Quest for the 1K

Begun caching in February of 2005 and never considered that two years later I would be receiving the 1K Coin and Golden Ammo can. Caching career took off slowly using an outdated Garmin without any map software. Later as I advanced in technology and experience, my numbers began to pick up. When I began caching, there was only one geocache in all of Weakley County and just a handful within 25 miles of home. But I had an advantage. My occupation places me on the road, sometimes up to 3,000 miles in one month! My occupation takes me to Somerville one to four times a month. Other destinations have been to: Memphis, Nashville, Pikeville, Hohenwald, Knoxville and Maryville. Also to my advantage, I spent two weeks on National Guard annual training in Smryna, which is cache saturated. The above picture of cached counties of Tennessee will illustrate where I have been.

After a year of caching, I stood at 420 finds. The majority of those were using a Garmin Legend, with maps, but no auto-routing and not paperless. In the next couple of months, I went paperless and began using auto-routing. In February of 2006, I set goals for the next year.

1) Reach 1K on or before February 17, 2007

2) Complete the West TN Mega-Multi

3) Complete the KTAG Multi

I failed to complete the Multi challenges. The distance of the multi cachers from my home has been a huge barrier for me. But I did complete one part of my quest and reached my 1,000th find on December 1, 2006. In the final months of my question, I took advantage of every opportunity to cache when I could. Cached on a hot July day with -boatman- and cachestalker94 in South Memphis and northern Mississippi. Cached in the pouring down rain and cold on my way to Fall Creek Falls State Park. Cached in good weather, cold, rain, snow, wind, day and night, just about when and where ever I could. In the last full month, I really turned up the heat, I was in a dead heat with sskaysee and Tuck Sackett. On a daily basis, I was checking their profile to see where they stood. I was not able to get out on a cache run on the Friday after Thanksgiving but did make a trip to Tullahoma on Sunday afternoon. I was instructed to attend a class at the Correctional Academy and spent the Sunday afternoon caching along I-24, Monte Eagle, Winchester and Tullahoma, netting over a dozen finds. But I was not where I wanted to be and contacted WildThing73 and ask if he could be assistance one of the evenings. The next day on Monday, thankfully, I did not have homework, I met with WildThing73 at his home and we went out caching in the dark. Counting the morning and that evening, I think I found 13 more caches. To my disgust, I found myself doing homework every evening, thus I changed my tactics. Being that I had to be in school at 8 am, I choose to get up at 5 am and go north to Shelbyville and cache 2-4 caches each morning. I did that, for three mornings. Thursday night, I was two caches short of my goal. Two classmates wanted extra instruction and wanted me to come in early on that Friday. I told them that I would and looked at the nearest caches. I saw that there were two in Winchester that I could go after but would have to do those in the pre-dawn darkness. I chose not to go out that morning, thinking my luck will run out and end up with two DNF's. I went on to meet with the classmates that morning, only to find that both were late!

Friday, December 1, was the final day in class and the schedule had the class ending at noon. I had decided to take Highway 64 on the way home. To my horror, the class ran over and was not released until 2 pm, leaving me about 3 hours of daylight and will be facing the sun all the way! Number 999 was the cache in front of the Jack Daniels Distillery. That would have been an awesome milestone cache and could have done that, if I had gone to Winchester that morning. Number 1,000 was an parking lot cache in Lawrenceburg. I felt the relief when I my fingers found the nano, signed the log and couldn't wait to call my caching friends to let them know of my accomplishment. On the way home, I stopped for only one cache and that being a virtual by Monkeybrad in Pulaski. The virtual being an important part of American History would have also been a great milestone and proud to say it was number 1,001.

Sskaysee reached the 1K before I did and Tuck Sackett found his 1,000 cache a few days later. Both cachers I have extreme respect for and had the honor of having sskaysee host my 1K event and I hosting Tuck Sackett's event.