Leap Day has a very special meaning to the geocaching community.  It is the day that only comes around once every four years that allows us to finally fill the last space on the “Finds for Each Day of the Year” chart!

Finds For Each Day of the year chart

Many geocachers, including myself, take the day off from work, to make a day long celebration of Leap Day.  The Geocaching headquarters even gave out virtual souvenirs to those who found a geocache over the weekend and who attended an event on February 29, 2016 to celebrate the day!

In the Chattanooga, Tennessee area, there were three events planned as part of the celebration, at three different times of the day allowing everyone the opportunity to attend at least one(GC6B1HM – Leap Year Hike 2016, GC6902G – Take The Leap – 2016, GC6917N – Northwing65’s February 29th Event.  We had planned to attend all three and grab as many caches as we could in between.

Leap Day Weekend

As noted in Crazy Dave’s Moving Day At Crazy Daisy’s, Laura, Shelby and I had spent most of the weekend changing booths and cleaning.  We were too tired and exhausted to do any caching.  I did desperately need a hair cut, so we decided we were going to get that done, then head to bed to rest up for “LEAP DAY!”

As I was preparing to go under the knife, I received a notification from geocaching.com that a new geocache had been listed less than three miles away!  I hadn’t gotten a First To Find yet for February, so the hair cut would have to wait.  Laura and I jumped in the truck and raced to find GC6C563 – Coming to America.  In less than sixteen minutes, I had found and signed the log.  Our Leap Day adventures were off to a good start!!

Leap Day Finally Arrives!!

The children happily bounced out of bed at 6:00 am, ready to start our day with a three-mile hike (Just kidding!!)

We managed to head out the door a few minutes after 8:00 am and arrived at 8:30 am for the start of our Leap Day Hike.  While on our hike, we had a chance to get to know a few geocachers a little better, search for and find a few geocaches and get some much-needed exercise!  The hike did turn out being a bit longer than expected, but everyone managed to walk out on their own.  I was very proud of my crew.

Crazy Dave with Yahairathevegan Stardustzzz and her Geo-dog on the Leap Year Hike

Next, we headed to the Taco Bell in Ooltewah, TN for the lunch time event.  We had good conversation and tried some new menu items (well, new to us).  While talking to Flagg2007 (his geocaching user name), we decided to go on our first ever night caching adventure (more about that later).  We worked to get a small group together for the trip into the dark woods down in Trion, GA.  Laura decided that she would need to take a rest before attempting the night cache so we headed home after the event.

The sunset was supposed to be at 6:38 so we all decided to meet at ground zero at 7:00 pm.  The Crew loaded up and started heading that way at about 4:30 pm(I had to pick up a few geocaches on the way down!!). When we arrived, there were a few cachers waiting and Flagg2007 had not yet arrived.  When he did, we all headed of into the woods in search of our prize.  It took about an hour, but we were successful and had a great time!

Leap Day was a great success, even though we only logged twelve finds for the day!  We got to know some new geocachers, visit with old geocachers, and tried several new things.  I’m just sad that I had to go back to work the next day!!