Geocachers collect many things: smiley faces, geocoins, favourite points, stories … I think my most treasured geocaching collector’s items are the souvenirs – those little pieces of artwork on your profile that you earn for visiting a specific location, or partaking in a special challenge. HQ’s latest souvenir promotion is particularly appealing!
Cache Carnival kicks off on 25th March and encourages us to celebrate geocaching creativity – both finding and placing exceptional geocaches! You have until 14th April to earn up to five souvenirs, by collecting points, for finding caches and for receiving favourite points as a cache owner. Obtaining a favourite point on a cache you own will bag you 25 points (you need 500 points to qualify for all five souvenirs). What a fantastic way to celebrate really great caches and the owners who put the time and effort in to hiding and maintaining them for the community. Here’s the breakdown of how you can earn points:
You can track your points total on the Leaderboard (a new incarnation of the Friends League), which will be available to view in the official Geocaching app for the duration of the promotion. As well as collecting points to earn souvenirs, there will be the opportunity to host or attend a special Creation Celebration event, to celebrate “geocache creation to inspire the next generation of geocache makers.” Attending a (registered) Creation Celebration event will earn you an additional souvenir. For all the details on Cache Carnival, check out the FAQ on geocaching.com.
To coincide with this latest souvenir promotion, I’m sharing my 6 reasons that being a cache owner is the best!
1. Unleashing your Creative Self
Who says imagination is confined to traditionally creative pursuits like painting or dancing? Designing and constructing your own geocache can be a great way to express your originality.
2. The Search for the Perfect Spot
Once you’ve turned all those caches in to smiley faces in your neighbourhood, it can be difficult to find a reason to revisit that local forest or park. But if you’re looking for a great spot to hide a geocache, you have the perfect excuse to go out and explore – this time from a different perspective.
3. Waiting for FTF
FTF hounds will know all about the rush of the first to find chase, but there is a certain excitement confined to waiting for the FTF log on your own geocache. Who will find it? Will they like it? Sitting at home in your PJs, continuously hitting refresh on your computer, waiting for that email to hit your inbox is a different kind of treat.
4. Reading the Logs
Long after FTF, you can continue to enjoy those stories* from geocachers. Whether it’s a kind word about your cache, or details of an unexpected adventure they had to find it, nice logs are a great reward for putting the work in to hiding and maintaining geocaches.
* TFTC logs are disappointing, but I’m trying to focus on the positives here!
5. Looking at the Photos
If you tend to only read the logs you receive via email, don’t forget to have the occasional browse through the image gallery on your caches. Photos of beautiful scenery and geocachers having fun are another bonus. It’s also a good idea to check if anybody has uploaded any spoiler pics*, which you can then promptly delete, should you so wish.
* Project-GC has a nifty function currently in beta, which notifies you when someone uploads an image to one of your caches. Paying members can switch on this function in settings.
6. Favourite Points!
Last but not least, favourite points are a nice little nod to your cache owning efforts. They used to be represented on geocaching.com as a blue badge – a sort of merit to be awarded and achieved. Nowadays, they are represented by a heart – so you can feel the love from the cachers who gift you one.
Are you looking forward to the latest souvenir promotion? What is your favourite part of being a cache owner?
Happy Caching!
Sarah
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