bitlux’s Cache Across America Journal
Log entries
| State | Date |
|---|---|
| California | 2024-11-16 |
| New Jersey | 2024-12-26 |
| Delaware | 2025-05-18 |
| Maryland | 2025-05-19 |
| Virginia | 2025-05-20 |
| West Virginia | 2025-05-22 |
| Indiana | 2025-07-23 |
| Michigan | 2025-07-23 |
| Ohio | 2025-07-24 |
| Florida | 2025-11-24 |
| Georgia | 2025-11-27 |
| Alabama | 2025-11-29 |
| Utah | 2025-12-22 |
| Nevada | 2025-12-23 |
| Hawaii | 2026-04-16 |
| Tennessee | 2026-07-03 |
| Kentucky | 2026-07-03 |
| Colorado | 2026-09-26 |
| Kansas | 2026-09-27 |
| Missouri | 2026-09-27 |
| Illinois | 2026-09-28 |
| Connecticut | 2026-09-29 |
| Rhode Island | 2026-09-29 |
| Massachusetts | 2026-09-30 |
| New Hampshire | 2026-09-30 |
| Vermont | 2026-09-30 |
| Maine | 2026-09-30 |
| New York | 2026-10-01 |
| Pennsylvania | 2026-10-02 |
My journey
2015
I happened to find the original California CAA cache in my first week of caching. It was located very close to my work at the time. I had no idea what CAA was. My log was simply “TFTC”. Such a neophyte.
2024
I first heard about the CAA series from this Reddit thread, which listed the series final as a must-do cache in DC. I already had a goal of finding a cache in every state, but this added an irresistible layer of difficulty, and a sense of organized curation, to it. I knew I had to get my name in the hall of fame.
The replacement California cache was fortunately in the Bay Area. I made the short drive and found the cache in a beautiful park with spectacular views of the coast. A great way to start the series. I did a long loop with a brutal uphill climb on the way back. Near the parking lot, there was a medical emergency on the trail, and I actually saw a very rugged ambulance drive on the trail to transport the victim away.
California
For Christmas, my family visited my sister in New York City. I knew I wouldn’t have much time to make a long trip, and I didn’t have a car of my own, so I made only one CAA attempt: New Jersey, which is actually the closest CAA cache to NYC. I made the 2.5 hour (one-way) drive in the dark, but other than some self-induced GPS problems, I had no issues finding the cache—even though the only light I had during the search was my phone’s flashlight.
New Jersey
2025
Early this year, I decided to attend GeoWoodstock XXI. As I do whenever I travel, I looked at what CAA caches were near; WV, VA, and MD were obvious choices. I booked my flight and began counting the days. About a week later, I realized that getting these states would isolate Delaware. So I moved my flight up a day and added the beach to my itinerary. Another while later, I kept thinking about GC17MX1. It is a 33 stage multi in Central Park, Manhattan, that I started in 2019. I came very close to finishing it on the aforementioned trip to NYC for Christmas, but I had some numbers wrong and ran out of time to try to fix it. I didn’t know when I would be back in NYC, so I went all out and moved my departure another day earlier.
Well, the start of this trip was a comedy of errors. My Friday flight got canceled. My re-booked flight the next day was delayed. Despite Google Maps’s insistence, it is impossible to drive to the EWR Amtrak station, so I had to drive to a different train station to catch my train. That train got delayed 40 minutes due to a disabled train on the tracks. On the drive to Delaware, Google Maps had me avoid traffic by taking a side street, only to find that the ramp back onto the highway was closed so I had to backtrack back to the highway, then sit in that traffic. Nevertheless, after a three-and-a-half hour train ride and a three hour drive, I found myself on Bethany Beach within easy walking distance of the Delaware cache.
Or so I thought. Google Maps once again routed me to the wrong place, this time a private development. I looked for the parking waypoint that the cache description mentioned, but it was not the be found. I finally used the parking waypoint for GC5A05G and walked the 2.5 miles round trip to sign the log.
Delaware
The next day took me through Maryland into West Virginia. The Maryland cache was thankfully uneventful. I was worried it would be difficult to find in the woods without a hint, but my GPSr was surprisingly reliable.
Maryland
After a drive through Shenandoah National Park, I continued on to Richmond for the Virginia cache. This was the most disappointing CAA cache I had encountered up to this point, because this location had so much potential to be great, but was unfortunately ruined by the local residents. The natural beauty of the island and river were marred by ubiquitous graffiti. The sound of the rushing water was drowned out by amplified music. To top it off, the south parking waypoint has been turned into resident-only parking, so I needed to search for a place to park. I was sad that I felt I should leave quickly instead of staying to enjoy the unique location.
Virginia
All told, I drove 650 miles in two days to get MD, VA, one national park, and to set myself up for another national park the next day. After a few stops at New River Gorge NP, I continued on to Morgantown. I arrived too late to go to Cooper’s Rock State Forest. The next day was very rainy, making me regret not arriving early enough yesterday to make an attempt. I began the day by attending the pre-GeoWoodstock event in the same park. I ran into problems as soon as I started the hike. First, I took the wrong trail. I ended up on the McCollum trail, which isn’t even on Google Maps. After I crossed the power lines, I checked the map, and realized I was way off. I followed a faint trail back towards the Raven Rock trail, but it soon ended. I cut through about 300 yards of off-trail wilderness to get back to Raven Rock. From then, I encountered muddy ground and running water on the trail at times. Then it started to really pour. The rain soaked through my shoes, hat, pants, and even my old raincoat. This all made the hike seem much longer than it was. However I found the container easily, took in the views from the nearby vantage point, and began the trek back to my car. The hike back never seems as long as the hike out.
West Virginia
Four CAA caches in five days–the year is off to a great start. Can it get even better though?
Two months after returning from GeoWoodstock, I made plans to visit Indianapolis to attend the Post. music festival and see a band I had been trying to see perform live for ten years. After lots of route finding, I figured the best path was to fly into Chicago, visit Indiana Dunes NP, pick up the Indiana and Michigan CAA caches, and then stay with a relative in Ohio. And that’s pretty much how the first day worked out. Indiana was a fun hide that stumped me for several minutes.
Indiana
Michigan was a little bit more of an adventure, since I chose to walk along the road to get from the parking waypoint to GZ. I had to hop a wire fence to get to the container. Then, staying on that side, I had to hop another wire fence to get back to my car. It was a very pretty sunset though.
Michigan
I had initially planned to get Ohio and Kentucky the next day. However, I needed to catch up on sleep (my flight the previous day was very early) and dipping into Kentucky would have added 2.5 hours to the trip. I wanted to spend that time with relatives, and being on the road an extra 2.5 hours would put me in Indianapolis dangerously close to the start of the festival. I chose to skip Kentucky and drive straight to Indy after signing the Ohio log. I can neither confirm nor deny that my choice of shirt, celebrating four consecutive victories by the University of Michigan Wolverines football team over a university in the state of Ohio, was intentional.
Ohio
Three states, two days, 650 miles (again). Would have been nicer to get four, but I’m still happy.
Later in the year, my wife’s family wanted to have a reunion in Atlanta. Our kids and our nephew had the entire week of Thanksgiving off from school, so they decided to schedule the reunion for that week. We spent three days in Orlando before driving up to Atlanta. I managed to get some time away on our first day in Florida to drive up to Lake Norris while everyone else was recovering and adjusting to the time difference. Florida is a multi, and stage 1 actually gave me quite a bit of trouble, because I didn’t know what I was looking for. It didn’t help that the coords pointed to a different object. I finally found it using the hint, but I read the wrong number of digits. This led me to a plausible but unlikely place. After a cursory investigation, I determined I was in the wrong place and headed back into the Lake Norris conservation area. I was able to drive to stage 2, which I was grateful for, since it was a little humid. Stage 2 was a quick find, and 3 the quickest because of the hint. The GPSr was a little jumpy at the final, but I used a previous log photo to narrow my search. This was the hardest I’ve worked for a CAA cache so far, but I enjoyed the experience.
Florida
We split up the drive from Orlando to Atlanta over two days. On the second day, we made the detour to pick up Georgia. It was a lot like Maryland (except I was able to park much closer): in the woods, no hint, but still a quick find.
Georgia
Two days after Thanksgiving, I set out at 6:00 a.m. I was surprised to encounter Atlanta traffic at 6:15 on a Saturday morning, but if anything has surprised me about this trip, it’s been the traffic. The thing that has surprised me the second most is the weather. I expected Florida to be hot and humid, but I did not expect Atlanta, just a few hours north, to be so cold, and Alabama to be below freezing. I arrived at Cheaha State Park before it opened, but the gate was open and I drove through. (I did the honorable thing of paying on my way out). The gate to Bald Rock was closed, despite the sign saying it would be open at sunrise. I walked past and made my way along the long wooden walkway. Once I got to the end, I began my search. I don’t know what is the intended route to the final, but the path I took earned all of its 2.5 terrain stars, if not more. Once I got relatively close, there was a tree that stood out, and sure enough that was the one which housed the cache. I signed my name and began the trek back. This time I found what is likely the intended path (funny how that always happens. I think it’s because when going to GZ, the only measure of progress is distance away and one is reluctant to make any adjustment that deviates from the direct path. Once the cache is found, the goal now becomes a safe return to a known location).
Alabama
For Christmas, my wife and older son went to Korea, leaving me and my younger
son without plans. My wife asked him, “Do you want to come to Korea with us?”
“No.”
I asked him, “Do you want to go to NYC with grandma and your aunt?”
“No.”
“Well, where do you want to go?”
“I want to go to Death Valley.”
My heart melted and a boys road trip was planned. We spent almost a week in Las Vegas and made the 2.5 hour drive to the Utah cache on our second day, before a brief visit to Zion National Park.
Utah
I had toyed with the idea of getting two CAA caches in the same day for the second time this year, but the early sunset made me realize this was a bad idea. The next afternoon we set out for a hike in Red Rock Canyon, a short drive from Vegas, on a surprisingly cloudy day. We even got rain on our drive back.
Nevada
2026
After a long deliberation about where to go for the kids’ spring break, we settled on Hawai’i. I made sure the trip included a few days in Oahu so I could attempt this cache. I woke up early one morning and made the drive to Keaīwa Heiau State Recreation Area (somehow there was traffic in Honolulu at 6:30 a.m.). After a short but gorgeous hike and a quick search I found the container. I awarded the cache a favorite point for the scenery.
Hawai'i
Fast forward to the middle of summer. My older son was spending four weeks at camps in Pittsburgh, PA, and I needed to go pick him up. By now you know the routine: how can I extend this trip to get as many CAAs as reasonable? At first I wasn’t sure how much time I would be able to allocate to this trip; at one point I even considered flying to as far away from my destination as Texas and driving all the way from there. In the end I had enough time to spend a day attempting Tennessee and Kentucky before arriving in Pittsburgh the next day.
Being a “car guy”, I reserved a fancy car (as close to a sports car as a national chain would carry) from the rental place. When I arrived in Nashville, I got a notification that my Jeep Grand Cherokee was ready. This was not quite what I had in mind, so I went to the rental counter to see if there were other options, or if not, if I could at least get a refund. After searching for a while, the attendant said they had a Genesis available. “I’ll take it”, I said. Only after I started the car did I realize it was an entirely electric vehicle, and the attendant had not told me. By now it was 2:00 a.m., the counter was closed, and I had 500 miles to drive the next day. I went to the hotel, got a few hours of sleep, and went to the closest branch of said chain the next day. The window was open, but no one came to the desk after ten minutes. “Well”, I figured, “this is the kind of challenge that makes for a good story in the end. Let’s see what happens”. After researching how to charge the car, I set out for the Tennessee CAA. Other than the oppressive heat and humidity, I had no trouble with it.
Tennessee
After a nice stop at the National Corvette Museum, where I charged my car (it felt kind of strange bringing an EV to a muscle car mecca), I soon arrived at the park where the Kentucky cache is. I missed the turn-in to the parking waypoint, so I parked quasi-legally to retrieve this one.
Kentucky
Another year, another music festival. This year’s was in Brooklyn, which I figured would give me a good opportunity to find New York, Pennsylvania, and all of New England. I determined that the shortest path would be to fly into Hartford, CT, drive for two days to get seven states, attend the first day of the festival, and then make a trip just for PA on the morning of the second day of the festival.
Some time after I made that plan, I got the idea to add a prologue of four Midwest states, to take full advantage of the time that I had as well as to log two caches hidden in 2000 that I needed for my Jasmer grid. This order of planning became important later.
In late September, I flew into Denver at night and in the morning drove to the base of Pikes Peak for the CAA.
Colorado
I then continued on to Kansas to log Mingo. The next day, I found the Kansas CAA, which was probably my second favorite cache of the trip. It was on top of a scenic hill, belying the myth that Kansas is perfectly flat.
Kansas
I found GC37 just after crossing into Missouri. Continuing on to the CAA, halfway through a 475 mile day that followed a 530 mile day, I started to have some second thoughts. I realized that my previous road trips either constrained the driving to no more than two consecutive days or involved traveling companions. Going solo on this trip allowed me to travel at my own (ambitious) pace, but the going was getting tedious and tiring. I really did not respect how much of the country was, well, countryside. Nevertheless, I was able to keep to my schedule and find all the caches without difficulty, so I just kept trucking along.
Missouri’s CAA seemed like it was in a random location, but it was a pleasant surprise to see it was the childhood home of Walt Disney. I was able to read about his Dreaming Tree and Son of Dreaming Tree without another soul around.
Missouri
The next day I made a quick find of Illinois and then continued on to Indianapolis to catch a plane to Connecticut the following day.
Illinois
It was then that I realized that when I planned the second leg of this trip, I had assumed I would be taking a red-eye to Connecticut and would have the whole next day to drive around. The itinerary called for four CAAs in one day, a feat that surely only a handful of people have done. However, with a very early morning to catch the flight, and said flight landing at 2 p.m., I would not be able to stick to this schedule. I had somewhat anticipated this though, by not booking any hotels in advance. My plan was to push as far as I could and then find the nearest place to sleep. I made the short drive to the Connecticut CAA, where I was greeted with some interesting history, high humidity, and a swarm of mosquitoes.
Connecticut
90 minutes later, after a short but enjoyable hike, I found the Rhode Island cache. This trend would continue: all of the CAAs I found on the second leg (except Maine) involved hikes in the woods.
Rhode Island
The original plan called for continuing to Massachusetts, then New Hampshire, then into Maine to spend the night. However, I wouldn’t be able to make it to Concord, MA before nightfall, and I was not going to attempt the hike to the CAA in the dark. I found a hotel close to Concord so that I could get an early start the next day.
The next morning, I hiked through the foggy scenery to find Massachusetts and then spent a little time in wonderful downtown Concord.
Massachusetts
New Hampshire was next, my favorite cache of the trip at the end of the longest, prettiest hike.
New Hampshire
At this point, I was about half a day behind schedule. If I had kept following the original itinerary, my next stop would be the Maine CAA. However, I also wanted to see Acadia National Park, and I would not be able to reach that before nightfall. Delaying Acadia to tomorrow would only put me further behind schedule, so I decided to deviate from the plan. I wanted to pack as much into this day as I could. This meant swapping Vermont (which was scheduled for tomorrow) and Maine, so I could wake up the next day, see Acadia, and then drive straight to Albany, NY. This would also give me a shot at my goal of four CAAs in one day! I sped north, through some breathtakingly gorgeous autumn foliage. Vermont was slightly difficult, as the trail isn’t on Google Maps (fortunately c:geo supports several different maps, including offline ones I had saved a long time ago) and my GPSr was pointing me tens of feet away from GZ. Nonetheless, I was able to quickly log and get back on the road.
Vermont
I arrived in Augusta, ME just before 9 p.m. This was one of the two caches on this trip that concerned me, because it had gone missing earlier in the month. Thankfully, (1) the CO was quick with the replacement (and with responding to messages), and (2) I was able to find a great place to park. Still, I spent a good ten minutes searching with phone flashlight (note to self: always bring a real flashlight if you plan on caching) before finding the container. I had done it! Four in a single day! And not the four closest to each other, either. It’s very lucky that this was the only CAA that did NOT involve a hike, otherwise I would not have been able to manage this feat.
Maine
The next day, I visited Acadia National Park as planned (it was incredibly crowded, even on a Thursday) and then drove to Albany for the CAA, complete with slugs on the container.
New York
Due to the absurd amount of driving I had done this day, I had almost caught up to my original schedule, which called for me to end the day in the Bronx. However, I would have arrived after my host was asleep, so at this point I had a choice to make. I could get a hotel where I was. I could drive closer to NYC. Or I could get really ambitious. My original plan was for me to spend all of Friday in NYC, so I would have time to settle before attending the first day of the music festival that evening, then drive three hours to the PA CAA cache on Saturday morning, then turn around and drive back to NYC for the second day of the festival. Since I wasn’t going to be in NYC on Friday morning anyways, what if I found PA on Friday instead of Saturday? I decided to go for it and drove two hours to Binghamton, putting me at around 650 miles for the day.
The next day was unquestionably the moment of truth for the entire trip. PA was the other cache that concerned me, because logs said it was a long, difficult, boggy bushwhack with inaccurate coordinates. Would I even be able to find this cache? Would I then be able to drive the three hours to NYC in time to take a 1.5 hour subway ride to Brooklyn? Why oh why couldn’t this cache be in Pittsburgh, the city where I grew up and still have family, where I visit every year? I put these questions behind me and just focused on what I needed to do. The first part of the hike was surprisingly easy and made me wonder if this find could be easier than logs had led me to believe. However, any semblance of a game trail soon ended, and I had no idea of how to proceed. I waded through thorns, hopped over logs, stepped in only one puddle, and went around in circles, until I ended up at the point where previous logs told me to go. Here, I didn’t see anything. I then started looking at photos from logs to see if there were any landmarks I could recognize. I did notice a double-trunk tree appeared in a lot of photos and I saw one of those nearby so I walked over to it. I circled and circled but I didn’t see anything. Running out of ideas, I looked around again and saw a different double-trunk tree about 30 feet further away from GZ. Right at its base was a large ammo can. Finally! All in all it took me about 45 minutes from parking to signing the log and then another 10 minutes to walk back to my car.
Pennsylvania
This ended the main caching portion of what I had come to call my “indeterminable, insane trip” (because “long, strange trip” was already taken). I drove to NYC, attended the festival, and logged a few more caches in the Bronx and Manhattan before returning to California. Seven days, 12 CAAs, 2700 miles driven, many lessons learned (be ambitious yet flexible, bring a flashlight).
I fear my progress going forward will be significantly slower than the whirlwind of the past two years. Most of the remaining states I have not even visited yet. It’s going to be hard to convince the family to visit places that don’t have attractions nearby. Yet, somehow I’ve made it work so far, so I’m hoping I can presernve the momentum.