly major roads between county seats, even in the wilds of the northern tier of Pennsylvania.

In Texas, you will also have the pleasure of seeing the old county courthouses around the town squares...not the larger seats, but nearly all of the smaller ones.

[+zoothornrollo]

Mrs. ZHR has been the one posting in this thread, but I decided to chime in. For perspective, there is a project underway to build a third loop around Houston. When it is finished, the great state of Rhode Island will fit inside of the loop.

[+BBWolf+3Pigs]

When it is finished, the great state of Rhode Island will fit inside of the loop.

 

But we'll stay exactly where we are.