OCNA Challenge Caches – OpenCaching North America Geocaching Blog

12 more OCNA Challenge Caches released!

November 19, 2015November 19, 2015 OpenCaching North America Leave a comment

We have released 12 more of our site owned locationless type challenge caches, for a total of 42 at this time. You can expect more in the future as well. Several of them are named “Variety Show”, and pertain to hiding some or all of the 14 different types of caches available on our site. Tentative plans call for about 30 more, and it should be obvious Variety Show challenges that pertain to finding some or all of the the 14 different types will be among them. The 12 newly released caches also include seasonal finding challenges, and FTF challenges. They are all linked to below, along with a short explanation of their requirements.

OCNA Challenge Cache – First To Find Hound (Level 1) – OU0935 (Be the FTF on 10 OCNA caches.)
OCNA Challenge Cache – First To Find Hound (Level 2) – OU0936 (Be the FTF on 20 OCNA caches.)
OCNA Challenge Cache – Seasonal Cacher (Winter) – OU0937 (Find OCNA listed caches hidden in the months of December, January, and February.)
OCNA Challenge Cache – Seasonal Cacher (Spring) – OU0938 (Find OCNA listed caches hidden in the months of March, April, and May.)
OCNA Challenge Cache – Seasonal Cacher (Summer) – OU0939 (Find OCNA listed caches hidden in the months of June, July and August.)
OCNA Challenge Cache – Seasonal Cacher (Fall) – OU093A (Find OCNA listed caches hidden in the months of September, October and November.)
OCNA Challenge Cache – Ultimate Monthly Cacher – OU093B (Find a OCNA listed cache a month for 12 months.)
OCNA Challenge Cache – Variety Show Hider (Level 1) – OU093C (Hide 4 different cache types.)
OCNA Challenge Cache – Variety Show Hider (Level 2) – OU093D (Hide 8 different cache types.)
OCNA Challenge Cache – Variety Show Hider (Level 3) – OU093E (Hide 12 different cache types.)
OCNA Challenge Cache – Variety Show Hider (Level 4) – OU093F (Hide all 14 different cache types.)
OCNA Challenge Cache – Variety Show Extravaganza – OU0940 (Hide and find all 14 different cache types.)

Only the lonely (New OCNA challenge caches released)

October 24, 2015November 19, 2015 OpenCaching North America 1 Comment

On April 28th, 2015, one week to the day after the most popular Geocaching website in the world imposed a one year moratoriam on new challenge caches, we at OpenCaching North America introduced our own. As the banner above says, they are Locationless, so to speak. If you qualify, you can log it. They are owned by a special Admin account, OCNAChallenges, and are all Unknown (?) type caches. They are presented as Geo Art in the Gulf of Mexico. We released 12 on that day, April 28th, 2015, and released 8 more on May 6th, 2015. And then, nothing. We are a small, all volunteer organization, we got busy! We hosted an After GeoWoodstock event in Maryland. We planned, ran, and handed out prizes for a contest on our site. We had to get our 5th anniversary Pathtags finalized, as well as a free back anyone can use for their own Pathtags. We endured an almost month long Denial of Service attack. Yes, that one really happened, although we never publicized it. 🙂 We could go on, but won’t.

Only the lonely (Know the way I feel) was a smash hit for Roy Orbison in 1960, reaching No. 2 on the Billboard charts. If you’re a little younger than that, a totally different song titled Only the lonely by The Motels peaked at No. 9 on the Billboard chart in 1982. What does this have to do with us, or our challenge caches? Well, on Wednesday, October 21st, 2015, we released 10 more challenge caches (the letter N in The Gulf of Mexico), and they all pertain to lonely caches! Only the lonely, get it? Find caches that haven’t been found on our site in over 1 year, over 2 years, or over 3 years to be eligible to log some of these challenge caches. The 10 caches are listed below, along with a short explanation of the requirements for each. This blog post is a couple days behind, so most have been logged by some of our more observant players who have noticed these new listings. And a heads up, we plan on releasing 12 more challenge caches in the near future. We’re certainly not planning another 5 1/2 month gap between them!

OCNA Challenge Cache – Lonely Cache Level 1 – OU0853 (Find a cache that has not been for at least one full year.)
OCNA Challenge Cache – Lonely Cache Level 2 – OU0854 (Find a cache that has not been found for at least 2 years.)
OCNA Challenge Cache – Lonely Cache Level 3 – OU0855 (Find a cache that has not been found for at least 3 years.)
OCNA Challenge Cache – Lonely Cache Level 1.3 – OU0856 (Find 3 caches that have not been for at least one full year.)
OCNA Challenge Cache – Lonely Cache Level 1.5 – OU0926 (Find 3 caches that have not been for at least one full year.)
OCNA Challenge Cache – Lonely Cache Level 2.3 – OU0928 (Find 3 caches that have not been for at least 2 years.)
OCNA Challenge Cache – Lonely Cache Level 2.5 – OU0927 (Find 5 caches that have not been for at least 2 years.)
OCNA Challenge Cache – Lonely Cache Level 3.3 – OU0929 (Find 3 caches that have not been for at least 3 years.)
OCNA Challenge Cache – Lonely Cache Level 3.5 – OU092A (Find 5 caches that have not been for at least 3 years.)
OCNA Challenge Cache – Lonely Cache Combination – OU092B (Find 3 caches that have not been found in 1 year, 2 caches that have not been found in 2 years, and 1 cache that has not been found in 3 years.)

GeoGearHeads 178: OpenCaching NA II

June 5, 2015June 5, 2015 OpenCaching North America Leave a comment

OCNA Admins DudleyGrunt and NativTXN were recently on the GeoGearHeads Podcast episode 178, talking OCNA, in an episode titled OpenCaching NA II. They were last on that podcast on Episode 125. If you count by 10’s on your fingers, you can figure out that was just over a year ago, hence this episode being titled OpenCaching NA II. Anytime our Admins are on a Geoaching Podcast, we run it here on the blog as well. Listen to them give an overview of our site, with an emphasis on our recently released Challenge Caches. GeoGearHeads is a near weekly feature with The Bad Cop and DarrylW4 discussing topics of interest to Geocachers, Location-based Gamers, and Technology Enthusiasts. They record the shows live through Google+ Hangout On Air Thursday nights at 9:10PM Eastern/6:10PM Pacific (The upcoming shows are listed on the Google+ GeoGearHeads page). You can subscribe to the audio version through iTunes, RSS, or Stitcher, watch the shows on YouTube, and check them out on FaceBook, Google+, and Twitter.

OCNA Admin DudleyGrunt on The Geocaching Podcast 5/6/15

May 11, 2015May 11, 2015 OpenCaching North America Leave a comment

OCNA’s longest tenured Admin, DudleyGrunt, is an official fill in host on The Geocaching Podcast, and fulfilled those duties for the first time on Wednesday, May 6th, 2015 on episode 401. In addition to discussing our site’s new Challenge caches with host HeadHardHat and fellow co-host Taz427, they also discuss two Terracaching.com Cyber caches which support very worthy causes. Those being DG’s own 2015 Walk to Defeat ALS Cyber Cache (which supports defeating ALS, and more specifically, the team Ben’s Buddies in honor of DG’s Father) and St. Baldrick’s 2015 Cyber Cache (which supports childhood Cancer research, and more specifically, Team OConnellz). You can listen to (and watch) the video version of the whole show below. There is the usual pre-show banter, but the actual show starts at the 6:40 mark.

More OCNA Challenge Caches released!

May 6, 2015May 6, 2015 OpenCaching North America Leave a comment

Here we see one of our loyal users feverishly logging one of our new locationless type Challenge Caches. OK, not really, we had that image in our library from another post. But these site owned Challenge Caches have been getting rave reviews from some of our most active long time users, as well as on some Geocaching forums elsewhere on the internet. In the 8 days since they’ve been released, 10 different users have posted 48 find logs on them. Not only is that a lot by our standards, that’s just the people who’ve checked the website or blog in the the last 8 days. We will also announce them via a “bulletin” to all registered users of the site in the next day or two. By the way, we rarely use these bulletins, and you can opt out at sign up (or by following the instructions in the bulletin). The last time we sent one in August 2014, 15 people, mostly from Yahoo accounts, reported us as spammers! Don’t do that, we’re not spammers. 🙂

So today we release 8 more, and you can see we now have a “C” in the Gulf of Mexico, to go along with an “O”. So obviously we will be spelling “OCNA”. Will we do more than that? We can’t say, but we will tell you there won’t be any more released until a couple weeks after Geowoodstock at the earliest. The 8 released on May 6th, 2015 are:

OCNA Challenge Cache – I get around (Finder level 1) – OU07CF (Find OCNA caches in 3 different States or Provinces)
OCNA Challenge Cache – I get around (Finder level 2) – OU07D3 (Find OCNA caches in 6 different States or Provinces)
OCNA Challenge Cache – I get around (Finder level 3) – OU07D3 (Find OCNA caches in 10 different States or Provinces)
OCNA Challenge Cache – I get around (Finder level 4) – OU07D5 (Find OCNA caches in 25 different States or Provinces)
OCNA Challenge Cache – They found it! Level 1 – OU07D6 (Receive 10 found it logs on your owned caches)
OCNA Challenge Cache – They found it! Level 2 – OU07D7 (Receive 50 found it logs on your owned caches)
OCNA Challenge Cache – I get around (Hider level 1) – OU07D8 (Hide OCNA caches in 5 different States or Provinces)
OCNA Challenge Cache – I get around (Hider level 2) – OU07D9 (Hide OCNA caches in 10 different States or Provinces)

Introducing OCNA Challenge Caches!!

April 29, 2015April 29, 2015 OpenCaching North America 2 Comments

One week to the day after the most popular Geocaching website in the world imposed a one year moratoriam on new challenge caches, we at OpenCaching North America our introducing our own! As the banner says, they are Locationless, so to speak. If you qualify, you can log it. They are owned by a special Admin account, OCNAChallenges, and are all Unknown (?) type caches. They are presented as Geo Art in the Gulf of Mexico. We plan on having 40+, but we are just releasing the first 12 today, Tuesday, April 28th, 2015.

Category: OCNA Challenge Caches