Just a couple of tidbits. The Black Walnut Geotrail got some mention at the 56th annual Black Walnut Festival during the Grand Parade. Just for some background info., during the Grand Parade the attendance at the festival reaches its climax and Spencer becomes arguably the largest city in WV as it swells to nearly 60,000 people. The announcer for the parade, Toby Wagoner, was overheard telling the crowd about geocaching. As I sat along Main Street with my family awaiting the parade I only caught the tail end of what the announcer was talking about when I heard him explaining that it was a "treasure hunt using GPS technology". Very cool Toby!

Also, on a recent episode (10/18/10) of the Podcacher podcast, the Black Walnut Geotrail stop #5 - Historic Spencer made airtime as it won on the great multi-cache contest. Sweet!

I had the good fortune of visiting all the caches on the trail Saturday morning with my brother, the Rabbit of Caerbannog from Charlotte, NC. I noticed that some of the swag was beginning to diminish on most of the caches. No problem! I will be out soon refilling the caches with more great swag donated by area businesses.

On September 4, 2010 Roane County was blessed to have some of the region's best geocachers attend the kickoff event for the geotrail. Cachers from Northern Virginia to Dayton, Ohio descended on Spencer to take in the trail and its caches. Numerous families visited from the Buckeye state and there were Mountaineers from Boone County, Harrison County, Greenbrier County and more.

The day began at 10:00 am sharp when it was announced that our hardworking volunteer Groundspeak Reviewer - MountainStateReviewer - pushed the big red button and published the ten caches making up the trail. PilotJ worked feverishly on his laptop to get the caches ready for folks to download into their GPSr's (thanks Pilot) while others were about the business of downloading the information into their smartphones. There were also paper copies of the caches available for those who wanted to hand load their units on the fly.

Before the hounds were released we had some great door prizes to give away thanks to some awesome sponsors. The City of Spencer donated mugs, glasses, cookbooks and more for prizes. The Arnott House Bed and Breakfast donated some handmade Russian Nesting Dolls and a hand painted gift bag. The Cunningham House donated some 25% off coupons (and I still have a few more to sporadically chum into some caches as SWAG so if you are interested, let me know and I may clue you in on where one of these great coupons may be). Gary's Sporting donated some $10 gift certificates (I have a few more of them too that will make it out as SWAG real soon). I also donated a DVD of the Find Me movie signed by the producer. Hailing from Columbus, OH-10, iphone-cachers was quick to step up to the plate to help me out with the door prize drawing. (You guys are welcome at my events ANYTIME! Thanks for the help.)

After the door prizes and a few brief announcements folks were set loose to Cannonball Run the trail. As I expected, almost every team developed a different strategy in order to grab at least one FTF (First to Find). It was big fun to see how strategies played out. Also, it was good to see a lot of teams pairing up to make new friends and spend the day caching together. I took my two geokids out to stops #7 and #8 and met up with KJCachers at #7 to lend them a few hints. Then we made our way up to #8 with KJCachers and Wintz50 who had already snagged an FTF coming from a different direction.

At 6:00 pm I headed back to Washington Park where cachers were anxiously awaiting the giving out of geocoins. Everyone was very appreciative and comments were great. It was one of the most rewarding geocaching days I've ever had to not only see so many folks caching in my home county, but to hear that they really enjoyed it too.

As I've said before, there are completely unique appeals to geocaching. I've heard it directly from some who ask "I just don't understand it, you mean you don't win anything?" I've more often heard it secondhand. A family member may say to me, "old so and so was asking me about your geocaching thingy the other day." They said "I just don't understand it, sounds kind of silly to me." This is pretty common. Most people are perfectly content to see nothing more than their living room, their office and a trip once each year to Myrtle Beach. I would return their retort, "I just don't understand it".

So that brings me back to the "appeals" that I mentioned earlier. Why do we do it? The answer from each geocacher that you talk to will be as different as we are as individuals. A common answer might be "because it takes me to places I would never have discovered without geocaching". But this answer needs more unpacking. The places might not necessarily be fantastic Utopian places of grandeur. Perhaps these places are simply just outside. Anywhere outside. We live in an ADHD culture that involves work then chores around home and a fine evening of mind numbing entertainment delivered by NBC, CBS, ABC and FOX. Many geocachers would never get out and discover the woods, the roads of their home region or perhaps even a few of those Utopian places of grandeur themselves without the aid and motivation of signing their name on a little piece of paper called a logsheet contained inside of a geocache. In essence, this is likely the biggest appeal to geocaching. In one word, DISCOVERY.

Then there are the things that motivate each of us individually as geocachers. The hides that really motivate us. There are family friendly hides designed to make it easy for young children to find. Many families go geocaching together and only target those large containers in easy to get to places where kids can enjoy the discovery and trade inexpensive toys. Some folks enjoy solving difficult puzzles. Some enjoy long hikes in the woods. There are handicap accessible hides to give some outdoor recreation to those limited in where they can go. One of the smallest, but most extreme sects of geocachers are those that enjoy uber difficult and dangerous hides. Those hides that require some risk to be taken to get to.

Part of the fun in hiding caches is to try to hide something that will appeal to all the different motivations. I like to hide caches that I would like to find. It is my hope that someone will find one of my caches, be inspired to "one up" me and hide something even better. The majority of geocaches are pretty benign. A lot of film cans stuck in a random roadside guardrail for reason other than they had a film can, a scrap of paper and a GPS reciever and desperately wanted to hide it. While these are less than thrilling hides it makes a really high quality cache even more exciting when you find them. So with all this in mind there were a few geocache styles that were pretty hard to find in this area of the state that I have tried to create here. One being nightcaches (only found at night) and another being the extreme terrain caches.

This week three new caches were published titled the Psycho Rural Cache Series. Inspired by the Psycho Urban Cache Series in Maryland these hides require special equipment or at least some unique terrain. One is located underwater at Charles Fork Lake. One is located 30' up in a tree with no limbs and the last of the initial PRC series is on top of an abandoned bridge pier 25' high in the air. I hope that this series adds to the variety in the county and brings more appeal to those motivated by challenging terrain.

• GC2DGVR - Psycho Rural Cache #1 - Descent into the Maelström
• GC2DGYH - Psycho Rural Cache #2 - The Balloon Hoax
• GC2DH2Q - Psycho Rural Cache #3 - The Raven
  

(Note: I'm sure someone will ask. The names were derived from Edgar Allan Poe stories. I thought he would appreciate these hides and would have been a geocacher if GPS technology had been around in his day.)

In May of 2010 the first Geotrail in West Virginia was unveiled at an event in Beckley. The Coal Heritage Geotrail - put together by Coal Heritage Highway Authority. This geotrail is a lot more spread out and challenging than the Black Walnut Geotrail, but provides a different feel and look to a concept. The concept, for those unfamiliar, is to unify a series of caches to challenge the participant to complete all of them in order to show them something about an area. It really isn't all that different than a challenge cache such as the County Challenge, Parks Challenge or DeLorme Challenge. The main difference is that they are normally funded by an entity unrelated to geocaching due to a nature of wishing folks to participate in something often unrelated to geocaching.

In developing the ideas for this trail I first consulted with the York County Geocaching Organization (YOGO) in South Carolina. As you may or may not know the city of Rock Hill and surrounding area is a mecca for geocaching along the southern end of the I-77 corridor. YOGO and York County have developed a great relationship. The geotrails in their program have been very successful. I learned that an important part of furthering this success is being able to quantify the success outside of sheer participation. One of the ways they have been able to do this is through the concept of the "passport" or "brochure" that participants must turn in to officially complete the trail. In addition to stamping the brochure, a few simple questions are asked. By keeping this data we can determine the return on investment and decide on future prizes as well as being able to provide a model of our success to other organizations seeking to provide unique tourism opportunities (read: more geotrails for us to tackle).

You may or may not know about the ExploreWV challenges that are forthcoming. I had the good fortune of learning about these early on, but they have been publicly looking for volunteers around West Virginia via the Groundspeak Forums as well as through the MAGPI Forum (Mountaineer Area Geocaching Persons of Interest). These new geotrails promise to take it to a whole new level and attract visitors from all across America to visit West Virginia. I'm very excited to be one of many volunteers to help make these challenges happen and hopefully successful. Geocaching has grown leaps and bounds in the 10 years since its inception. What the next 10 years has in store I don't know, but I do believe that organized embracing of geotourism by state and local officials will be a big part of that.

• #100 - Angler's Art. I found this cache milestone while fishing the famous Spring Creek in State College, Pennsylvania.
• #500 - WV DeLorme Challenge. 'nuff said.
• #800 - Lion's Head. By far my favorite day hike I've done. I would never have found this formation located in Dolly Sods Wilderness Area in Tucker County if not for geocaching.
• #900 - Picture Perfect Bridge. Yeah, we've all seen it, but actually hiking out to this location and being at this spot in person is indescribable.
• #1000 - Chimney Top. My favorite cache to date. The hike, the view and the friends I had with me (NA and PilotJ) made it my favorite moment in geocaching.
• #1500 - WV Well Rounded "Fizzy" Challenge. An absolute watershed moment in geocaching. The effort involved in finding a cache in every difficulty/terrain combo was monumental.