Caching in Gilby ND

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Our next stop after Bemidji Minnesota is about a 140 mile drive west into North Dakota. Gilby North Dakota isn’t likely on many traveler’s bucket list. The town only has a population of ~240 people and not a lot of sightseeing opportunities. It’s about 20 miles northwest of the bigger town of Grand Forks ND. But if you were like us, you would not know where Grand Forks is either. Fargo is likely the closest city that many people will recognize but it’s 90 miles away. Of course, you may only recognize Fargo from the 1996 movie of the same name which coincidentally doesn’t take place in Fargo but is predominantly based in Brainerd MN - but I digress.

Back to Gilby being our next stop. Why do we want to visit the small town surrounded by 1000 acres of crops and not much else? We first heard about Gilby from a geocaching podcast (PodCacher) we listen to frequently. Back in 2022, they did an episode talking about this out of the way place as being the “Disneyland of Geocaching”. Based on the descriptions about the wonderful geocaches hidden in the area, it sounded like a cool place to visit. But when I looked for Gilby on a map and realized it was located in the middle of nowhere and not necessarily on the way to or from somewhere we would be traveling, I concluded we would never make it there. But as we formulated our plans for the upper Midwest this summer, I saw just how close we would be to Gilby. Surely I could talk Chris into taking the slight detour. The picture below gives her answer - she’s even smiling after several days in town!

We Made it to Gilby

Given its location, there aren’t many camping options. Turtle River State Park in the town of Arvilla was the closest - about 10 miles south of Gilby. We had been watching the campsite availability and back in mid July we reserved a spot for 6 nights as we started to formulate our travel plans back to Florida for the winter months. The drive from Bemidji was about as easy as you could get. US Route 2 passes through our starting point and our destination. We did complicate it slightly by trying to find some geocaches in a couple additional Minnesota counties. A 38 foot motorhome pulling a Jeep isn’t a nimble geocaching vehicle, but we managed to sneak in two stops. One at a rest stop with plenty of parking for us and a nice view of a lake. The second one required us to be a bit more creative and park on a side road and walk a quarter mile for a cache just beyond a county line. The things we do for geocaching!

At Oak Lake Rest Area

Turtle River Entrance

We arrived at Turtle River on the Wednesday after Labor Day so the place was nearly empty. Our site had 50 amp electric and water which will suffice for the 6 nights we are here. The first full day was forecast to have on and off rain showers but improving the remaining days, so we stayed in the park and did a couple of hikes. There are about 10 geocaches hidden in the park and about 10 miles of hiking trails as well. The morning rain ended so we headed out for a hike only to get wet after 1.5 miles and a few caches.

After the rain stopped again, we headed out a second time but only lasted a mile before the rain got us again. But after the front passed by we were expecting pretty nice weather for the rest of our stay here.

Large Picnic Shelter at Turtle River SP

Gilby ND is in some ways similar to other geocaching hot spots we have visited over the years. Martinsburg West Virginia is the first place that comes to mind. In that town, one specific cacher (WVTim) has placed many very creative hides in the surrounding area. People come from all over the county (or world) to enjoy his hides. We have spent several weeks camping in the area just to experience his geocaches. But Martinsburg is a much larger town back east, along the I-81 corridor and is close to so many other large cities. So the idea of stopping for some WVTim caches when a traveler happens to be visiting Washington DC or Baltimore MD isn’t that far fetched. There are hundreds of other geocachers living in the area that have also placed hides and there are all sorts of other sightseeing spots in the vicinity to bring visitors to the area.

Gilby also has one very creative cacher (Trycacheus) that has a hundred or so hides around town. There’re probably a couple other cachers in town but not many. Gilby doesn’t have many local sightseeing stops in the area and isn’t all that close to a major interstate. Although Interstate 29 runs north towards Canada and south to Fargo and beyond, it isn’t busy like I-81. So if you are stopping in Gilby, you either are lost or here to geocache. The following map shows how atypical Gilby is in this part of North Dakota. The map show roughly 25 miles across its width. The colored circles denote locations of caches with the yellow smileys being the ones we found during our stay. There are 107 caches and we found 52 of them. The second map is the same scale but centered on the town of Northwood ND which is about the same distance from Grand Forks as Gilby but in a southwesterly direction. This town has a population about five times more than Gilby and has a total of 11 caches all pretty much in town.

Gilby ND Caching Map

Northwood ND Caching Map

We spent three full days exploring the countryside around Gilby looking for caches. We had no intention of trying to find all the hides but concentrate on just the high quality ones with lots of favorite points. He has one series of 29 caches that are part of the Gilby Geo Tour so we knew we wanted to make it to all of these caches. One interesting observation about this part of North Dakota, that is easily seen in the aerial map below, is that the land divided up into all these perfect little squares. Each of them is exactly a mile wide and tall, although most of them seem to be further divided into half mile chunks with different crops. There is usually a road between the parcels at these one mile marks. Sometimes that road is a two lane paved road, or two lane gravel, or one lane gravel road but a few times as we were navigating to our next destination, our GPS would tell us to make a turn onto a “road” that should only be attempted if you are the farmer planting or harvesting the crops in the parcels adjacent to the path while driving your tractor. We learned we only needed to travel another mile to find the next potential road.

Aerial View Around Gilby Showing 1 Mile Parcels

We had arrived in town a couple weeks before a big geocaching event was to take place. Gilby Gone Wild is an annual event hosted by Trycacheus. This year was to be the 6th time for the event. We had considered trying to time our travel schedule to coincide with the event but we didn’t want to stay this far north that late into the fall from a weather standpoint. While being here with other cachers has the advantage of the camaraderie of like minded people, after experiencing these caches ourselves, we were very happy not to have a line of other people at each hide. The style of caches placed in Gilby are definitely unique and being able to experience them by ourselves and at our own pace was definitely an advantage. I later checked and saw that 109 geocachers attended this event.

Day one had us going to 23 different hides. The biggest problem we have is that the main road from the campground to Gilby has a bridge under construction so we need to take a detour. The good news is that with a road every mile, we don’t need to go far to get around. It’s just a matter of how minor of a road you want to drive on. The terrain is generally flat and there are huge fields of crops - mostly soybeans and sugar beets and some sunflowers. There tend to be large hedgerows that separate the fields and it’s in these hedgerows that many of the geocaches are hidden. There are homes or farms every couple miles and we don’t see too many other people or vehicles as we travel around the outskirts of town. Downtown Gilby is roughly a 4 square block with a church, hardware store, post office, bar and the usual small town features.

Field of Soybeans

Field of Sunflowers

Closeup of Sugar Beet

What makes the caching in Gilby so much fun? There isn’t a common theme between the hides so as we walk up to ground zero, we don’t really know what to expect. Most of the hides have some sort of puzzle or trick to them in order to open the container. There tends to be a combination lock requiring a 4 digit code to get to the logbook. But sometimes the hide is just some sort of cute container that brings a smile to our faces. I will describe some of the more interesting caches to give you a sense of what they are like but I won’t give away the solution. My description may, however, may provide some insight on how to solve the given hide which might give other cachers a head start on opening them. If you are planning on visiting Gilby yourself and want to have the full experience of pondering what to do, you may want to skip over the descriptions I provide so that you can come here without any preconceived notions. I did take notes on all the ones we solved and have them written down, so if you get stuck, I can be your phone a friend - our geocaching handle is rushrutter.

After a couple of successful finds, we head to the next closest one - named GGT13: MEEP, MEEP! From quite a distance, we spotted something big about 100 feet off the side of the road. As we get closer it looks like a huge anvil sitting atop a large pole. Its probably 12 feet tall and seems out of place but there isn’t a hedgerow here, just large flat fields of crops so it must be the cache.

Anvil by a Field

As we park and approach, we notice the anvil starts to rotate. It turns out the thing is also a weathervane that rotates in the wind. Beneath the anvil is a sign that reads “Free Bird Seed” and a rock with a lock. As we try to figure out where the combination might be hidden, we look up to find Wile E. Coyote looking down on us ready to drop a smaller anvil on the next unsuspecting roadrunner. We contemplate what we need to do and figure out how to retrieve the needed information to sign the logbook. This cache will likely be the most memorable just because of the creativity and size. As a side note, in writing this post, I discovered that Trycacheus is intending to move this cache to a new location - no small feat.

Free Bird Seed for Roadrunners

Wile E. Coyote Waits Above

We continue driving the gravel roads finding all sorts of caches. Most of them take us a little bit of time to figure out what we need to do. We were surprised that many of them are actually electronic but don’t require us to bring our own batteries. Many of them are based off old school games like Pac-Man and twister.

Pac-Man

Twister for Your Fingers

Others are more like arcade games where there is some sort of hand to eye coordination required like shooting ducks with a nerf gun or raising a ping pong ball up the body of a snake using two strings with pulleys.

Shoot the Ducks, Get the Code

Move the Ball Up the Snake

One of the more challenging puzzles involved a box with a laser and detector with a series of mirrors that could be rotated to reflect the laser beam to the detector. There were 5 mirrors to use and would have been simple except that there were obstacles placed strategically to block the beam if you attempt the most straightforward path. We sat for 10 minutes analyzing this one before getting the laser to hit the detector and access the logbook.

Laser Ray Tracing Puzzle

One of the caches was hidden 100 feet from a house. Fortunately it was where Trycacheus lives so he expects visitors from time to time. We saw someone working in an outbuilding behind the house. This cache has a robotic arm with multiple control levers to drive several motors. The goal is to move the arm and grab a small bison tube and drop it in a chute so we can sign the log. As we were trying to figure out which lever controlled which motion and then accomplish the task, the CO walked over to see how we were doing. We had a long talk with Trycacheus and explained how we travel the country and came to this part of North Dakota specifically to find his caches. He told us to give him a text or call if we run into problems at any of the caches since he wants visitors to be able to solve them instead of leave frustrated. He asked if we were planning on attending a small geocaching event at Culver’s in Grand Forks that evening. We had seen that there was another group of cachers traveling through the area and had setup an event. We had already logged our will attend and will see him again at dinner.

ET Phone Home!

Geocaching Swiss Army Knife

The rest of that first day took us all around and who knows how many miles of backroad we drove today. As we head back towards camp we stopped at one last geocache. Trycacheus hid this one on the property of a guy who is clearly into making unusual metal sculptures. The puzzle here was interesting because you are presented with an old Etch A Sketch and a series of instructions. After a bit of thinking, we realized we we need to rotate the two knobs based on the directions and when complete, you have written out the code needed for the combination lock. After signing in, we wander around checking out the sculptures.

The Green Barron

Bigfoot Weathervane

Religious Section

Numerous Metal Figures

That evening, we head into the big town of Grand Forks to Culver’s. A group of 4 geocachers from Virginia are also in Gilby to find the caches and had setup the event. Since they were just about done with all the caches and we were just starting, we had to be careful to not listen in too closely when they talked with Trycacheus about some we’ve yet to attempt. A couple other local cachers joined in on the fun. It was nice and we always like dinner at Culver’s.

We had one cache on the first day that we couldn’t figure out. We spoke with the Trycacheus at dinner. He did say that it is one of his trickier hides and was willing to give us a hint but we told him we wanted to try to solve it one our own. On day 2 we drove past this one and tried to open the lock but our new ideas didn’t pan out so we moved on to other hides. We concentrated on caches on the west side of town. Some of the hides were more of a drive and a couple of them proved to be challenging for us to figure out so we didn’t have as many finds as yesterday. But the 12 we did find felt like an accomplishment for us. By now, we are getting used to driving these back roads and seeing a hedgerow in the distance and just knowing that we will be stopping there for our next find.

One of the Sneakier Geocache Puzzles

Snoopy PEZ Dispenser

A Bulldozer Maze

On day three, we needed to head to the east side of town for some of the remaining hides and we decided to stop by the Grand Forks Air Force Base. Outside the main gate to the base are some aircraft on display. Besides just walking around to check them out, we had an Adventure Lab that helped describe the planes.

Main Entrance at Grand Forks Air Force Base

B-52

Hound Dog - Air to Surface Missile

There are definitely some neat old planes as well as a missile transporter.

B-52 Side View

Missile Transporter

B-25 Mitchell

Of course we saw similar planes at Oshkosh earlier this summer and those planes were still flying. But it was still a fun and quick stop on our way to more geocaches.

F-101 Voodoo

A-25C Invader

UH-19D Chickasaw

Since we were picking the caches based on location instead of how popular they were, we lucked out that we had a large number of really fun caches. One named GGT8: Elmer Fudd 2 was a really fun and creative one. At ground zero, we discovered a large locked case. The description provides the combination to get inside but we knew it wasn’t going to be that easy. Sure enough we found our “weapon” with a locked chamber. In order to find the combination, we need to find Mickey Mouse, Goofy, Donald Duck and Minnie Mouse. It wasn’t perfectly clear what that meant until we noticed a plaque with a Disney character and number hanging in a nearby tree. With that as the basis of the puzzle, we start to wander around the small section of woods near the cache looking for other plaques. After a bit of searching, we had found 4 plaques and assumed we had the answer but it didn’t work. It turned out there was an unneeded plaque and what we thought was Goofy was actually Pluto - they’re both dogs so they can easily be confused. So we continued our search and eventually spotted another plaque way up in a distant tree. I could not read the number but the Elmer’s gun has a functioning scope. Sure enough, I was able to use the scope to read that last number and open the cache. This was definitely a very creative, out of the box type of puzzle.

Elmer Fudd Gun

Spotting Scope in Use

A couple of the caches required a bit of strength or skill in order to complete. One had a functioning strongman game like you might see at a county fair - the kind where you use a sledgehammer to ring a bell. Chris grabbed the mallet and took a few swings that got the cache container to move in the track, but not come out the top and ring the bell. I took a couple whacks at it and managed to get the container to come out so we could sign it. I would dread to think of the maintenance something that gets beat on continually requires. For another one, we found a container 12 feet up a tree trunk. There was a baseball on a string and the mission was to throw the ball at a target that will release the cache. This one took us quite a few tries before being successful. There was a creative way to replace the cache in position for the next geocacher.

Chris Takes a Swing

Throw the Ball, Hit the Target, Sign the Logbook

At another cache we found an actual gumball machine. There wasn’t a real challenge here but simply the novelty of the hide. Each gumball came with a stick on mustache to work as a disguise. The reason for needing the disguise is more complicated to explain than it’s worth but I doubt anybody will recognize me! I really don’t know how some of these caches survive the North Dakota winters. We had asked Trycacheus about whether he pulls all the caches for a few months to keep them safe and he says they all get to experience the cold and snow as is. That’s kind of remarkable in my viewpoint.

Functioning Gumball Machine

Unknown Man

One last really creative cache I will talk about is named GGT6: Driving Miss Daisy. At ground zero and yet another hedgerow along a seldom traveled road was a container with an odd looking gizmo that sort of looked like a handheld hair dryer. On the side of the thing were a series of LED lights and numbers. It looked like the requirement was to get the internal fan to spin fast enough to make the power needed to turn on the LEDs which then gives the numbers for the combination lock. I hadn’t read the cache description at first and tried to blow the fan but couldn’t get it to spin fast enough. As I was trying to decide if my running would be fast enough, Chris read the description telling us it needs to move around 40 to 50 MPH. Obviously I’m not running this fast and I’m glad we weren’t attempting these caches via bicycle! So in the car we go and start down the dirt road holding the thing out the window. Sure enough at around 45 MPH the lights turned on and we had our combination in hand. Back at the cache, we opened the container and signed in. Another amazingly creative hide, albeit a bit dangerous if there happens to be any traffic around.

Driving Miss Daisy Tool

We ended up with a total of 20 finds on day three in Gilby and while there were many more caches to find in town, we had definitely found all the ones with a high number of favorite points. We even were able to solve the one puzzle that had stumped us on day one after asking for a small hint from Trycacheus. As hard as it is for me to say it, we were almost overstimulated with all these creative hides and we needed a break from the mental challenges and driving deserted back roads.

For our last full day in the area, we picked out a bike ride over in Grand Forks. The Greater Grand Forks Greenway is a series of trails that follows the river separating North Dakota from Minnesota. Half the ride is on the North Dakota side of the Red River and the other half in the town of East Grand Forks Minnesota. AllTrails lists the loop as just under 9 miles although there are more trails on the south end of the loop that we will try as well.

Overlooking the Red River

There are many places in town to pick up the trail. We chose Riverside park because it’s the closest place along our drive.  We head north which has us cross over into Minnesota in less than a mile. It doesn’t take us long to realize that this river must flood fairly frequently because there are huge berms of earth or tall flood walls all around the river on both sides of it.

Huge Berm Protects Town from Flooding

This Area has a Flood Wall

There are quite a few caches along our route but since we were trying to get in a bike ride, we limited our diversions to around 10. It’s a pretty ride with some old bridges across the river between the two states.

Pier from Old Bridge

It felt good to exercise the legs a bit and explore the area. Along the way we noticed a Bass Pro Shop on the Minnesota side. We made it back to the car after almost 13 miles of riding. It was definitely a nice trail to check out as long as the river isn’t flooded. We drive over to the Bass Pro to look around on our way back to camp.

Fountain Along the Bike Path

Another River View

Former Hospital Turned to Apartments Along River

What else can I say about our stop in Gilby? If you’re a geocacher, it should be added to your bucket list. It was one of our top stops in 2025. If you’re not one, then you might consider skipping this stop since you may not find enough other things to do in the area. Now we can start our slow journey back south towards Florida with a quick stop in Fargo.