Top 10 of 2013: A Very WVTim January

Numbers 6 through 8 are all hidden in the same area by the same amazing geocacher, WVTim (though note, these are not his last entries on the top ten list for 2013!). WVTim is indeed so awesome that he was the March 2013 Geocacher of the Month. Each of these three caches were found on the same weekend in January on a trip deliberately scheduled to find awesome caches away from home. 

Number 8: Hi-Tech
Clearblook, Virginia
193 Favorite Points

This is the most favorite cache in the entire state of Virginia (not too shabby!) despite its humble placement on a truck stop off I-81. So far, the caches on this list have been about amazing locations, this is about an amazing container. Frankly, so are 6 and 7. WVTim puts hours and hours of work into his geocache containers and is a deliberate and kind member of the geocaching community. The care he puts into his caches is obvious to all who find them and in this case realize that a birdhouse isn’t quite a birdhouse. 

Number 7: The Quick and the Dead !
Inwood, West Virginia
216 Favorite Points

While this list proves that many great caches were found in 2013, this may have been the most entertaining. Many of WVTim’s geocaches are “gadget” caches. These are geocaches that often require an extra tool or device (ranging from balloons to batteries to jumper cables) to extract the log. Illustrated in the photograph below, I’m sure you can imagine that I’m pretty glad this one was not a gadget cache!

Trying to get the cheese!

This is the fifth most favorited cache in the state of West Virginia. 

Number 6: TB Hotel Extraordinaire
Martinsburg, WV
225 Favorite Points

And sometimes, truly great caches are right under your nose. Chris and I always stay at the Martinsburg Holiday Inn when we’re in the area. There are so many great reasons to stay there: nice pool, clean rooms, friendly staff, and, as it turns out, this geocache. We were planning our geocaching day and to our surprise, there was this cache staring right at us as we looked out our window.

A travel bug (or TB) hotel is a geocache safe for individuals to place travel bugs. For those who do not know what a travel bug (or trackable) is, it is a trinket or coin with a code on it that is supposed to travel from geocache to geocache and as new people find it, it can be logged via it’s unique code on the Geocaching website. For example, I released a travel bug in Seattle with the goal for it to travel to State College, PA. Though its route was circuitous, traveling via Wyoming, Florida, Ontario, South Carolina, Georgia, and a few other states, it eventually made it to Williamsport, PA. Williamsport is about an hour from State College so on my next day off I picked it up from the geocache it had been placed in there.

Most TB hotels are indistinguishable from regular geocaches, except that they tend to run larger and be in areas where they are monitored or unlikely to be removed. This one, however, is no comparison to those. This is the Greenbrier of TB hotels.

This is the third most favorited geocache in the state of West Virginia.