Last year at this time, I had completed seven states. This year, I have completed two more states and added fourteen more to my running tally, for a total of thirty-seven states visited, of which nine are completed.
Friday was my sixth geoversary. It still doesn’t feel like six years, but it also kinda does. I’m certainly not the same man who started caching in the heady days of 2018. Yesterday was Day 2,192 in a row, completing the sixth year (plus two leap days) of my streak. From the perspective of the Great Project, it’s been a decent year. I added seventy-eight new counties (or county equivalents) to the list: sixteen in Maryland; nine each in Connecticut and Utah; seven in Vermont; six each in Colorado and Wyoming; four in New Hampshire; three each in Delaware, Massachusetts, Nebraska, and Virginia; two each in Pennsylvania, New Jersey, and Maine; one each in New York, West Virginia, and Washington DC. Add in setting foot in both Rhode Island and Quebec, doing an interview for a local college paper, being on an episode of Caching in the NorthWest, and another chat with Groundspeak, and I think I did well this year.
I don’t intend to continue my streak another year, but I said the same thing at both the four- and five-year marks, so that statement is functionally meaningless. I have some regrets regarding things left undone (sometimes because of circumstance, sometimes because of my own weakness), but that’s the beauty of going forward: I can fix the things I missed before. No guarantees, but I may have another trip on the horizon returning somewhere I’ve already been that will give me a chance to take care of one of those things I had to miss before and pick up a few things I didn’t have a chance to get the first time around. Besides, those 2,291 remaining counties (and county equivalents) aren’t going to find themselves!
Geocaching While Black 