GeoRedheads come full circle... with jack_armstrong

jack_armstrong finishes CaddyShack strong! And this is very cool for us personally - with a back story.

When we first started caching, 2 years ago, we stayed local to our house, and found as many of the caches as possible within walking distance of the house. GRH3 and 4, at that time 7-9 years old, both were rather dubious about the new hobby, and we were trying to keep it a low key experience for them (that changed over the years).

However, I remember one of the early weeks, at Oak Hill Park in Danville, we'd cruised through and found 4 of the caches stashed away in the park - the last of which was one attached the the Windmill at the park. Being new to the hobby, we'd never seen anything like a "nano" before, so had no clue what to find, what to expect.

But there was this very nice man there, also caching out the park out, also looking at the windmill, and we remember sitting there, staring at the windmill, together, talking about how much we jointly disliked nanos. He ultimately found it, handed us the container, with both signed, and parted ways.

Anyway, ultimately we learned that the nice man was jack_armstrong, and that he was yet another prolific cacher in the area. He's found virtually everything within 20 miles, from what I can tell, and he ripped through the front 9 of the Caddyshack series in one day, and took finished the Caddy Tournament over the weekend.

Only 1 T-Shirt Left! See Caddy Tournament Leaderboard for all of the latest details.

#4 for Caddyshack - FamilyL4

Hey, Congratulations to FamilyL4, the team that got us hooked on this crazy hobby, finished the CaddyShack tournament, and took home the #4 runner up prize. After being out of town Memorial Day weekend, and missing out on the opening day frenzy, they've been on a tear the last week and a half -- taking down 3-4 caches a day in the 19 cache series.

Today, they hit #19, and got rewarded by a friendly visit by our mascot, Sigmund the Skunk! #19 is ditched up in the hills by Blackhawk Country Club, one of the more swanky golf courses in the area. It's a total gated community, and the only way that you can hide a large cache, anywhere near it, is to use the access roads into the nearby Mt Diablo State Park. And since #19 is loaded with prizes, we also want to make sure that no one inadvertently stumbled on it, searching for errant drives or anything... so it's ditched waaay up there, securely, in a hole -- evidently shared with our friend Sigmund. So today, when FamilyL4 got the find today, they were chased down the hill by a pissed off skunk! And when they came back to re-hide the cache, the same pissed off skunk was still defending it's lair.

Thankfully, FL4 moved the cache, up the hill a bit, but that just means that we need to come back and do some "cache maintenance".

Congrats again, FL4, for sneaking right ahead of 4Wheeler, another local cacher who is just on the precipice of finishing the series as well! 2 Years ago, mutual friends of ours, JESWES, convinced us to go out with them and do a little caching with the kids.... and this was just 1 week after FamilyL4 convinced them that it was a fun thing to be doing with the whole family. Well, FamilyL4 has been devoted, die-hards ever since, as have we -- and we both are ripping through the local caches in our area. (JESWES still needs to be convinced to cache periodically... they don't have it in their blood).

Clear here for the latest updates to the CaddyShack leaderboard.

Caddyshack rewards it's Third Winner: AlamoGul!

AlamoGul, the #1 most prolific Geocacher in the world, is the third to conquer the Caddyshack Caddy Tournament challenge, finishing the 19th and final cache on the Caddy Tournament. Named the "Bushwood Memorial", in honor of the Bushwood Country Club that was the setting for the 1980 classic, Caddyshack, the cache series drags challengers over 100 miles of driving, around from golf courses scattered all over the SF East Bay.

Normally, AlamoGul is right on-top of new caches the moment they are posted in the area, as he lives in Alamo, and is always a challenger for FTF honors, "First to Find", for anything new in the area. However, he happened to be out of town on Memorial Day weekend, with many of the other prolific bay area caches, at a caching event in SoCal. That probably gave everyone else a chance...

For finishing the challenge in the top 5, AlamoGul won a T-Shirt! -- and was heard to be muttering "I just finished chasing down 19 caches, and all I got was..."

GeoRedheads - now with new GeoCoins

We have updated our caching presence, with a new keepsake to leave in caches, the GRH Geocoin for 2010. When we first started caching a couple of years ago, we picked up some Geocoins from Geocoins.net, had them personalized, and tagged with trackable ID's. However, this time, we need more of a personalized flair, designed our own logo, with a special attention to the Geo-Family aspect of things -- and of course, "Redheads".

No trackable ID's this time around... just a token - literally.

Caddyshack Geo-Tournament Initial Winners In

MisterScooter and Jellis are the initial winners from the Caddyshack Geo-Tournament this year, cranking through the 19 golf course, 19 cache series over the 3 day Memorial Day weekend. MisterScooter collected $50 gift card narrowly beat Jellis, $25, to the 19th hole - but apparently found his last 10 caches without logging any of them on GeoCaching.com -- until a flurry of logs the day after he finished the route.

Caddyshack tournament takes you around 19 golf courses in the SF East Bay, from Martinez to the north, to Sunol in the south, Orinda to the west, and Clayton to the east. Per Misterscooters own guesses, he drove well over 100 miles finishing the course, even factoring in the last day, where he took one morning driving directly from one cache to the next, to the next. Around 10:30 am, on Memorial Day, we received the call from MisterScooter, with the quote "I'm in the Clubhouse".

Jellis took a slightly different tact - she had to work 2 days over the weekend, but was fitting in caching on the side. She methodically took down 18 caches by Sunday, had them all logged and ready to go by Sunday evening - Misterscooter only had 8 logged at this point. However, she was missing one clue from her 18 hole trip earlier, a missing 1 coordinate for the 19th hole. The 19th hole is marked as a Terrain=4.5, Difficulty=5 monster, difficultly is largely because of the 18 hole jaunt that is required to get there, but the 4.5 Terrain is for some of the steep hill scampering requried to get to the cache. That was not a good place to be guestimating final locations, without the specific coords. Mid-day Monday, she made the assault, but found that MisterScooter had already signed the log.

Anyway, Caddyshack awaits still more winners - each of the first 5 "runner ups" in the Caddy Tournament wins a Bushwood CC T-Shirt. For a detailed update for the current standings, please see The Leaderboard