Welcome!!!!

You have reached the homepage of the Michigan Geocaching Organization (MiGO). The purpose of our organization is to promote the sport of Geocaching in Michigan via improved communications and to provide information to the public about our activities and the sport of geocaching. Please spend some time on our site. If you have any questions, feel free to contact us or visit www.geocaching.com for more details.

Join MiGO Today! Membership gives you many benefits. MiGO is one of the oldest and most respected Geocaching organizations in the country. Since our inception in April, 2002 we have grown both in size and stature. In 2007 we were granted an organizational land use permit by the Michigan DNR. This permit is paid annually by MiGO and enables all our members to place caches on permitted DNR lands, with the appropriate permit where required, at no fee. This is just one of the many benefits of your membership. You'll also become part of a local and tight-knit Geocaching community with an active interest in caching in our state. Our forums are very active and are a great place to meet cachers and learn.

To Join, renew or upgrade your membership, pull down the Membership Menu.

The Bad News:

It is with great difficulty and much sadness that we have to inform our membership and the Michigan geocaching community that there will not be a Winter Social this coming February. The last couple of years, MiGO has strived to make Winter Social bigger, better and longer as an entire weekend of events in the middle of winter. We do not want to get away from this type of Winter Social. We do want to grow it even more. The Winter Social is our annual fund raiser through the Silent Auction. That, too, will be postponed and/or modified.

This decision hasn't come easily. It takes months of planning and preparation to put on a weekend of fun like Winter Social. We would all like to believe we are going to find our way out of the Covid situation, hopefully soon. Not knowing what the situation will be is hard on us, but much more so to potential facilities to hold such an event, the caterers who would provide our meal, and other facilities that would host Friday and Sunday events. No one wants to commit. A decision to hold a large indoor social event in the middle of Winter is not prudent at this time and may not even be allowed, based on past and future decisions by government officials in Lansing and/or Washington. We, therefore, have decided to not hold our beloved Winter Social in 2021 and resume in 2022.

The Good News:

In lieu of the Winter Social being AWOL for 2021, we are planning a one day, outdoor event in Southeast Michigan (where WS 2021 was supposed to occur) to help us get through the long winter doldrums. We plan on having a series of new Adventure Labs activated on the day of the event. We hope to practice social distancing in a place that will allow us to have a bonfire or fireplace. Stay tuned for more announcements as the new plan come together.

Winter Social will be back in 2022 and will be held in the Southeast Region as was planned for 2021. We hope it will be even bigger and better than in 2019 and 2020.

The Bottom Line:

The Winter Social is our annual fund raiser through the Silent Auction. We are looking at alternatives. Without our annual Silent Auction, we will very likely be a little short on funds for the year. What can you do? Upgrade or renew your membership to the Lake Superior level. That will help keep us moving in the right direction with regards to events, promotions, contests, etcetera.

On a final note, the annual meeting required by our 501(c)7 status will likely be held using a Zoom call. This will be announced and placed on the calendar when the details are worked out.

Thank you for understanding.

The MiGO Executive Committee and Board of Directors

2021 MiGO Scholarship

In memory of one of its past members, the Michigan Geocaching Organization will be sponsoring a $300.00 scholarship aimed at assisting our next generation of Michigan youth in their studies of outdoor recreational activities, in hopes of helping them gain an appreciation of the outdoors while learning to be good stewards of Michigan's land conservation and the environment in general.

Any active MiGO member, their spouse or their child or grandchild, who will be attending a college or university, is eligible to apply for this scholarship. Details and a link to the application can be found on the MiGO Scholarship Page.

MiGO Scholarship

2020 MiGO Election

The Self Nomination Period for positions on the Executive Committee and for Regional Vice President is open through October 31st. If more nominations are received than we have open positions, an election will be held December 1st through 15th. Click the button below to get to the nomination form.

The MiGO Executive Committee has seven elected positions that serve two year terms. The five Regional Vice Presidents also serve two year terms. Approximately half of these positions are open to fill each year.

The EC is responsible for supporting the goals and mission of MiGO, promoting geocaching and running the day to day operations of the organization. The EC reports to the Board of Directors through the MiGO EC President. The EC has seven elected positions that serve two year terms. Approximately half of these positions are up for nomination/election each year. Specific EC positions are decided on by the new EC after the nomination/election period.

RVPs are responsible for supporting the goals and mission of MiGO, promoting geocaching, being the liaison with members and park managers, and supporting local events and CITO's within their region. RVPs will be given a budget for the purpose of supporting events. RVPs report to the EC Vice President. The five RVPs also serve two year terms. Approximately half of these positions are up for nomination/election each year.

Being an officer in this organization has been a very satisfying. We currently have unfilled positions that we would dearly love to have filled. If you think you might like to play a part in it, we would welcome you. See the details in the preamble of the Self Nomination form for eligibility. If you change your mind, you can cancel your form.

Self Nomination for 2020 MiGO Election

Promote MiGO on your Geocache Page

MiGO members are encouraged to identify geocaches as being owned by a MiGO Member. We have had a page containing sample logos and other graphics for MiGO Cache Owners to include on their own cache pages. Recently, HQ tightened their security, breaking many COs links to graphics and other pages. Neither our old host or our new one were included in the acceptable list.

The good news is, we have placed the graphics on our own Google Drive space and updated the page with the logos and code to go with them.

The bad news is, we would like all of our members to update all geocache pages that used our older host with code for the new location of the graphics.

Click the link below to see what is available and copy the new code to your cache pages.

Add a MiGO Logo to your cache page

November Promotions

Take lots of pictures while you are caching. A photo contest is coming.

October Promotions

MiGO HaUNTED WoRD SeARCH

Finding your way to creepy places for Halloween.

Halloween may be a bust this year in many communities, but that shouldn’t keep you and your kiddies from being able to have some Halloween fun. The object of the game will be to find geocaches with certain words in their titles. The more words you find, the better your chance to win. Follow these steps the rules described below and in the Notes and Rules section, and abide by the MiGO Code of Fair Play (see note 2). This is a contest open to all MiGO levels, but there are chances to win prizes for the supporting tiers of Lake Huron and Lake Superior level members.

Contest in Brief:

This contest is open to All MiGO Member Levels. Once a year, we give our Lake St. Clair members a chance to see what they are missing.
The contest runs from October 1st through October 31st.
To enter this contest, use the Contest Entry Form linked on the contest page (see button below).
During the contest period and after you enter, find, log and log online caches with the selected words in the cache name. There are 100 words to search for.
You must follow all of the rules detailed on the contest page.
Use the Word List and Scoresheet linked on the contest page to record the geocache ID and date of your finds corresponding to those words. This sheet is for your use only.
Prior to 11:59PM, October 31st, submit your finds using the Contest Completed Form on the contest page. I don’t recommend waiting until the last day or minute to do this.
Results will be announced within a few days after the contest closes. Please be patient, as it will take time to gather and collate the results.
All communication between players and the Contest Manager(s) will be through the two contest forms and through the email form linked on the contest page. Any other attempt at asking questions (like Facebook, direct email, personal message, etc.) will be ignored, NIAOB!

MiGO Haunted Word Search Contest Page

Who who who who who who who who wha wha whaha ha ha haaaaa!

September Promotions:

MiGO Signature Jacket Preorder

At long last, the opportunity that some of you have been waiting for. You can now submit a pre-order for your own personalized MiGO Signature Fleece Jacket in two different styles. This opportunity will be open for a short period of time so we can get jackets ordered and in people's hands hopefully by early to mid November.

In order to get the prices shown, we have to have a minimum of ten jackets pre-ordered. If you want to stand out at cool weather events, order yours now. We can place an order when we have a minimum of ten pre-orders.

Charges for the jackets do not include shipping from the MiGO Store to you. Shipping charges are estimated to be $8-$10 per jacket, perhaps less for multi-jacket orders. You may be able to pick up your jacket at an event, but that may not be until next year, depending on our old friend Covid-19. To have the jacket shipped, you will get an invoice through your MiGO account. Once paid, your jacket will be sent to you. LS Member Coupons can be used for the jacket but do not apply to shipping costs.

The jackets can be personalized with your trackable number but do not include a trackable number in the price.

Jackets are 10.3 oz. 100% Polyester Fleece.

Click to see selections and/or preorder

August Promotions

In an effort to bring more contests and promotions to supporting MiGO members, we have decided to adapt Geocacher BINGO, into a more interactive version for this contest. You will be seeking caches with specific types, locations, attributes or having other criteria. This contest scores based upon completed Bingo lines, up to three per card. This is a contest for all skill levels.

This is a premium contest with rewards and is open to Lake Huron and Lake Superior level members only. Trial members can play but they must upgrade to Lake Huron or Lake Superior membership before the end of the contest to be scored. Lake St. Chair members need to renew or request an upgrade to Lake Huron or Lake Superior level to enter. There will be two prizes awarded, one to a Lake Huron contestant and one to a Lake Superior contestant.

The contest ran from July 20th through August 31st.

And the winners are...

$5
MiGO Store
Gift Certificate

Of the 67 BiNGO lines submitted by Lake Huron Members, the randomly selected winner of a $5 MiGO Store Gift Certificate is...

GLC

Of the 46 BiNGO lines submitted by Lake Superior Members, the randomly selected winner of the August 2010 GeoCoin from the GeoCoin Club collection and a one year extension of her Lake Superior membership is...

Debbiedoll

Surprise prize: Of the 15 entries who offered a future BiNGO theme, the MiGO Challenge Work Group selected a winning theme that will be used in a future MiGO BiNGO. Receiving a July 2010 GeoCoin of the Month for her suggestion is...

Cinamuck

The competition for a future MiGO BiNGO theme was very close. We may very well use more than one of the suggestions. MiGO BiNGO seems pretty popular, as attested by the comments left by players, including this one:

"This was my first MiGO contest and I really pushed myself! Thank you, I found this a lot of fun and would do it again!"

Thank you to all of the players. Your participation makes the efforts to provide you entertainment very rewarding.

The MiGO Challenge Work Group.

GC8K0ZR - August 22, Sleepy Hollow State Park, plus a weekend of camping fun

Camp MiGO 2 was another success, thanks in a huge part to the attendees paying attention to the Covid-19 plan. People kept to social distancing guidelines and at no time during the day were there anywhere close to the limit of people at outdoor gatherings.

So far, 85 cachers have left "Attended" logs. Around well over 100 cachers signed the log book.

We were under the scrutiny of the DNR and were visited by Park Manager Lisa, who seemed happy with our management of the event. We hope that this is a sign that we will be welcomed back in 2021 for Camp MiGO 3.

Sleepy Hollow State Park has welcomed a large geocaching event for a decade with the annual Haunted Hollow Event. In 2019, MiGO picked up the reins and held the first Camp MiGO. This year, it became a new tradition with the Second Annual Camp MiGO. The 2019 event was a big success for MiGO and the caching community. Hopefully, everyone who attended thought the same of the 2020 event, even under the Covid-19 rules. There were the familiar 50 plus caches spread all over the park and multiple events over the weekend including the familiar, yet somewhat more restricted grill.

Thank you to MiGO President Steve Bassette and the crew of cache hiders for another successful Sleepy Hollow State Park event.

Click on the link above to log your "Attended".

June+ Promotions

With the state and the country starting to reopen, it is with great pleasure that MiGO announces the first post-Covid organization activities, created by our MiGO Challenge Work Group. There are more contests, promotions and challenges in the pipeline:

For our Lake Huron & Lake Superior Members:

For Everyone:

MiGO Five Oldest in My County Contest is Over.

And we have Co-winners:

Congratulations to 2girls1GPS, the prize winners for the MFOMC Contest. 2girls1GPS scored 33,810 days, and also had the oldest find in the contest, the oldest cache in the state, GC35 - Power Island! That is some serious gaming to use such a difficult cache to get to.

Congratulations to DanTMan&Co, the entrant with the highest score, 33,995. As DanTMan&Co is a MiGO Regioinal Vice President, he was not eligible to be the prize winner of this contest. You SE Region members should send him congratulation and condolence messages.

Runners up include 4KClub, Equine1030, mkettel, Fallin' and Stuffedcabbage, all over 30,000 days.

Good sport awards go to EC member DirtBikeGranny who only had six possible targets, two of which needing archive, and RVP bgscrabble who only had one possible target, a cache he had already DNFed earlier this year.

The lazy schmuck award goes to yours truly, aghudley, for never getting around to finding two more on my list. You should all give me a hard time about that :)

Full results can be seen at:

MFOMC Contest 620 Results

If you think you have a scoring correction, please report it using contest email on the contest page. Disputes will be "heard" through Friday, July 17th.

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It is a premium reward contest which will keep you close to home. There will be no panic for completing the contest first or with the most finds. This contest may give the less experienced cachers a bit of an advantage, but the cagey, experienced cachers may win the day. This contest is a bit different and in most cases could easily be completed in a day or two, but there is a catch: We provide your targets. We would like as many of our Lake Huron and Lake Superior members to play, so we can get an idea if the concept is a good one.

This contest can be entered any time from June 8th to June 29th and must be completed by July 12th. Once you start, tell others about it. We invite non-members and Lake St. Clair members to become Lake Huron or Lake Superior members and participate in this contest. Trial members may participate but must renew as Lake Huron or Lake Superior members to be scored.

You will be required to have your on line logging, (at least close to home) up to date prior to entry, so get busy between now and June 8th.

This contest will be tricky for us to set up and score. Once you enter, it will take a day or two to set up your targets. We will email them to you, then you can begin your quest. Remember, you must be an active MiGO Lake Huron or Lake Superior member to play.

TO ENTER: Go to the Premium Challenges Menu and select MFOMC Contest to get to the contest page.

A new GeoArt, put together by MiGO, puts the MiGO Hiker Dude on the map in Montcalm County. It will be a bicycle accessible or hikeable GeoArt over about 8 miles of the Fred Meijer Heartland Trail between Edmore and Stanton. Trail-head parking is available in Edmore, McBride and Stanton.

The caches will publish approximately 8:00AM and will all be mystery caches with a simple puzzle on the web page. Many of the answers will have to be looked up on the INTERNET with provided links. You will need to collect information from the cache container or log book to determine the location of a final cache. Instructions for obtaining your pathtag are in the final cache. No GPX file will be provided. Please do not share any cache coordinates or answers with others. The prize will be the MiGO Hider Dude Geoart pathtag pictured.

The latest from the MSPC GeoTour:

October 1st, 2020.
It has been seventeen and a half months since the kickoff of the Michigan State Parks Centennial GeoTour, Memorial Day weekend, 2019. A lot has happened since then. During 2019, cachers went crazy to qualify for one, two, three or all four regional pathtags and one or two of the DNR's GeoCoins. 2020, for unfortunate reasons, got off to a much slower start. Over the summer, the search for these quality hides is definitely back on for these popular hides. As of September 27th data from Project-GC, October 2nd Favorite Point data from Geocaching.com and from our own tracking of coins earned, here are the latest stats:

Logged
Finds:
32,676

Individual
Cachers:
4,532

Favorite
Points:
5783

Geocoins
Earned:
Silver: 116
Gold: 91

News from the DNR: With a Covid-19 induced furloughs and a spending freeze, the annual renewal of the GeoTour was in some doubt, but Groundspeak worked with its GeoTour partners and gave a four month extension, pushing the renewal into the next fiscal year. Also, the DNR members of the GeoTour team have been furloughed part time, working from home, and do not have access to their offices or accounting systems to send out official mail. Earned geocoins will be mailed eventually, but not until the crew is allowed back in their offices.

As many of you know, our own "Kneel More" is an avid and prolific filmmaker with regards to the game of Geocaching. Kneel and his friend Bob Billy have dozens of informative and often hilarious videos in his YouTube collection. Kneel has created a series of videos while caching the MSPC GeoTour. To view the videos, click on the images below.

Adopt-a-Forest cleanup challenge is still looking for volunteers. Click this button to go to the site:

DNR Adopt-a-Forest

For more DNR bulletins, visit this site:

DNR News Bulletins

Get Ready for the #BattleOfTheDailyLogs

This is a little late, but still worth your look and participation.

The Tick App is a research study in which you can contribute as a Citizen Scientist. Join the Tick App Challenge:

The Tick App

Latest Covid-19 Information from DNR

The latest information from the DNR can be found at this link:

DNR Covid-19 Update

October 1, 2020: Six Months in to the new Membership Tiers

Trial... Lake St. Clair... Lake Huron... Lake Superior...

We are pleased to report that 93 members have upgraded to the new Lake Superior level and many Lake St. Clair members have upgraded to Lake Huron level as well. Thank you all for your help. We have attracted new Trial members several of whom have signed on as Lake Huron and Lake Superior members after seeing what we have to offer. Take a look at the "scoreboard" below to see who is helping. This is a terrific start. We still have work to do. More members than we thought would are still renewing at the Lake St. Clair level. Perhaps they have not gotten the word as I can't imagine many members would not want to support the organization. MiGO is asking all free members to help support the organization and is asking members already supporting to up their game. No active membership is free to MiGO. We pay our web service by the number of active members we have. A membership that is free to one member is being paid by other members. In order to increase our funding level to bring you many more fun things to do, we need to maximize the number of paying members at the highest level. Membership has its privilege. Paid membership has its rewards. We are hard at work coming up with some fun new things to do.

The new member tiers are named for the Great Lakes that we know and love. We are (almost) all Michiganders, so we used three three lakes on our international border to name the regular member levels.

The Trial member is a new level available for new members to try out the organization for thirty days. It is open to anyone who is not currently a member and has not been a member since January 1, 2017. Any time during your trial, we hope you take the option to renew as one of the following three levels:

The Lake St. Clair (formerly Member) membership level is the free membership. It is only available as a three month renewal and has a limited view of the website. It is intended for those that simply cannot support the organization financially, but still want to be associated with the us.

The Lake Huron (formerly Supporting Member) is $10 per year, renewed annually. This fee covers just a little more than the cost of your membership on our web service. Lake Huron members have access to and eligibility for many things not available to Lake St. Clair members. Lake Huron members that upgrade to the Lake Superior level before they are up for renewal level will have their remaining membership prorated at the new level.

The Lake Superior level is a new, premium level. It is $30 per year, renewed annually. Renewing or upgrading your membership to this level demonstrates your commitment to the organization. Your contribution allows MiGO to expand the promotional activities we offer our members and our caching community. Lake Superior members are recognized and rewarded at the highest level.

Refer to the Member Levels page found on the Membership Menu for details of the various levels.

Refer to the Renewal page in the Membership Menu for instructions on renewing and upgrading when your membership is within the 30 day renewal window.

Refer to the Upgrade page in the Membership Menu for instructions on upgrading when your membership is not due for renewal.

MiGO is a 501(c)(7) organization and 100% funded by our members! Thank you for your help and support. We want to see your name on the Lake Superior Member Honor Roll.

Notable Membership Activity over the Last Two Months

Trial Members

Treasure Hunter (welcome)
flipflops2pups (welcome)
Adventures Unplugged (welcome)
HaleTribe (welcome)
xpird (welcome)
ekotus (welcome & thank you for upgrading to Lake Superior)
Holmer4Manistee (welcome)
juleezon (welcome)
Sky'sRiders (welcome & thank you for upgrading to Lake Superior)

Lake Huron

GreatLakesCacher (renew)
rough_n_it (gfours) (renew)
troisha (ren&upg)
G3tth3cach3 (renew)
marshajean (renew)
waytag (renew)
theveens2405 (new)
Pugchaser (new)
bbwalkers (ren&upg)
Team Nix (new)
GHBuccaneers (renew)
AlphaRK9 (ren&upg)

Lake Superior

hornyjoe (new)
Grayseelou (new)
LiteOnCache (ren&upg)
sycloneman (new)
Huntroth (ren&upg)
Merlin1392 (ren&upg)
Acker3Family (new)
loumeister (ren&upg)
grizz-rider (new)
ekotus (new)
Robriki (new)
Harrise1 (ren&upg)
Grinner6 (new)
indenyl (new)
JHBDFamily (ren&upg)
The BlueDog Team (new)
laker91 (ren&upg)
Sky'sRiders (new)
jordand30 (new)
Farmchickadee (ren&upg)

Lake Superior
Honor Roll

At the risk of embarrassing her, MiGO is proud to announce that the 100th Lake Superior Member is Farmchickadee!. Thank you, Donna, for supporting MiGO!

MiGO Store

Big News in the Store:

MiGO is now an official distributor of Shop Geocaching (geocaching.com) and now has select items available in the MiGO store. Also, we are adding our own new items to the store soon including a trackable MiGO walking stick medallion pictured above (coming November '19), a MiGO Name Badge available for pre-order and a new transparent window sticker.

MiGO Store

We are looking at new items to put in the store and are always interested in your feedback. Is there something you think that the store should have for sale? Please let us know.

The funding to support our organization is derived through member contributions via donations, purchases in our store, and supporting memberships. We appreciate your interest in our organization and our store and invite you to look around. If you have any questions, you can email us at store@mi-geocaching.org

MiGO and You

This is the home of the Michigan Geocaching Organization or MiGO. Geocaching is closing in on 20 years of existence and MiGO has been a part of most of that. Our goal is to promote the activity of geocaching by helping geocachers and those looking to get into geocaching. What can we do to help you? Take a look around and let us know what you think. Feel free to share your thoughts and suggestions. Happy caching!

MiGO Leadership Update 2/2020

Welcome the following:

Executive Committee
At Large member:
Jodi Spalding (LiteOnCache)

MiGO Member

BIG things are going on at MiGO, and I just wanted to take a minute to let you know what some of them are:

New Membership Tiers were announced April 1st. in an effort to expand MiGO's budget so we may bring you more fun and interesting things to dol

The Executive Committee and a new MiGO Challenges Work Group is working on new basic and premium challenges for our community and membership.

August 2020

Come to Camp MiGO the weekend of August 22nd. Watch the panel on the home page for more information.

MSPC GeoTour
The Spring of 2019 put Michigan on the world geocaching map with our first official GeoTour! MiGO and the Michigan Department of Resources continue working together on this GeoTour celebrating the 100th anniversary of Michigan's State Parks.
The GeoTour has been an amazing success and is already one of the most popular GeoTours in the world. Thank you to the entire team for a job well done.

There are more things to announce, but they're not quite ready yet. The Executive Committee is working hard to keep bringing you fun things to do. Your support is much appreciated. We can't do it without you.

We have new merchandise in the pipeline for the store. We have unique and exclusive path tags for you to acquire, we will have a bigger presence at events around the state and be making donations in cash and in-kind for events of all types and sizes. Let your RVP know if you have an event coming up that you would like MiGO to help with.

We have made big strides in the number of people supporting the organization, but we still have a long way to go.

Susan Kay Schug Educational Scholarship

2021 applicantions for this scholarship will be available in the fall. Applications will be due January 1st, 2021, with a recipient announced at the 2021 Winter Social. Any active MiGO member, their spouse or their child or grandchild, who will be attending a college or university, is eligible to apply for this scholarship by filling out the form, and submitting it per the instructions outlined in the application form.

Learn more

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