Opencaching.us – Page 11 – OpenCaching North America Geocaching Blog

Hank The Hawk update

January 10, 2015January 10, 2015 OpenCaching North America Leave a comment

We introduced our mascot, Hank The Hawk via a blog post on Friday, January 2nd, 2015. Although the post is actually dated January 3rd, due to that whole pesky Greenwich Mean Time server time thing. We have now implemented Hank into the “frame” around every page on our website in two different places. We have also designed Hank The Hawk T-Shirts for our OCNA Swag Store, powered by Spreadshirt.com! We have five different T-Shirts available; standard weight for Men and Women, “Premium” for Men and Women, and Unisex Tie Dye. They all come in your choice of colors, depending on which particular one you may be interested in.

And we didn’t plan this, but there just happens to be a sale right now!

Spreadshirt.com runs many sales during the course of the year, and from Friday, January 9th 2015 until Tuesday, January 13th 2015, they are offering 15% off of all orders! If you choose a standard weight Mens or Women’s T-Shirt, you could be rolling in a stylish Hank The Hawk T-Shirt for $13.85 delivered anywhere in the Continental U.S. in 3-4 business days. What a deal! Or anything else in the OCNA Swag Store, or anything else Spreadshirt.com sells. Even if you’re not interested in our “swag”, do check out Spreadshirt.com. They were founded in 2001 in Germany, but we use their U.S. subsidiary in Greensburg, Pa., a suburb of Pittsburgh. They are much more reasonably priced than their more well known competitor Cafe Press. If you have a design, you can have your item made on an “on demand” basis, even if it’s only one item.

HikerJamz After-Cache: Episode 27

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

[spreaker type=standard width=500px autoplay=false episode_id=5430539]

Hikerjamz After-Cache is an internet radio show on Spreaker. We discuss geocaching stories that you, the listener sends in about your favorite geocaching adventure of the week with your host Hikerjamz & co-host Crazycritter1966 from Florida, USA. Here is the link to send a voice message https://www.speakpipe.com/hikerjamz

Introducing Hank The Hawk; the OCNA mascot

January 3, 2015January 7, 2015 OpenCaching North America 1 Comment

Not to be outdone by green Frogs with antennae on their head, or blue Squirrels that don’t really look too much like Squirrels, OpenCaching North America is ringing in 2015 by introducing our new mascot; Hank the Hawk! The idea for him, believe it or not, was born out of a thread in our forums started by a cacher who couldn’t find their own cache listings on our site. We quickly figured out he was confusing us with Garmin’s Opencaching.com, a rather common mistake. He commented how the site looked a little different then he remembered, and there was no “little blue mascot guy thingy”. 🙂 We then started our own thread in our own sub forum visible only to our admins and volunteers, and the idea for Hank was born. Hank is a red-tailed Hawk, by the way. For more on why he is a red-tailed Hawk, why he’s named Hank, and who made him, as well as some other things OCNA has planned for 2015, click the read more button below.

Has Geocaching finally peaked, and on the decline?

December 11, 2014December 11, 2014 OpenCaching North America 4 Comments

That depends on how you define “on the decline”. If it were defined as the number of new caches created by year, we’re afraid the answer is yes. Here you see a bar graph of caches created by year on our website. Note that caches created doesn’t necessarily mean all of them were published, but 98%+ of them were. Keep in mind our site was launched in mid-August 2010, so there was quite a bit of interest in the new website to have 527 caches created in just 4 1/2 months. Then we had a somewhat unexplained decline in 2011, and we peaked in 2012. You can see where the numbers have gone from there. It’s not just us though. With 3 weeks left in 2014, new caches hidden in The United States in 2014 are down 23% from their 2013 levels on Geocaching.com, as well as being down in most Countries in the world that are considered traditional hotbeds of Geocaching activity. However, there are a few Countries that are exceptions to this overall decline in caches hidden, and there is some good news regarding the number of new Geocachers, and the overall number of caches being found.

Winner announced for the TravelFleas Giveaway!

December 6, 2014December 6, 2014 OpenCaching North America Leave a comment

We have a winner for our $10 TravelFleas.com Gift Certificate Giveaway! Ian, AKA Bangkok_Ian, a Geocacher from Foxwood, England (A suburb of York, England) was the lucky winner. He is so named because he lived and worked in Bangkok, Thailand for 10 years. Sounds very interesting, perhaps we could convince him to be interviewed by this blog in the future. 🙂 Congratulations to him, and thanks to all who entered the contest. Didn’t win? You can always buy your own personalized TravelFleas from TravelFleas.com. They are very reasonably priced, and are a great signature item.

2nd Annual TravelFleas Gift Certificate Holiday Giveaway

November 27, 2014December 17, 2014 OpenCaching North America Leave a comment

Happy Black Friday, shoppers! Actually, we’re posting this Thanksgiving evening, but Thanksgiving is the new Black Friday. Our November/December 2013 TravelFleas Gift Certificate Holiday Giveaway went pretty well, so we’ve decided to make it an annual thing. So once again, we’re giving away a $10 Gift Certificate to TravelFleas.com, and we want to insure that the winner has plenty of time to get theirs ordered, manufactured, and shipped before the holidays; as TravelFleas make a perfect stocking stuffer for that Geocacher in your life!

The crew at TravelFleas are great friends of this blog and our website via social media. In case you’re not familiar with TravelFleas, they are personalized tags (they can accept up to 20 characters) measuring 1/2″ x 1 1/4″, which can be attached to a Geocaching trackable, or placed in a Geocache as a signature item. They are available in 12 colors, and you can buy them in the TravelFleas Store on their website. Note they have other items for sale, including TravelFleas logbooks, necklace kits, and license plates (a moot point for the blogger, who lives in a 2 plate State). Or you could learn more about them by reading the interview we did on this blog with John from TravelFleas on June 27th, 2013, or the interview The It’s not about the numbers blog did with Mike from TravelFleas in 2012.

To enter The TravelFleas Gift Certificate Holiday Giveaway, fill out the form below with your name (as it says, “Geonick” is fine), and a valid email address. We will never use your email address, and the Google Document storing all the entries will be deleted after the contest. There are rules, of course, which appear below, in italicized text above the entry form. Don’t forget to check your spam folders, to see if you won!

Rules: To enter, provide your name and email address in the form below. One entry per person, and one entry per email address. There are no Geographical restrictions, contest is open to anyone in the world. The contest begins upon publication of this blog post on Thursday, November 27th, 2014, and ends at 7:00 PM Eastern Standard Time on Wednesday, December 3rd, 2014. One winner will be chosen at random from the entries received. Winner will be notified via email, notification being sent from the email address opencachingnorthamerica at gmail.com (be sure to check your spam folders!), and must respond within 48 hours, or the prize will be forfeited, and another winner will be chosen. Once accepted, the prize will be delivered directly from TravelFleas.com.

Category: Opencaching.us