How Did You Get Into Geocaching??

[supermanfan]

I had borrowed a Friends GPS to go moose hunting. He was showing me how to use it and explained Geocaching to me. He suggested I try to find a few caches to get used to using the GPS before I take it into the bush. Well 61 finds and 2 hidden, I'm hooked. Everywhere I go, I look for a new place to hide a cache. My wife loves it too and comes with me to almost every find. She keeps a binder of all the printouts of every cache we did and adds her own little comment of our trip to each one. (like a journal)

 

Anyone else have a story of how they got into the sport??

 

Anyone???

 

Team Supermanfan

Edited June 6, 2005 by supermanfan

[Texas ShortBus]

My wife and I do a lot of offroading and a GPS was useful in a lot of situations. I was on the net one day looking for a replacement unit because my 310 had failed and came across the Geocashing website. I read a few of the descriptions and couldn't get to best Buy quick enough to get a new unit. I also took my wife on our first few searches and she loves it too. I can't think of anything more entertaining the a scavenger hunt! We have only been successful in finding one cache so far, but we expect it to become easier as we get use to the types of hiding spots that people choose.

[+reveritt]

I was googling my favorite hiking venue to see if I could find an on-line trail map. What I found instead was a cache listing. That led me to visit GC.com, where I quickly learned that there were several caches in my town, including two within walking distance of my house! I was amazed to find the this cool activity was going on right under my nose.

 

I had an older GPS for boating, so I immediately went out looking for the nearby caches. I was two-for-two on my first attempts, and was hooked.

[+Scoobie10]

You can read all about it here.

 

Scoobie

[atroxatrox]

Marcus, my son, stumbled over a box in the woods when we were visiting a scenic view.

It was wedged in under a fairly big stone.

Marcus said that he could imagine its contents of sandwich, sausages and so on.

Luckily it did not turn the rest of us off and we opened it.

People from everywhere was here!

I ran home and dug up my old Garmin 12 which I BC (Before Caching) only used for testing out props on boats (speed measurements).

Hooked.

All of us.

The whole family.

[+bigbbfan]

I have been using a GPS for several years on hunting and fishing trips in Alaska and in the lower 48. My GPS usually sat 95% of the time unused. About a year ago, there was an article in the newspaper on Geocaching. I cut out the links to the recommended websites but just recently found the clipping - which had almost faded away. I already owned a Palm for work purposes, so I started about a month ago and just found my 10 cache yesterday!

[+Team Zappy 45]

My son saw a program about geocaching on TV. He sent my wife a GPS for mothers day. I bought another unit and that was it. We are having a lot of fun and visiting places we didn't know were there.

[+Mr. Fantastic]

I had purchased a little Geko for the dayhikes I enjoy in northern Illinois. Around Thanksgiving 2003, I saw an article in the Chicago Tribune that discussed geocaching. I cannot remember which cacher was in the article, but I thought I would try it out. The first cache I found was near my old house in Chicago and I have been hooked ever since. I should also mention that I upgraded to a Garmin GPSMap 60CS last spring and it has made adding waypoints significantly easier.

Edited June 6, 2005 by Mr. Fantastic

[+2Wheel'in]

My wife (MooseMaMa) originally brought the idea home. She uses a GPSr in her work, and some of the folks on her crew were geocachers. We tried it and fell in "Love" with it immediately.

Regards,

Bill

[uperdooper]

my brother made me do it.

[+Lean Wolf]

It had to be sold to me. I discovered GC a long time ago and included it in the "funny but obscure links" section of my Internet links collection. "If you don't know what to do with your GPS" was the tagline, I think. Then two years later the husband of a collegue of mine got into geocaching and she started telling everone at work what a fantastic pastime it was. Well, she's must be good at selling (she should, that's part of her work), cause she got me all worked up about it. Especially the hi tech/hidden treasure combination. I ordered the GPS the very same day, an etrex Legend, and I bought my second one, GPSMAP 60C a month ago or so. So now the GC link resides in a more honourable place in my link collection.

[+RLNuts]

I had purchased a little Geko for the dayhikes I enjoy in northern Illinois. Around Thanksgiving 2003, I saw an article in the Chicago Tribune that discussed geocaching. I cannot remember which cacher was in the article, but I thought I would try it out. The first cache I found was near my old house in Chicago and I have been hooked ever since. I should also mention that I upgraded to a Garmin GPSMap 60CS last spring and it has made adding waypoints significantly easier.

I read the same article.

 

Was ordering my trusty Magellan not long after that.

[+tntyz]

I often read the Straight Dope at lunch. A couple of years ago they had a link to GC.com (under the unusual links section called "Weird Earl's"). It sounded like fun and within a week I purchased my little yellow Etrex. I've enjoyed it ever since.

[+BlueDeuce]

Heard it on NPR and knew IMMEDIATELY it was the thing for me. Oddly enough I had just inherited a Vista just two weeks before. Fate I guess.

[+BilboB]

I had purchased my Etrex Vista for a rotation in Bosnia when someone over there told me about GCing. I did not have the time over there (too many landmines anyway), so when home I started up and have been addicted ever since. Have turned a few others on as well.

[+Anonymous']

Someone in my Boy Scout troop got me into caching.

[+briansnat]

I read a newspaper article about it and thought it sounded really cool. Before reading that I had no interest in, or knowledge of GPS, but within a month I purchased my first GPS and found and hid my first caches.

[+Team Perks]

I blame my dad. He dragged me out into the middle of the desert in the peak of summer and made me dig in the bushes for a plastic box full of plastic dinosaurs. What can I say...much to my amazement, I loved it.

[+Melrose Plant]

I have to blame my wife, Balboagirl herself. She heard about it from someone on another message board she frequents (although I don't think that person is a regular cacher), she found the website, she bought the GPSr, and she dragged us out to our first cache. Since then, I have sort of taken over the geocaching, and she doesn't want much to do with it. Ironic, isn't it?

 

And now I'm stuck with this user name. I could change it, but I've had it too long. It just wouldn't seem right.

[Ted's Trekkers]

Heard it on NPR and knew IMMEDIATELY it was the thing for me. Oddly enough I had just inherited a Vista just two weeks before. Fate I guess.

I also heard it on NPR.I can hardly start my day without it.

[+cudlecub]

I noticed a link to the gc.com site in a friend's bio and thought I'd check it out. After browsing the site it looked like something cool to do but I didn't have a gps. I then happened to find another friend who had an emap that he wanted to sell for 20 bucks. So armed with a gps that I think Noah used to navigate the Ark, I was off caching. After I saw this was something I would stick with and enjoyed, I bought a gpsmap 76c. It has made my caching life so much easier.

[+Iceburger]

My girlfriend and I were researching local hiking trails for excercise purposes and just to get back to nature. Well we found a nice location nearby and googled the web for more info on it, first link we found was to gc.com. Took us about a week to research gps units and find a good deal on one. We were then hooked. Now it has turned into something we do as a family with our kids, who also love it. 76 finds in 3 states, 2 hides and a new gpsmap 60 cs later, we're still totally hooked.

[+lefty2448]

I wanted to by a gps unit and was trying to justify the purchase of another gadget. Before I purchased it I googled gps uses and found out about caching and I was hooked. As a matter of fact I borrowed my friends to go caching with on weekends till my order got in. I guess I got myself into it by accident.

[+m0sgb]

Well how did i get in to geo-caching,, A friend of mine took me for a walk up some nice hills here in the UK. And me being a novice at it, took a map (fool ) Dont need that he said try this what i said a GPS !!!!!!...........

Well i did, finding it a good thing and my friend said lets try something new for you,,,,What i said,,,, geo-caching,,,,,, Whats geo-caching i said,,,,,what geo-caching you have not lived he said,,,,, what i said so he told me!!!!!

Well any way a few weeks later a bought my self a GPS (etrx Legend)............

up and running before i could walk,,, Found a few now and placed a few aswell

Looking for ward to finding my first COIN only to see what they look like any way must dash byeeeeeeeeeeeee

Steve m0sgb in the uk (north west)

[+GeoBlank]

Our work group hired http://www.playtimeinc.com/ for a team building event. One of the activities was a closed circuit GPS based hunt on the corporate campus. We then hid a real team cache in a near by park. I was hooked.

 

This is the one that started it all: http://www.geocaching.com/seek/cache_detai...7f-e65189b4429d

 

Since then this is my activity of choice.

[+Team Benhamtroll]

I don't remember how I first heard about, but I believe it was back in like 2000 or 2001. The concept sounded cool, but I didn't actually get a GPS until ealry 2004, when a friend sold me his GPS 315. I convinced my wife that it would be a good thing for my daughter and I to do together during her long Grad school days. It's only been recently that we've gotten into it full throttle, but I feel like it's been a lot longer . . .

[+StarBrand]

I had owned my GPS for over a year and was updating the software on the Garmin site one day when I noticed a mention of Geocaching. My wife did not understand why I had wasted money on my GPS so finding something to do with it was on my mind. Ten minutes later I decided to visit the site thinking there is no way that one is close to me. Hmmmmmm - ok there was 1 within 2 miles. I quickly dismissed the idea as crazy - "who would actually do that??" I thought. 15 minutes later I was digging through desk drawers looking for a cool trade item. 25 minutes later I was wandering in circles following the arrow on my GPS. 35 minutes gone by and I was digging through a pile of leaves for a coffee can. Now I have 180 finds and 50+ hides. We have gone from 12 within 100 miles of me to 134 within 100 miles (40 or so are mine). We have a local organization and about 40 people that participate in the area.

[+mrmnjewel]

I can't precisely remember when I heard about it, initially. I think it was in the timespan between 2001 and 2002, when I was working a job that I hated and wasn't making any significant $$ at. I remember thinking it was cool, but money was so tight that there was no way to even consider buying a GPSr. My job fortunes took a decided upswing, and I revisited gc.com in spring of 2003. I decided to go ahead and buy a barebones entry-level GPSr to see if I liked the sport, and, more importantly, to see if I would stick with it. My Magellan Sportrak arrived on June 12, 2003, and Julia and I set out to find our first Geocache. 241 finds later, I do love the sport and have stuck with it. In fact, later this year, I have plans to upgrade to a much nicer GPSr and the Sportrak will become Julia's for the occasions when she accompanies me.

[+ATMS]

My brother told me about it Nov 2004 and took me on two hunts. Liked it and thought it was cool. Husband got me a GPSr and stuff I would need on a hunt for Christmas...and I was a little disappointed that that was it. BUT...soon as the weather broke...out and about we went! I am now 100% hooked and can't wait for my next hunt! Looking to upgrade my GPS with the proceeds from my yard sale next week!

[+2ofHis]

Our origins are steeped in mystery; or at least lost in the mists of time. I know both of us had heard of the sport somewhat simultaneously, albeit separately, over a year ago. The idea lay dormant, until Rae apparently heard a piece on Public Radio, and got "bit". I came home from work to find her at gc.com, and the next thing we know a GPSr is on it's way from Wally-World (No blatant advertising here, nope, not at all!). Anyway, we've been members since late March, with 29 finds under our belt (Yeah, I know, light-duty!), and we absolutely LOVE it!

[+GPScooterphish]

In kind of a convoluted, muddled, roundabout (anymore similies?) way.

I'd heard of geocaching many years ago by way of a local outdoor reporter's story (Grant McComey (sp?) of KATU I think it may have been? Wouldnt surprise me, he rocks)...GPS units cost more than I could afford at the time, but the idea looked cool and fun. "Someday..." I said.

 

Not long ago, I worked for a cellular provider that first introduced GPS capabilities as a standard feature available to users, (not just for those 9/11 emergency requirements, etc). Phones were too darn expensive and only GPS navigation, 'find a restaurant 30 miles from your current location' kind of apps existed - for a price/subscription.

Again, "Someday..."

Fastforward to present.

My current - and most excellent - employer suggested I upgrade my cell phone to one with bluetooth and I'd be able to use it with some nifty gadgets they'd provide to perform my IT duties.

Time came and I switched cell providers and looked specifically for a bluetooth phone to use with said gadgeti (is that a word? Is now!).

While researching possibilities for that phone, I found info on bluetooth enabled GPS transceivers (unrelated google results rule!).

Bluetoothenabled 'smartphone', bluetooth enabled GPS unit, GPS software for phone and Mac.

Rock n Roll, baby.

Well, almost. My first planned gc was sidelined by a nasty virus that keep me in bed all weekend long. *grumblegrumble*

Edited June 8, 2005 by GPScappoose

[Charles Iverson]

lurking around on the web just after garmin came out with there geocaching gps on garmin's web page

 

looked like a fun sport....

 

i was right..

[+caveman2040]

I read about geocaching in a Dentist office in Time magazine in 2003. Thought hummm? We used to hide things in the woods alot as kids. Got a new Etrex "yeller" for $25 and the rest is history.

[Jim Bob Ferly]

My brother comes home one day asking me if I want to go treasure hunting? You have to understand. This is just about the time that movie National treasure was coming out. "You have the Declaration of Independence" I said to him. . hehe

 

He then told me about geocaching. He just heard about it at his new job. Both of us where interested, so we went to the website. It was about 12:00am and after researching geocaching for an hour we came to the conclusion that we couldn't wait. Off to Wal-Mart we go to get a GPS in the middle of the night lol. Anything less would be uncivilized hehe. Did a few caches that night and I've been hooked ever since then.

[+'Jeep'ers]

I heard a story on NPR about it last year. I came home all excited about it but Chris was like, "oh, okay" (but we were in the process of wedding planning). Then in March, we got the Camping Life Magazine and he read an article and he got excited about it and now we are hooked! We found our 100th find on Monday!

[RicknRoy]

I saw part of a blurb on a TV show 10-12 years or so ago, quickly forgot about it because a gps cost about $1200 dollars at the time. Then Wally world(curse corporate America ) started carrying the Garmin gps12 for around $150. I remebered the blurb and searched the internet und "treasure hunting gps" I found geocaching.com and saw there were many caches in my area. I bought the 12 and showed it to Roy. He thought the government was involved(curse the government )but thought it was a cool idea. We biked to our first cache, found it in the dark, and now we are 50+ finds with 2 caches we own and a multicache we are working on. We have introduced several others to the sport.

Edited June 8, 2005 by RicknRoy

[RandLD]

We had quite a few "false starts", and it's really somewhat convoluted, so bear with me ...

 

One day while hunting for the "perfect picnic spot" in a park, I stumbled across an old hollow tree containing a green box with some writing on it. I wasn't quite sure what to make of it, so I didn't mess with it and didn't really think about it again for quite some time. (As you may have guessed, it was a geocache. Had I opened it, I would've found the letter explaining Geocaching and might've gotten hooked from there.)

 

Then one day a few months later, our Sunday School class decided to have an outing at a local park. Our teachers are cachers and decided it would be fun to take us all to hunt for some of the caches there. (I think the park has about half a dozen.) I had no idea what was going on at first, but once we figured it out, it was really fun.

 

However, it was a year or so later that we finally did some caching on our own. We planned a trip up to our college alma mater (Furman U. in Greenville, SC) and before we left I decided to see if there were any caches there. There are 5 on campus and dozens nearby! So we decided to hit a few. I was hooked then.

 

My wife didn't really get hooked until we found a cache in a park near her parents' house. What did it for her was finding a Travel Bug there. Now she's excited about figuring out exactly where she wants to put him, and she wants to track where he goes so she can see if he ever makes it to his destination. She's also tracking a few other TB's, in hopes that they come near us and we can help them along on their journey.

Edited June 8, 2005 by RandLD

[+Team Red Oak]

About a year ago I worked for the Corps of Engineers in D.C. and one day someone called asking if we had a map of somewhere or another and I had to refer the caller to our office in VA. But after the phone call I thought I could probably find that map online because it was of some state park in Florida I think. So I did a search for a map of the area and found a link to a cache log. I looked at it and read some of the entries then I looked at other hides and other log entries and different types of caches, then I looked up how much a GPS would cost and I don't think I got any work done the rest of the day.

 

I went home and told my husband and kids all about what I found. My kids looked at me like I was nuts (teenagers!) and my husband thought it sounded interesting. But I said a GPS was too expensive (I was looking at top of the line, but had no real clue), but wouldn't it be neat to try one day. Then a little while later I stumbled on the web site again, I had forgotten all about Geocaching by then and I was thrilled to find the site. I looked at caches in our area and logs and thought wouldn't it be fun one day when we can afford a GPS.

 

Apparently my husband actually listens to some of the things I say becasue this Mother's Day he bought me a Garmin etrex Legend. I was totally surprised and we now have 14 finds logged and a few DNF's. My kids think we're wierd and have no interest in coming out with us. But that's okay it doesn't hurt me to have some alone time with my hubby in the woods.

 

BTW since we've gotten ours, my daughter's boyfriend thinks his parents would love to go geocaching and he is considering buying one for his parents. Last night I talked to a very good friend of mine (I've known since kindergarten) and told her about the new hobby and she thought it sounded like a really cool thing to do and is very interested and she is looking at rearranging her schedule to come with us to the MGS picnic on Saturday.

[+Faith the Aquariaqueen]

Learned about this two years ago at Scout training.....

 

...got my first GPSr for my 40th birthday in May.

 

Been learning and finding ever since.

[+hoovman]

In 2002, my November birthday was approaching and my father asked me what I'd like as a present. I don't recall what other ideas I gave him, but since I had heard about geocaching, I mentioned a yellow eTrex. This way, if I didn't enjoy geocaching (what was I thinking?) I wouldn't be out any cash, and I could unload the gpsr on eBay.

 

I went for 4 caches in Nov/Dec that year and 4 in each of the next 2 years. It wasn't until this year that I started taking geocaching more seriously, going after 2-3 every weekend and caching when I was out of town on a trip.

[GeoPhishers]

We read a article about it in a magazine that JEEP sends out to JEEP owners. I think it was the spring issue for 2004. Anyway it sounded cool and I asked a friend to borrow his GPSR, found a couple, (actually our first find we used the topozone map from the cache pages) had a blast, and the rest is history or yet to come.

[CrafterCat]

My hubby got a Garmin 12XL as a 25 year service award from work. We had used it on trips to track our speed and to see how far we'd traveled and how far to destination, etc. But then my son saw a program on the travel channel about geocaching and logged on to gc.com. That was back in 2002. I used to ride along with him when he went caching, because I didn't think he should be trapsing around in the forest all alone...it's not wilderness here, but, hey, who knows when you'll run into a bear or take a fall? I remember thinking back then that it was kinda' lame...chase around in the woods and maybe not even find it, but when you do, all it's got is some dumb trinkets...nothing very important or cool. But then last year he talked me into going caching for something to do on my Birthday, and viola! I'm now a cacher. I'm up to about 30 caches now, and I've hidden 3 and I have hosted a local club M&G and am co-hosting 2 campout/M&G's later this summer. The friends I've made thru our local club are great! We have a good time caching and camping and visiting together. Cache on!!!

[+Willden Wild-Bunch]

We just happened to be channel surfing one evening and caught the last little bit of an interesting clip on geocaching that the Travel Channel ran a couple of months ago. I went on-line to do a bit of resurch on this geocaching thing and two weeks later we got our first GPS. We caught the geocaching bug with our first find. Now, instead of "Can we play the nintendo?" I hear "When can we go caching?" from my kids. Even my 16 year son has a renewed intrest in our "family outings".

[+treasure_hunter]

After my father seen a program about this so called sport Geocaching on the outdoors channel in a motel room in Raleigh Durham NC, we headed to TN to my uncles house, and thats were it started, he has always had a GPS because he is a big fisher, so then we make our accounts and then we find the closet cache which turned out to be only a mile or so away and we took off only to have never slowed down, STILL CACHIN AND STILL LOVIN IT!

[+medbery]

Before leaving on a week-end trip to Big Bear Lake, CA, a co-worker told me about geocaching. I jumped on the net, found the site, printed out pages like crazy and packed some goodies. When we arrived to Big Bear we plugged in the coordinates and started our family excursions. It has been very enjoyable.

[+Alan Ellis]

Learned about it while researching to buy the Garmin 60CS.

 

------------------------------------

www.JackieandAlan.com

[+paintfiction]

We read a article about it in a magazine that JEEP sends out to JEEP owners. I think it was the spring issue for 2004. Anyway it sounded cool and I asked a friend to borrow his GPSR, found a couple, (actually our first find we used the topozone map from the cache pages) had a blast, and the rest is history or yet to come.

COOL! Me and my family were the subjects of that article! You can still read the article online here but I'm not sure if the picture gallery still works. That sweet little girl holding the frog is my youngest daughter Grace. It was a lot of fun!

 

I better stay on topic and tell my story. It's a tad amusing....

 

It started when I found a scraggly www.wheresgeorge.com $1 in some change. (Someone had handwritten the web site on the $1) I kept meaning to look it up on the internet but ended up buying a taco with it instead (c'mon, I was hungry!). THANKFULLY my wife reminded me of it a few days later so we punched wheresgeorge.com into the computer. It looked a little interesting so I started reading some of the recently logged bills. On several of them the comment said "found in a geocache". Well, I had no idea what a geocache was but I knew that people were finding money in them so off I went to Google to find out what the heck a geocache was. That of course lef me to gc.com which seemed mildly interesting. Now keep in miind that timing is everything! It seems that I was reminded the next day about out impending trip to Chicago to visit my in-laws. Now don't get me wrong, my in-laws are great people BUT my sisters in law all seem to share a similar disdain for me (some more than others), I know NOBODY in Chicago, my wife knows EVERYBODY so a trip to Chicago for me usually entails countless hours of me listening to my wife catching up with her friends while I make polite conversation bored out of my mind. I quickly punched my in-laws zip code into gc.com to find MANY caches nearby. WOO HOO! My sanity was saved! I had 2 days to figure out what kind of GPS to buy (Garmin GPS-V), buy it, make up a good cover story to tell the wife why we needed a $500 device on such short notice ("Gee honey, remember when we got lost going to Downtown last time? hmmmm?" - it worked), and get siome caches loaded. We found our first cache in CHicago with mother-in-law in tow. I nearly killed her because I didn't mark the car, we found the cache (WOO HOO!), we got lost, it was about a million degrees out, we didn't bring any water, and I couldn't figure out the DANG track-back feature. Oh well..... we found 2 more that trip. My mother-in-law survived (though she still has only one find), my sanity was preserved, we had a great time (well.... most of us), and I was hooked!

[+AtlantaGal]

From my uncle. He would link me to these photo journals on his personal webspace each time he'd find a cache. Of course it took me another two years to finally go out and find one, but it was definitely what got me started.

[+Yamahammer]

I learned about this from a friend, TOMAJE, (some friend!). He had 2 sticks in the back of his pickup and I picked one and swung it like a golf club. He said something about it being his geostick. What the heck is a geostick? He went onto explain it to me. He and his daughter do this type of treasure huntin' using a GPSr. I had one I used for hunting. ... It was 4 days later when I emailed him and asked again about it. He sent me the website and it's been downhill since.

 

[+onetrapper]

My daughter heard about gecaching from a friend of hers and was telling my wife. My daughter asked me if I knew anyone that had a GPS that they could use. It happened that I had one that had never been used. (I pruchased it for an elk hunting trip that didn't happen). Of course I had to know why she needed it. The rest as they say is history.