The Geo Boo Gang is a social group made up of geocachers from northeastern New Jersey and the Lower Hudson Valley of New York. The Geo Boo Gang holds regular events, including monthly ice cream socials and quarterly dinners. They race each other for First to Finds and often run into each other on local trails.
The Geo Boo Gang visiting the Mingo cache (GC30)
(l-r): Olga Caramel, Jack Russell, Felicia Furrball, Cornelius Taylor, Caesar Taylor, Bo Woolensworth, Balto Kaasen, Cody Cook
It was during one of their ice cream socials that the following conversation occurred:
Olga: ... and that's how I developed a love for cooking.
Bo: Wait, I love to cook too. How did I never know this about you?
Cody: Well, all we usually talk about is geocaching. I don't think I really know much about any of you, besides the fact that you enjoy finding plastic food containers in the woods using a super-expensive satellite system!
Felicia: Hey, that gives me an idea! Why don't we create a puzzle series together; each of us would create a puzzle based on something that interests him or her? Olga or Bo could use cooking if they wanted to, for example, since they both love cooking. And then together we can create a final, bonus puzzle, based on all our individual puzzles. This will be a fun way to get to know each other better.
Cornelius: Caesar and I are brothers. Can we put together a puzzle as a team?
Balto: Jack and I hang out all the time. Can we create a puzzle together too?
Felicia: That sounds great guys! So we'll have six puzzles, which works out perfectly. Let's coordinate the bonus puzzle, and then we'll go create our individual puzzles on our own.
And that's how the Geo Boo Gang puzzle series was born.
Felicia Furrball
Felicia Furrball is a peripatetic with a mission - to find a cache in all 50 United States, plus Washington, D.C. Her passion for traveling began at a young age, participating with her family in an annual summer road trip, each year heading in a different direction to see what America had to offer. Her favorite memories are from those family vacations.
Felicia recently returned from her latest and grandest family vacation, and couldn’t wait to catch up with the Geo Boo Gang and tell them about her trip. On her first day back, she messaged her friend Olga Caramel.
Felicia's message exchange with Olga
Olga arrived at Felicia’s house and immediately they starting talking about caching. Olga related some of the adventures the Geo Boo Gang had when Felicia was away, and then the conversation turned to Felicia’s trip.
Felicia showing Olga the photo album of her trip
“The trip was great!” said Felicia. “I saw so many interesting places and logged a bunch of new states!”
“Where did you visit?” asked Olga.
Felicia replied “First we flew to Seattle – what a cool city! When we landed, we rented a car for our trip and went to some of the tourist sites, like Pike Place Market and the Space Needle. And, while we were there, we were able to visit Geocaching HQ! They run Hosted Visits each day, and we were able to schedule one; we arrived at the headquarters and found other cachers waiting for the visit to start, and together we learned about Groundspeak and its history. We were able to see all sorts of historical geocaching artifacts and they even give you a free travel bug just for visiting! Here’s a picture of me at Geocaching HQ! This was the first cache I found on my trip.”
Felicia visiting Geocaching Headquarters and displaying her free Travel Bug
“From Seattle, we headed south into Oregon. While we were there we got the opportunity to visit the Original Stash Tribute Plaque. It was so cool seeing the location of the original geocache!”
Felicia visiting the Original Stash Tribute Plaque
“After Oregon we drove east, visiting various states and, of course, finding geocaches. Eventually we found ourselves in the Black Hills National Forest of South Dakota, and got to visit Mount Rushmore. What an amazing sight that was! “
Felicia visiting Mount Rushmore National Memorial
“We continued east, hitting lots of states and caches on the way. After visiting the Upper Peninsula of Michigan, we headed south to Illinois. I loved visiting Chicago! Check out the view from the Sears Tower! Well, it’s called the Willis Tower now.”
Felicia visiting Chicago's Sears Tower
“After Chicago we continued heading south and got to visit a bunch of the southern States. One of my favorite places to visit was Graceland, because, of course, Elvis was awesome!”
Felicia visiting Graceland
“We then headed west, visiting southern States such as Texas and Oklahoma. While we were visiting Dallas, we were able to visit the famous Grassy Knoll at Dealey Plaza.”
Felicia visiting Dealey Plaza
“Arizona and New Mexico were beautiful, and my favorite thing to see during that part of the trip was the Grand Canyon. It sure makes you feel small!”
Felicia visiting the Grand Canyon
“We passed through the southern part of Utah and finished our vacation in Las Vegas. The Las Vegas Strip had so many amazing hotels! We only stayed one night before we flew home.”
Felicia visiting Las Vegas
Olga said, “Felicia, these are great pictures! I’m so impressed that you got to see so many cool places!”
“Thanks Olga!" replied Felicia. "I had a really great time. I wound up finding 71 caches, with a cache-to-cache distance of 15935 miles. I found caches in twenty-three states this time, which is a new record for me! Take a look at this map; I logged new states in this order:
- Washington
- Oregon
- Idaho
- Montana
- Wyoming
- North Dakota
- Nebraska
- South Dakota
- Iowa
- Minnesota
- Michigan
- Illinois
- Alabama
- Arkansas
- Tennessee
- Mississippi
- Texas
- Louisiana
- Oklahoma
- New Mexico
- Arizona
- Utah
- Nevada
“That’s so great!” said Olga. “Sounds like it was an awesome trip. The Geo Boo Gang was wondering, though, have you come up with any ideas for your installment in the puzzle series?”
“The whole time I was away I was working on my Geo Boo Gang puzzle series installment,” replied Felicia. “I came up with a cool puzzle - wait until you see it! Now that I’m home, I need to work on the listing and get it published. Since my trip was so long I feel like I’ve been holding up the whole Geo Boo Gang series! I hope you enjoy my puzzle!”
“I’m sure I will!” said Olga. “And, don’t worry, Bo still has to finish her puzzle too!”
Can YOU find the geocache?
Per the rules of geocaching, a Found It log must correspond to a signed logbook.
You can check your answers for this puzzle on GeoChecker.com.
BONUS: the cache container will have written in it a note with part of the coordinate for the puzzle series bonus cache, of the form LETTER=COORDINATE PIECE. Save these pieces of the bonus coordinate for use in geocache GC62D9P.
I hope you enjoy the entire Geo Boo Gang puzzle series! The series consists of the following caches:
GC62D9B: Geo Boo Gang Series: Caesar and Cornelius Taylor
GC62D9D: Geo Boo Gang Series: Balto Kaasen and Jack Russell
GC62D9F: Geo Boo Gang Series: Cody Cook
GC62D9G: Geo Boo Gang Series: Olga Caramel
GC62D9J: Geo Boo Gang Series: Felicia Furrball
GC62D9M: Geo Boo Gang Series: Bo Woolensworth
GC62D9P: Geo Boo Gang Series: Bonus
Happy caching!