When I wrote about the global sport of geocaching in July 2005, there were 181,216 active geocaches in 215 countries and in the prior 7 days there had been been 138,512 new log entries written at geocaching.com by 24,318 participants. As of today there are 423,816 active caches worldwide. In the last 7 days, there have been 325,387 new logs written by 45,911 account holders. In other words geocaching has doubled in the past two years. I suspect it will double again in the next two years. Although my own enthusiasm has not diminished, I haven’t had nearly as many "finds" due to the extensive travel schedule so far this year. (I did manage to find one in St. Petersburg, Russia).
Today was a perfect day to add geocache #76 to my record, so I set out for Kipp Island in the morning before the Lake got busy. There are too many rocks close to shore to go there by boat unless you want to anchor and swim ashore. Instead I went on the jetski. The island is located in Pike County Pennsylvania and is one of four islands on Lake Wallenpaupack. It is roughly 1,000 feet long and a width less than 100 feet at the widest part. In spite of the small size, the Tupperware cache was well hidden and the GPS signal wavered due to the dense trees and other vegetation. The huge number of bugs did not help either. Five of us searched for more than a half hour last summer and could not find it, so it felt very good to have a fairly quick (and lucky) find. After signing the logbook and entering TNLN (took nothing left nothing) at geocaching.com it was off for a ride. Tomorrow is supposed to be 90 degrees so it will be a good day to stay inside and write about my early experience with the new iPhone.

• Photo Gallery – Kipp Island
• Other patrickWeb stories about geocaching
• Other patrickWeb stories about hiking