Friday, March 18, 2011

Looking Out The Back Window

Haven't been out caching or back road touring much due to winter time, only managed to get out a couple of times past few weeks, so I thought I would look backwards and see where I've been.

I have been doing back road and forest road driving for close to 35 years, needless to say my knowledge of the South West corner of British Columbia is pretty extensive. On Jan 9 2005 I added geocaching to one of my hobbies, which dove tails nicely with my love of exploring the countryside and poking around little corners of the Vancouver suburbs and the Fraser Valley. Looking for geocaches is a good way of finding those hidden gems of parks, ocean vistas and high mountain views. Add in my love of photography and story telling, well, you have all the makings of a guy who goes every where and wants to tell every one about it!  :)

I've expanded my way of getting my travelogues out as the years went by; starting with simple emails, then to writing trip reports for web site forums, to posting pictures on Flickr.com, then getting my own web space in the form of this blog, and finally adding videography to my story telling repertoire.

Let's see where I've been, stories I've told, and who's seen me......(I know, rather self-aggrandizing but there you are) LOL

Starting with this blog, which began on Oct 2 2006;
16,642 visitors have viewed 24,412 pages worth of 90 trip reports and blog write ups. Guests have come from dozens of countries, every where from Canada to the U.S., China, Argentina, the U.K., France, Netherlands, Italy, Australia, Israel, Russia, Austria, Columbia, Denmark, and dozens more countries.

My Flickr account consists of 1,959 pictures which have been viewed 30,154 times

My YouTube channel contains 52 videos I have uploaded which have been watched a combined total of 7100 times, give or take a few times.

On the geocaching front I have found 2,366 geocaches in 3 provinces, 8 U.S. states and two countries in Europe. Doing so I have logged 36,190 miles between caches.....thankfully I didn't walk it all!  :)
As a way of saying thanks to the geocaching community, I have hidden 54 various geocaches. My cache hides are in such diverse places as your run of the mill shopping mall parking lot, where the busy area makes it difficult to retrieve the cache unobserved, to local suburban parks, to forest mountain roads treating the finder to fantastic lake views, west coast rain forests, and beaver ponds.

A lot of time has gone into documenting and recording my activities to share with my family, friends and colleagues, but that same type of force that drives my wanderlust also drives my story telling...I've had such a great time and seen some fantastic places that I just have to show and tell every one where I've been, whether they want to hear it or not!  LOL

I hope you didn't nod off reading the stats, but when I look back on the journey so far, I'm amazed at the territory I've covered doing what I love - exploring BC and beyond!

Bring on the nicer weather and melt that snow in the mountains, me and the Jeep are ready to hit the road again!