First Timer With Paranoia

[moellis1]

Hello, I'm off to my 1st find this weekend. I'm all prepared but started wondering is this safe? What I mean is has anyone experienced not so pleasant things on their journey? I'll be with 2 kids ages 1 & 5. I started thinking what if someone left something not appropriate in a cache. I just have this image in my head that when we finally find it we'll open it and there will be pile of dog poo or a syringe or something like that. Ok, I know I'm a freaky paranoid person but hey someone has to be right?

[+Team Neos]

I have never found anything like that in a cache, but I have read stories here on the forums about people finding things like that. Like anything else in life, you can keep the experienc positive for your children by having a calm attitude of control.

 

Set some rules ahead of time:

I wouldn't let the children open the cache--Then you can remove anything offensive, check for things with sharp edges, ect. Perhaps you could take a bandana with you and lay it out on the ground before you open the cache. Then ou can can pull out only the things that you want to the kids to see and lay them on the bandana for them to choose their trade items. Lots of objects that are "OK" are not things you would want a 1 year old to see, just because they ight want them and be disappointed when you have to say no.

 

If a problem can't be hidden from the children, tell them that you are "very disappointed because someone has done something foolish to the cache", and explain as you see fit (or not) and move on somewhere else.

 

I think kids can recover from disappointment fairly well if their parents handle the situation as a learning experience. I doubt that you will run into anything terrible and likely your instincts will lead you to avoid questionable areas and sketchy caches. Reading the cache pages ahead of time is a must if you are taking kids. Look thorugh old logs to make sure that no one mentions odd items in the cache and look for ones that mention good trade items for kids.

 

Give the kids some responsibility and power. Let the kiddos carry their own trade goodies, and help them at the cache to pick items that will make fair trades for anything they find. Remind them ahead of time that you do get to say "no" to anything you don't want them to have. When my kids were little and had trouble making up their minds about things like what to wear that day, I would pick two things and let them pick between only those two items--should work with geocache trade goodies, too.

[+briansnat]

Lets see. There have been over a quarter million caches placed since this sport's inception. Figure conservatively an average of 10 finds per cache, that's 2.5 million finds virually without incident (the real number is probably 3 times that). I've read of a few instances of where teens found a cache and urinated in it, or slightly worse and one instance of where someone sprayed pepper spray on the contents. But these are so few and far between that they are insignificant.

 

Your kids are in more danger in the back seat of your car on the way to the cache.

 

Still, its always a good idea for the parent to open the container first.

Edited February 4, 2006 by briansnat

[+Vinny & Sue Team]

The few and only adverse incidents -- well, slightly adverse incidents-- that I can report in our 10 months of geocaching and over 400 finds are these decidedly very minor incidents:

 

1) At one backcountry cache, Sue and I were abducted by space aliens and taken to a mothership in geocychronous orbit over the cache, where they strapped us to tables and pefrormed medical experiments upon us against our will for four days and then returned us to earth stark naked on a side street a residential neighborhood in Mahnattan, New York City. Other than that, the alien grays were quite nice to us.

 

2) At another backcountry cache, we were each shot several times by an international gang of cache thieves armed with high-powered rifles. Other than that, the outlaws were quite nice to us. Due to the gunshot wounds and blood loss, we were limping for a few days afterwards, and then healed without incident.

 

3) At an "urban" cache in a tiny village, we were mistaken for bank robbers by well-meaning local law enforcement officers, and we spent five days and four nights in a tiny jail in a backwater town in West Virginia until they realized their mistake, but other than that they were quite nice to us.

 

4) At a cache hide site in Wyoming, a friend and I accidentally surprised a female grizzly bear, and she attacked us. We each lost a lot of blood and a lot of skin, but other than that, she was quite nice to us.

 

5) We found a small undetonated homemade nuclear explosive device at one cache in West Virginia, but fortunately Sue had her PDA with her and was able to decode the machine language program for the microprocessor board and was able to guide me in defusing the device. We did each get a bad case of radiation poisoning from the poorly-shielded device (after all, there is only so much lead shielding that you can fit when stuffing a nuclear bomb into a cache container), but other than that, we were fine.

 

6) While hunting for a final stage of Blood & Guts in Virginia, we were -- as had previously been reported by several earlier finder teams as well -- abducted and held captive for three days and three nights by a renegade splinter group of the Illuminati, as part of their plot to... oops, I cannot talk about it right now; I would be killed.... Anyway, other than that, they were quite nice to us, and during our forced sojourn with them,they dutifully went out to a nearby Chinese take-out restaurant each evening to get me some steamed dumplings for my dinner. The best news is that after our release we did manage to complete the find for Blood & Guts in Virginia.

 

7) Then there was that ugly incident in southern Maryland where another cacher had beat us to the site of a newly-listed geocache, and we were in danger of losing First-to-Find honors to him. Yes, there was some gunplay, and yes, all threee of us, the other cacher, and Sue, and I, each suffered some minor gunshot wounds, and yes, we accidentally killed three bystanders in the park, but the good news is that the bystanders were only muggles, and no cachers were killed, and that we did manage to be First to Find, although we got a lot of blood on the log book.

 

8) At another cache in Western Maryalnd, we were set upon by a pack of wild dogs and a pack of wild boars, but we managed to sign the logbook and get out alive. One of the boars ate the pencil, so we had to sign the logbook in blood.

 

9) Finally, while pursuing the final stage of "Holy Wastewater (She It?)" cache in North Carolina, the acids and other acrid pollutants in the sewage pond/toxic waste dump ate through the 3-ply 840 denier rubberized nylon hull of my inflatable kayak, and all four chambers explosively delfated, dumping me unceremoniously into 7 feet of fluorescent orange toxic waste and sewage. Yes, the stuff ate thru most of my clothes and left bad burns on my skin, and yes, I had to declare a DNF on the cache, but the good news is that I made it to shore alive, missing only one finger, two toes and part of my nose (and, well, if you want to be picky, I did lose part of one eyelid, but that hardly counts), and I got home alive. It took only two months to heal from the chemical burns and from the toxins and parasites, and then I was back on my feet again.

 

10) While placing an extreme bridge geocache, I took an accidental 890 foot fall from the structure under one of the highest highway bridges in the USA (in West Virginia) into the river gorge below, but I broke fewer than eighteen bones, and was back on my feet within a month.

 

11) Once, while seeking a storm drain cache in Quebec, I hit a pocket of hydrogen sulfide gas, apparently in a concentration above 25 ppm, and, as I did not have my H2S montior/alarm with me, nor my pony tank of spare air, I almost died. I was, however, released from the hospital after only four weeks and the doctors say that the long-term damage to my brain, heart and liver was only moderate.

 

Other than that, all our cache hunting trips have been relatively uneventful. Oh, I just remembered the tale about the cache in the abandoned nuclear reactor housing and how my air supply crapped out on me while I was still in the hot chamber, but I will skip that story for now...

Edited February 4, 2006 by Vinny & Sue Team

[+Team Tayjam]

Welcome to geocaching! I hope you have a great time this weekend.

 

My only suggestion for you would be to start with some easy caches, ones that are rated with a difficulty level of 1-2. Read the logs from previous finders. That should give you a pretty good indication of the condition of the cache, and possibly even the contents.

 

Have fun!

[+hiker49]

Hi. Welcome to geocaching!!!

Although I am realatively new to geocaching, I have a little expierience to report. I am 13 years old, recieved a gps for Christmas 2004 (specifically requested it for Geocaching) and like to geocache with friends. No, we do not urinate in caches on a frequent basis (j/k, never done it, never will) and my team and I have never encountered any expieriences such as the ones you described when caching. We do cache with siblings, most being around the ages of 5 and 6, and we do always check caches before showing and items to them. Really it's just to be official, though, we've never found anything "bad." I would defidently reads through cache logs, description, d/t ratings, maybe email owner, etc, etc before setting off with the little ones, more to check if the physical requirements are within their ability. Our team has found caches that are physically chalenging, so you should check it out.

 

Hope you have fun.

Hiker49

[+briansnat]

The few and only adverse incidents -- well, slightly adverse incidents-- that I can report in our 10 months of geocaching and over 400 finds are these decidedly very minor incidents:

 

1) At one backcountry cache, Sue and I were abducted by space aliens and taken to a mothership in geocychronous orbit over the cache, where they strapped us to tables and pefrormed medical experiments upon us against our will for four days and then returned us to earth stark naked on a side street a residential neighborhood in Mahnattan, New York City. Other than that, the alien grays were quite nice to us.

 

2) At another backcountry cache, we were each shot several times by an international gang of cache thieves armed with high-powered rifles. Other than that, the outlaws were quite nice to us. Due to the gunshot wounds and blood loss, we were limping for a few days afterwards, and then healed without incident.

 

3) At an urban cache, we were mistaken for bank robbers by well-meaning local law enforcement officers, and we spent five days and four nights in a tiny jail in a backwater town in West Virginia until they realized their mistake, but other than that they were quite nice to us.

 

4) At a cache hide site in Wyoming, a friend and I accidentally surprised a female grizzly bear, and she attacked us. We each lost a lot of blood and a lot of skin, but other than that, she was quite nice to us.

 

5) We found a small undetonated homemade nuclear explosive device at one cache in West Virginia, but fortunately Sue had her PDA with her and was able to decode the machine language program for the microprocessor board and was able to guied me in defusing the device. We did each get a bad case of radiation poisoning from the poorly-shielded device (after all, there is only so much lead shielding that you can fit when stuffing a nuclear bomb into a cache container), but other than that, we were fine.

 

6) While hunting for a final stage of Blood & Guts in Virginia, we were -- as had previously been reported by several earlier finder teams -- abducted and held captive for three days and three nights by a renegade splinter group of the Illuminati, as part of their plot to... oops, I cannot talk about it right now. Anyway, other than that, they were quite nice to us, and during our forced sojourn with them,they dutifully went out to a nearby Chinese take-out restaurant each evening to get me some steamed dumplings for my dinner. The best news is that after our release we did manage to complete the find for Blood & Guts in Virginia.

 

7) Then there was that ugly incident in southern Maryland where another cacher had beat us to the site of a newly-listed geocache, and we were in danger of losing First-to-Find honors to him. Yes, there was some gunplay, and yes, all threee of us, the other cacher, and Sue, and I, each suffered some minor gunshot wounds, and yes, we accidentally killed three bystanders in the park, but the good news is that the bystanders were only muggles, and that we did manage to be First to Find, although we got a lot of blood on the log book.

 

8) At another cache in Western Maryalnd, we were set upon by a pack of wild dogs and a pack of wild boars, but we managed to sign the logbook and get out alive. One of the boars ate the pencil, so we had to sign the logbook in blood.

 

9) Finally, while pursuing the final stage of Holy Wastewater cache in North Carolina, the acids and other acrid pollutants in the sewage pond/toxic waste dump ate through the 3-ply 840 denier rubberized nylon hull of my inflatable kayak, and all four chambers explosively delfated, dumping me unceremoniously into 7 feet of orange toxic waste and sewage. Yes, the stuff ate thru most of my clothes and left bad burns on my skin, and yes, I had to declare a DNF on the cache, but the good news is that I made it to shore alive, missing only one finger, two toes and part of my nose (and, well, if you want to be picky, I did lose part of one eyelid, but that hardly counts), and I got home alive. It took only two months to heal from the chemical burns and from the toxins and parasites, and then I was back on my feet again.

 

10) I took an 890 foot fall from the structure under one of the highest highway bridges in the USA (in West Virginia) into the river gorge below, but I broke fewer than eighteen bones, and was back on my feet within a month.

 

11) Once, while seeking a storm drain cache in Quebec, I hit a pocket of hydrogen sulfide gas, apparently in a concentration above 25 ppm, and, as I did not have my H2S montior/alarm with me, nor my pony tank of spare air, I almost died. I was, however, released from the hospital after only four weeks and the doctors say that the long-term damage was only moderate.

 

Other than that, all our cache hunting trips have been relatively uneventful. Oh, I just remembered the tale about the cache in the abandoned nuclear reactor housing and how my air supply crapped out on me while I was still in the hot chamber, but I will skip that story for now...

Vinny is joking....I think.

[+Jamie Z]

Your kids are in more danger in the back seat of your car on the way to the cache.

Good job Brian. Add some more paranoia.

 

I think Team Neos said it best... (although I'm not a parent... so take this as the voice of inexperience, or as the voice of an unbiased mind) you can't shield your kids from everything, and you shouldn't. Your response to those undesirable things is far more important than trying to avoid undesirable things.

 

Jamie

[+Cyclometh]

Start off with some fairly easy ones, note the descriptions, terrain difficulty, and so on. The cache description page has a set of "attributes" on the right side, which are little icons. You can hover the mouse over them to see what they mean, but they're pretty self-explanatory. The one you're looking for is "kid friendly".

 

I wouldn't recommend taking the wee ones to any caches that require any bushwhacking, obviously. There's usually a number in parks and safe urban/semi-rural areas.

 

The previous hunters' log notes are a goldmine of useful data too, if you're willing to take the chance of a spoiler (not many of these I've seen).

 

I take my 6 year old son with me almost every time I go caching, and I've taken my 2 year old daughter on a couple. Others have given good advice about the hunt itself- keep them close and under control, obviously, and you should both fetch and open the cache to be sure it's not dangerous (highly unlikely) or containing questionable stuff (unlikely, but possible).

 

Another thing I find is that my son just loves to be in charge of the GPS for part of the hunt. "Can I have the GPS, Daddy?" So I let him hold it and since I usually know the way, I let him "navigate". Fun for the whole family.

 

Oh, and obviously, don't go on any hunts with kids that require long walks unless you want to carry them!

 

Good luck and welcome to the sport!

 

Cyclometh

[+New England n00b]

HA! Vinny, that's NOTHING! Once, when I was at band camp, I<#$%$@ CARRIER LOST>

 

Not really.

 

moellis1, welcome to geocaching! It is a wonderful activity for the whole family, as Cyclometh has said. Check on the difficulty level, and know what your kids are capable of.

 

It really is great fun, though I had to explain to my nephew that if he wanted something out of the cache, he had to put something IN. He wanted it all.

Edited February 4, 2006 by New England n00b

[+bblake]

5) We found a small undetonated homemade nuclear explosive device at one cache in West Virginia, but fortunately Sue had her PDA with her and was able to decode the machine language program for the microprocessor board and was able to guide me in defusing the device. We did each get a bad case of radiation poisoning from the poorly-shielded device (after all, there is only so much lead shielding that you can fit when stuffing a nuclear bomb into a cache container), but other than that, we were fine.

 

When dealing with small, undetonated, homemade nuclear explosive devices, I have always found it helpful to clip the blue wire. No, wait, it's the red wire... or was it the yellow?

 

We just returned from our first find and we took our 4-yr-old daughter with us. Of course we're always concerned for her safety, but she had a great time. Mostly. She did get quite upset when we had to stop searching for the first one which was either MIA or hidden very well.

 

I'm planning on hiding a cache of goodies just for her in the woods close to my house tomorrow, and taking a walk with her to find it -- she already knows how to follow the waypoints on the gpsr, and it helps to give her an idea of what the 'game' is all about. Not that finding goodies is what its all about, but you know what I mean. Family time, fun, thrill of the hunt, the challenge, just getting out of the house, whatever you like about it.

[+bahama97]

I take my 4 yr old dd with me most of the time. My fav caches so far are ones at parks or where the walk isn't too far. She likes to walk in the woods, but not for miles Definitely check out the log & see what people say. We call it "treasure hunting".

[+Deliveryguy428]

Start with a 5/5 that will get everyones feet wet...in more ways then one...

 

Ok seriously, pick a few good urban micro caches to start with and just slowly move up to the more in the woods type hides.

[+budd-rdc]

Hello, I'm off to my 1st find this weekend. I'm all prepared but started wondering is this safe? What I mean is has anyone experienced not so pleasant things on their journey? I'll be with 2 kids ages 1 & 5. I started thinking what if someone left something not appropriate in a cache. I just have this image in my head that when we finally find it we'll open it and there will be pile of dog poo or a syringe or something like that. Ok, I know I'm a freaky paranoid person but hey someone has to be right?

No sarcasm here.

 

To alleviate your concerns, you should read the previous logs before you visit that cache. I'd hate to see your first find be unpleasant, even if the chances of that happening are very low.

[docdigit]

Vinny, you missed my favorite one about the sky diving for that balloon cache and the fighter jets...

 

Seriously, I worry about the same thing. I have been able to go only a few times myself and take my little ones. Around here we have a major meth problem. The only advice I can give you is be aware of where you are, if it looks like the cache is in an area that could be a problem like that, move on. Open the cache first like everyone says. Most of them are small enough that you can shield the contents for a moment or two with your body (in case there is something really strange in there.) I think after a couple of finds, you will have a feel for it and not worry so much (I can tell the ones I will try with the kids and the ones that I will skip now.)

 

Doc

[moellis1]

Well I found my first cache. We had a blast! There was nothing gross inside, as I feared. Thank you everyone for your kind words of wisdom and for the laughs! I can understand how this game is addicting, I felt so accomplished after my find. I'm jonesing for the next one!

Thanks- Moe

[+Vinny & Sue Team]

Well I found my first cache. We had a blast! There was nothing gross inside, as I feared. Thank you everyone for your kind words of wisdom and for the laughs! I can understand how this game is addicting, I felt so accomplished after my find. I'm jonesing for the next one!

Thanks- Moe

 

Seriously, in over 400 finds and owning 22 caches, we have never found anything particulalry inappropriate (other than food and dog treats) in a cache container. We HAVE found weird things, such as a handful of water softener pellets placed in one of our wilderness caches by a local cacher (an off-duty law enforcement officer), but it was not malicious: turns out he had seen the pellets dumped among some trash in the trailhead parking lot where he had parked and had thought that they were "pretty gemstones". sigh!

 

And, in one 5 gallon size cache container which I found in a Targhee National Forest wilderness area in Idaho, I found a ton of religious tracts for the Mormon religion, but, on the other hand, the cache had been placed four years earlier by a Mormon Girl Scout Troop from a local summer camp, and I simply understood that this was their way of sharing things; small price to pay for finding a 5 gallon bucket under a log in a beautiful wilderness area. In fact, I ended up doing some major cache maintenance for them, as their logbook had filled up and the cache needed other work as well.

[+Team Neos]

Well I found my first cache. We had a blast! There was nothing gross inside, as I feared. Thank you everyone for your kind words of wisdom and for the laughs! I can understand how this game is addicting, I felt so accomplished after my find. I'm jonesing for the next one!

Thanks- Moe

 

Congratulations! I am so glad to hear that you and the kids enjoyed it. Hope you have many more fun adventures soon.

[+Night Stalker]

I have found over 1000 caches and the worst experience was finding a cache in the woods. A skunk was sitting on it. We had to wait until he decided to move on. I would suggest finding full sized caches. Kids don't get much out of micro's but they love to go through the junk in a real cache.

[+StarBrand]

Other than the occasional knife (kitchen type) - I have never really seen anything too bad in a cache. I've seen worse on the trip to get to the cache location - but even that is quite rare.

[+doctor scotland]

vinnys reply is the best post ive ever read in the forum - you should write stories mate! well funny!!

 

seriously though, i dont think you need to worry, most cachers have had mainly good experiences with their cache finds.

and the previous logs for the caches you are looking for will tell you of anything to be wary of.

enjoy it, and experience will lead to further confidence!