An excuse to get outdoors..

[Myself248]

I ran across xkcd comic number 77 last night, and it set me thinking:

 

Did you add geocaching to your regular outdoor activities?

 

Or is geocaching the only thing that gets you more than 100 feet from the car on a regular basis?

[+NorthWes]

It was an add-on; the family was learning to use GPS for marine & cross-country navigation (i.e. how to use GPS to enhance fishing & hunting forays) when my daughter stumbled onto geocaching. Now, we add geocaching as a plug-in activity when we travel, plan to take the dog on a walk, or look for a great hiking opportunity on a nice evening or weekend. Of course, it does have its singularly obsessive moments, and I saw one of those moments in the concluding panel of that cartoon...

[+Thrak]

I ran across xkcd comic number 77 last night, and it set me thinking:

 

Did you add geocaching to your regular outdoor activities?

 

Or is geocaching the only thing that gets you more than 100 feet from the car on a regular basis?

 

I was an Internet gamer. I played a MMORPG (Massively Multiplayer Online Role Playing Game) called Dark Age of Camelot. I gamed anywhere from 2 - 16 hours EVERY day for 3.5 years. I built 2 computers specifically for playing - fast processors (even faster since I overclocked them), lots of very fast RAM, high end video systems, voice communication. I was totally hooked. (BTW - Thrak was the name of my very first character or "toon" in the game.)

 

The folks on my block have a block breakfast each year where we all bring some food and have a big outdoor breakfast. At the end of July 2005 my neighbor Bob (he caches as bobolu) came down to the breakfast gathering to snag some food and say hi to all the neighbors. When folks asked him what he'd been up to lately he got a big grin on his face and said "treasure hunting!". Most of the folks laughed and asked about it and Bob told us he had been doing something called geocaching and told us a little bit about it. Again, most laughed and kind of shook their heads. I thought it sounded interesting and asked him to repeat the web site name. I went home, created an account, and started reading the forums.

 

I haven't gamed since that day. I just completed my first year of caching -- first find was August 8, 2005 -- with just over 600 caches in the year. Geocaching has been GREAT for me.

[jtkauderer]

I ran across xkcd comic number 77 last night, and it set me thinking:

 

Did you add geocaching to your regular outdoor activities?

 

Or is geocaching the only thing that gets you more than 100 feet from the car on a regular basis?

 

It was added on to my current outdoor activities. I love hiking, but was getting kid of tired of the same old trails over and over.

 

The caches made these 'old' trails new again. I looked at everything differently, I saw things I missed before.

 

Even when I am not out looking for a cache now, I have a new appreciation for that which I took for granted before.

[+LDove]

This has totally enhanced my life. I use it as a stress reducer, a great way to see places and most importantly to exercise which I did not do before. Exercising in a gym was boring and walking my subdivision was boring too, now I see all sorts of new places and have met many great people.

 

P.S. Got my college student daughter into it also, she caches with us on occasion and wishes she could devote more time to it too.

Edited August 24, 2006 by lonesumdove

[+crystalndave]

Other than mandatory gardening geocaching is basically the only reason I go outside. I like the beach and would walk a nature trail once in a great while if heavily prompted but I would neve have considered myself a outdoors lover. Now I cache as often as possible and have been to many places that I would have never seen.

BTW-Thrak.. good for you! I think the computer can be extremely addictive and its good you have found something else to do! I used to spend 8-10 hours a day in chat rooms if you can believe that, makes me cringe now.

[+egami]

It will be an add on for my family.

 

We aren't outdoor junkies, but we are always going to the park, playing in the yard or going on walks. I take the kids on short motorcycle rides.

 

I am a tech junky so I spend a lot of time on the computers. I am a developer / sys admin. by day and an internet junky by night (Fantasy Football, MMORPG, FPS, web design work, fix computers, break computers, network config...all that stuff). I have like 6 computers on a network right now...probably my all-time low. When I took a load to the dump I got questioned to make sure I wasn't dumping for a business...sadly, they were indeed all my old personal PC's (recycled as much as I could!).

 

So when I can go outdoors AND be a tech junky....double score, imo.

Edited August 24, 2006 by egami

[+KKTH3]

Hard to say, really. I grew up as being an outdoor person most of my life with hunting, fishing, skiing (downhill and X-country) camping, backpacking, road cycling, long distance running, and middle distance T&F being my main activities. The only main activity I had that was more of an indoor activity was music. After Lady K had her injury I had to give up nearly all of those activities. I was able to keep up fishing and music for a couple years and then eventually had to quit those as well as I really can't spend much time on the road like I was used to being able to do. Since then, only geocaching has really filled in the outdoors part of my hobbies with everything else being something I can do at home. In that way, yes, geocaching has been an excuse to get outdoors. In reality, however, this isn't really a new experience for me to be outside. I spend less time outside since picking up geocaching than I did most of my life before geocaching. Sometimes that's just the way things work out.

[+conradv]

It's just been added on to my hiking here in north Idaho & western Montana.

 

It's funny how many caches I was standing right next to over the last few years and had no idea that they were even there...

[+TheAlabamaRambler]

Geocaching saved my life.

 

No exaggeration!

 

It's a long boring story, so skip the rest if you want... It's likely much more than the OP asked for!

 

I had a devastating car wreck in '79, had 42 bone-graft surgeries over the next 20 years, comprising almost five years total time in hospitals, battled chronic pain and infection, lost a leg to it in '99, can't use a prosthesis so I am stuck in a wheelchair or walking on crutches, and then broke my fool neck in '02.

 

Years of escalating use of prescription pain meds led to my being Opioid-tolerant and addicted to enormous doses of Fentanyl (a narcotic 100 times more powerful than Morphine)... doses higher than is usually allowed for terminal cancer patients.

 

During that time-frame I owned a business and raised a family (5 kids, now 33 to 16).

 

When I broke my neck and they told me they couldn't fix it due to the infection risk I sold my business and retired.

 

I had grown fat, useless, irritable, slept all the time, the drugs killed any usefull brain funnction, I had zero quality of life, was crippled from losing the leg and now my left hand is numb and my arm cramps all day from the neck injury. I hurt like crazy 24/7 and saw no hope for a cure or future.

 

The very nature of pain meds is one of increased tolerance, so I was taking the drugs faster than was prescribed and begging my doctors to fudge the date at the end of the month - drug-seeking behavior I abhored and had never thought myself capable of. I had always detested addicts and knew I could never be one - and then one day I am one.

 

Despair, depression and hopelessness caused by chronic pain made me into a person I detested. Despite a decent income that would last for life, a happy wonderful immediate and extended family and being blessed with a large circle of supportive friends, I decided it was time to check out. I'd had quite enough, thank you very much. Whatever was next HAD to be better than the life I was living.

 

I decided it was time to go fishing; they'd find my boat drifting empty down the river.

 

I was packing my car and boat for the trip when the mailman brought a package.

 

I smoke Marlboro cigarretes, which at that time had a coupon redeemable for catalog stuff, and had months before ordered a Garmin eTrex Yellow for $25. and a basketful of coupons. I had totally forgotten about it.

 

Huh. I like gadgets, so I took a break from loading the boat and went online to see what I could do with this thing. My original idea for ordering it had been to mark fishing holes I wanted to return to.

 

So on the 'net I run across this geocaching.com site. Enter my zip code and what do you know, there are some of these geocache things around me. Interesting.

 

Looking at one of the listings I realize that I know right where it is, from the description. It's at a hole in the fence that surrounded my high school. Back in '70 we used to cut class, go to this hole in the fence to get off school property, and smoke whatever was available.

 

Well, that's interesting. The Mountie Cache. I wonder will this device really take me there? I knew the route well, but let the arrow take me there, and sure enough it put me exactly in my old smokin' hole, and there was the cache right by the hole in the fence. By this time it's late and I am tired, so I put off my 'fishing' trip until the next day.

 

That night I had some soul-searching to do. I knew I had to get well or die. No other choice. Frankly, dying didn't look all that appealing, plus it's just too cowardly. I would have eternity to hate myself for being such a wuss, so I had to get healthy.

 

I put $1700. worth of Duragesic patches and Actiq suckers (the two fentanyl drugs I lived on) in the garbage and swore I would never take another narcotic drug. Man, that was a trip. Going cold turkey off that stuff is often fatal, but I didn't care; it was die or get healthy, and pretty much a coin toss anyway.

 

I don't remember much about the next 90 or 100 days, cold-turkey withdrawals from where I was on the drug scale are not pretty, except that I do remember being almost fixated on this one cache that I had read about, Higher Than A Hawk, up on a mountain behind my house. Whenever I could sit up I looked out the window at that mountaintop, spending hours imagining where the cache was located, and my whole recovery focused on getting that cotton-pickin cache.

 

One morning I grew tired of looking at it, plugged in the coordinates and took off to find it. This was, I think, August of '03. August in Alabama. I had been indoors for years, a couch potato, and bad sick for months. Now I am hiking up this mountain. Stupid. No water, no telling the wife I am going, just load the GPS, grab a hat and go.

 

This cache is in a Nature Preserve, so I get there at the 8 a.m. opening time. The signs say the park closes and gates are locked at 5 p.m. The GPS says the cache is only three miles. No problem. I have all day. I thought I would die. Within a mile my crutches are killing me, I hurt all over, my heart is pounding, I am sweating like the proverbial pig, and as thirsty as I have ever been. 2 miles to go. Something like 800' of elevation change. I look desperately along the trail for any source of water. No joy.

 

Push, dammit. Push on. Quitting is not an option. I found the cache at 4 p.m.

 

Woohoo! I can do this! It was as grand a sense of accomplishment as ever I had felt in my life. Of all the wonderful events I have been blessed with in my life, and I have been truly blessed, that moment was defining. I sat on an overlook by the cache and cried like a baby for the first time since my wreck almost twenty-five years ago. What a long strange trip it has been.

 

Ut Oh. No way am I gonna make it back to the gates before they close. Call the park office, to ask them to leave the gate open... no answer.

 

Well, heck, I live just right down there, I can practically see the house from here. It's just a few miles, and I got here, didn't I? I'll bushwack down the back side of the mountain and can't help but intersect a road that will lead me home.

 

At 7 p.m. I stagger out of the woods, bedraggled, exhausted, dehydrated, and knock on the door of first house I come to. Turns out to be the grandmother of one of my daughter's friends. Glory be... cold water and a ride home!

 

But... I did it. If I can climb that mountain, sign that cache, I can reclaim my life.

 

And I did. One cache at a time.

 

That was three years and about three thousand caches in 24 states, plus 50 or so caching events, ago (I don't really know, I mostly quit logging caches at 1800-something) and I have been grateful for this game and its community of players ever since.

 

My family appears to like me now, I certainly love them more than ever, I have a huge community of geopals, and life is good.

 

I will always hurt, but I found that when it gets really bad if I get in the car and go hunt a few caches I forget about it. I'll take caches over drugs hands-down.

 

Having someone call me and ask "Wanna go caching?" is all the high I need.

 

I have gone back to my life-long hobbies of hunting and fishing, but they are now more the add-on to my real enjoyment, geocaching.

 

Ed

[+Harry Dolphin]

Gee, Alabama Rambler, that's where I got my Yellow Etrex too!

 

Well, I used to do a lot of hiking in north Jersey. I think I finally did eeery trail in north Jersey that I could find a map for. So, I started following that trail with the six inch white blaze out of the state. First, I did day trips on the AT. Well, Harisburg, Pennsylvania was just too far for a day hike. So I started planning backpacking trips on the AT. Twice a year, I'd go off on a sixty-mile backpack. Well, in ten years, I hiked from Crawford Notch, New Hampshire to southern Shenandoah National Park, in Virginia. Well, that was getting to be a bit far a trip for a week's back-packing. And, to be perfectly honest, the Presi Traverse in New Hampshire was a real downer. That's not a trail! That's climbing piles of sharp boulders. Took us four hours to do the first mile north of Madison Hut. Nope, sorry. That's not for me. That is not hiking. Over a thousand miles on the AT!

So, I took up geocaching instead. Now, if I do five miles a week, that's a lot! I've gained fifteen pounds. And, I'm having a heck of a good time!

[playstation69]

The kids and I were visiting Grandpa in a little town with nothing to do, but after the first time, we loved it. Now I am in a new place, not knowing anyone and it is an absolutely great way to get out find new places and really enjoy the surroundings all on my own.

[+LDove]

Ed,

 

Your story brings to my mind one of my favorite words:

 

serendipity

• (noun) the occurrence and development of events by chance in a happy or beneficial way.

 

Your story is wonderful, it brought tears to my eyes. I believe in things happening for a reason and you seem to have overcome a quite a "mountain". Congrats to you! I should print your story and show it to the naysayers that I meet who don't get this whole thing, they think I am wasting my time going in the woods looking for "keychains". Happy caching!

[+Harriet the Spy]

About a month ago out of the blue my husband (Pilgrims Progress) told me that he was glad I started Geocaching. After asking him why he said that he was worried that I was starting to fall into the same habits of my mom and sister who are shut in, world of warcraft addicts. Although I myself never got into that kind of game I was spending a lot of time at home away from the outside world. After being introduced to geocaching by my good friends the BabyBackPackpackers there is rarely a week that I don't go SOMEWHERE. So Geocaching was the answer given to my husbands prayer about me getting a hobby and out of the house! But unfortunately for him I now offer that as my excuse about not having dinner ready, or the dishes done, etc. After all it was all HIS idea for me to not be home!!

[+Tsmola]

it was an add-on for me, as I've lived in the country and played outdoors all my life. Caching has been a nice addition to my hobbies and is right up there with hunting and fishing for me. I've discovered new hunting and fishing spots thanks to caching. Caching did do one thing for me though....it gave me an excuse to get out and explore! Before I started caching I hardly ever went to big nature preserves or visited old cemeteries. I never knew there were so many cool places so close to home before I started caching.

[+briansnat]

Add on for me. I've been an avid hiker (and skier, backpacker, fisherman, snowshoer, canoer) for years and geocaching was just one more reason to get outdoors.

[+KG1960]

We always have liked hiking and other outdoor activities, but usually reserved those for vacations and special trips. With geocaching, we have been out a lot more frequently. We have discovered parks that were unknown to us and discovered parts of other parks that we didn't know were there. Cool!

[+Natureboy56]

NO, I already hunted, fished, and all that dstiff before geocaching

[+Searching_ut]

For me, it's an occasional add on. The first few times I geocached I went with a friend who had learned about it, and wanted me to help her being as how she knew I used GPS units a great deal for hiking. At the time, we were looking for Park type caches, and I didn't really find it that interesting. During that time, I was finnishing up my qwest to climb the highest peak in every county of the state, and found a cache on top of the mountain I had googled when planning my route. I decided to hit that cache while I was up there, and found that to be fun enough that I started caching on and off from then on.

 

My caching still isn't consistant though, mostly just added on to other adventures. I plan a lot of them when I travel, but hardly ever actually search them out. My vacation 3 years ago was to England, and I didn't manage to hit a single cache in the week I was there. Last year we stayed fairly close to home, and spent a couple weeks in the yellowstone area, managing to hit a couple virtual caches that we never bothered logging. It just seemed like such a sidenote to the trip. This summer, it was an Alaskan cruise, where we planned to hit about a dozen caches, but only actually got around to hitting two of them. Just seemed we were having too much fun doing other stuff. I found that I quite often load pocket queries into my gps for areas I plan to hike or explore, but then never bother seeking out the caches even when I'm quite close by. On other rare occasions, I spend the day with the sole purpose of caching. I can't say I get out more because of caching, but it adds a little extra incentive on occasion.

[+ChicagoCanineCrew]

It was just an extension of my love for short hikes... I'm not an overnight hiker/camper kind of person but I love hiking in the woods or just through the city sidewalks, especially with my dogs. Geocaching is just a good excuse for a hike in my case, and for getting the dogs out even more often!

[+Kryten]

I suffered from agoraphobia and panic attacks so I didn't get out much. Caching provided a wonderful distraction, something to concentrate on while I was outside. Perhaps it's just the substitution of one compulsion by another. Addicted, who me

[b1rdbrain]

I ran across xkcd comic number 77 last night, and it set me thinking:

 

Did you add geocaching to your regular outdoor activities?

 

Or is geocaching the only thing that gets you more than 100 feet from the car on a regular basis?

Geocaching gets me out more then 100 feet away from my car.

[+thedeadpirate]

TAR, believe it or not, it's because of stories like yours that I actually feel fortunate to have been born with my disabilities. I have spoken with many people over the years who have become disabled later in life and have had difficult times getting a handle on it. Be it pain, mental, etc. Somehow, it seems that growing up with disabilities allows you to adjust much easier. For that, I thank God that he made me who I am.

 

As for the OP, caching was an addon to wardriving. I originally purchased my gpsr to use while lecturing at the college about wifi security. However, my brother had mentioned a couple of years earlier something about some kind of treasure hunting that people do with gps's. So, the firest day that I had mine I googled gps and treasure hunting and found this site. Amazingly in the small town that I live in, there was actually a cache just a few miles from here.

 

The rest is history. I was instantly hooked.

 

I will say that I went from someone who only got from behind the computer on a rare occasion to someone who gets outdoors several times a week. Before I couldn't walk more than 100 hundred feet without being in considerable pain. Now I still can't, but I don't care. I have a goal. I have walked up to a mile to get a cache and savored every moment of it. I might be in pain for several day later, but while I am building back up, I am planning the next cache or the next hide.

 

I am heading back for surgery once again next week. But I can guarantee that I will be back on my feet quicker because I have to get my cache fix. It's very strange to me, but caching has been a motivator like none other for me.

 

P.S. I have printed off TAR's post. The next time I get asked why I do this, I will be handing someone a copy of that post.

[+AJB3023]

Caching was an add on for us. I found this site while doing some research on my old GPS. Saved the pennies when I decided that the old GPS wasn't going to be good enough. My wife and I had always been outdoorsy type, however she suffers from Lupis and over the last few years the pain it somethimes causes has slowed her down alot. Geocaching has given her a goal to make the pain worth the hike. Even though it may only be a little trinket, its a reward. We have done 3 so far, one we had to bushwack and 1/8th of a mile one was a 3 mile round tripper with some big elevation gain, but she did them both, cussing all the way. She, actually both of us were tired and sore but happy at the end of the day. The 3rd was a nice 4 X 4 trail and a 50 yard walk once we were on top of the mountain. Now we plan for an area we havent been to in a while, look to see what hikes or drives are there and then look for the caches in the area.

[+SweetBell]

Two years ago I had routine surgery that caused a strep infection. I ended up with toxic shock/ severe sepsis. I had a massive heart attack, my organs, including my lungs shut down. I was put on life support and was in a coma for 32 days. My family was told I had about a 10 percent chance of survival. (I was 40 at the time).

 

When I awoke my body was so week I couldn't even lift my arms up by myself. I needed 7 months of rehab to learn to walk and to even take care of my activities of daily living.

 

The infection that nearly took my life damaged my nerves causing neuropathy and I have constant nerve and joint pain. My lungs were damaged and I get short of breath easily. I have many lasting effects that I will have to live with forever. At least I get to live!!

 

And live life to the fullest is what I intend to do. After an experience like this my entire family lives life with a different perspective.

 

I want to travel and see and experience as much as I am able to. With the help of my children I am able to geocache. ( I am unsteady on my feet) I have found that this is the most wonderful exercise!! The goal of the cache is just what I need. The walk to the cache helps my legs, lungs and heart gain strength. Some days it is difficult just to get up and dressed because of the pain, however if I have a goal it helps keep me going.

 

So far this year I have been able to visit Ohio, Arkansas. Kentucky, Illinois, Missouri and Alaska.

Unfortunatley I did not try geocaching until later in the year and I just have my home state of Indiana and Alaska under my belt for found caches.

 

Alabama Rambler... Your story really hit home. You sure have been through a lot! I need to visit your state and Arizona and I will have to "A" states all covered!! Hopefully I will be able to do that next year.

 

I say a loud THANK YOU ...... for geocaching as a form of exercise for the mind and body, for a wonderful family activity, and most of all for the kind, wonderful and interesting geocaching community.

 

Mary

[+Ockette]

I was an Internet gamer. I played a MMORPG (Massively Multiplayer Online Role Playing Game) called Dark Age of Camelot. I gamed anywhere from 2 - 16 hours EVERY day for 3.5 years. I built 2 computers specifically for playing - fast processors (even faster since I overclocked them), lots of very fast RAM, high end video systems, voice communication. I was totally hooked. (BTW - Thrak was the name of my very first character or "toon" in the game.)

 

My story's much the same. I RP in The Nexus, an immense free-form Role Playing community on livejournal. I'd play 'round the clock, if I could. But one of the people I play with introduced me to geocaching when I went down to meet her face to face for the first time. Thanks, SKYLANTH. This is all your fault. (And Ockette is the supervillain handle of my first character, or 'pup.')

[+miss_butterfly]

I'm another one of the people who suffered from agoraphobia and panic attacks, I live in a first floor flat and used to not even be able to go to the ground floor to check if i got any post. No way could i go for walks, wondering around aimlessly, I couldn't 'take in the sights' because i was too busy panicing.

Caching gave a purpose to going outside that was NICE, a focus so I wouldn't think of horrible things I could panic on and finally got me out of the house

[+cimawr]

It's an add-on for me - both to my normal habits of spending time out of doors, and to my normal habit of spending too much time on the computer.

 

I grew up in the country (from age 5 to age 14), was usually out of doors all the time, wandering fields, woods, and orchards - plus, my father's idea of a good time on a nice Sunday afternoon was to go out for a long walk in the woods.

As an adult, I like to go out with my dogs and hike; I'm also active in the sport of NADAC dog agility, which means I travel with my dogs.

I ALSO like exploration by driving, checking out new places, and finding wonder in everyday things... AND am something of a computer geek, since I've been building my own for about 10 years now, like discussion groups etc., AND love mystery stories, crossword puzzles, Sudoku, acrostics... things that take both logic and intuition.

 

So when my S.O. (he's got an account under the name Fandrel) called me up one day, all enthused, and said "Hey, go to geocaching.com and check it out!", I was immediately intrigued; the following weekend, he, his son, and I went out and did some fairly easy urban ones, and I was hooked - had to get my own GPS so I could start hunting on my own. Well, with just the dogs, anyway.

[+norsehawk]

For me, its a good excuse to go out and get exercise, have fun and its usually a decent mental challenge at times as well. I am definately one of those gadget guys, I love electronic toys, and after reading a few news articles about geocaching, checking out the site before, then seeing another news article, I finally decided to say what the heck, buy a gps and start trying to find caches.

[Luckless]

Love this thread and you can see how caching can be for everyone.

[+Team XL5]

For me, it was a chance to get and do some exercise, see some interesting places and take pictures. I had a dodgy hip for years and couldn't walk very far. I finally got a replacement and am now fully mobile and doing things I only dreamt of a few years ago.

[+shawhh]

add on for me. had always been active out of doors-hiking, hunting, fishing, canoeing, backpacking. bought a gpsr in preparation for a trip through the ten thousand island region of the everglades. wound up not needing it to navigate (years of experience using map and compass). gpsr just laid around until 2001 when i read about geocaching in backpacker magazine. 900+ finds later, i've seen places near and far that i wouldn't have otherwise seen. -harry

[+Big Max]

It is an add-on. I love the outdoors, mainly hunting, off-roading and camping, and I also am a tech junkie. Got interested in a GPS for these things. Ran across geocaching while researching GPSr units. Have really enjoyed it, although I don't get to do a lot of it right now.

[+larryc43230]

Geocaching helped me rediscover the joys of the great outdoors, and probably helped save my health in the process.

 

When I was a kid, I spent every minute I could outdoors, usually with my cousin and a few good friends, exploring the countryside, fishing and camping. When I started college, I found new friends and new things to get involved in, and pretty much forgot about my previous interests.

 

After college, my job involved mostly sitting at a desk and staring at a PC (for the last few years, I was a webmaster for a government agency; before that I worked in IT and network administration). My hobbies and spare-time activities were also centered around my PC and the Internet (also a lot of reading and movie-watching, all in the comfort of my living room). I pretty much forgot what real fresh air was like.

 

Then, about four years ago, I became very ill and was eventually diagnosed as a Type 2 diabetic. I had gained some weight over the years, but wasn't anywhere near obese (I'm about 5'11" and my weight had grown to about 205 pounds). It was the lifestyle (along with bad eating habits) that was causing the damage.

 

Once I got things under better control with diet and medication, my doctor advised me that there were three things that were vital to my keeping the disease in check: Exercise, Exercise, and Exercise! I bought myself an exercise bike for use at home, and starting taking long "hikes" in the emergency stairway in the office tower I worked in. At my peak, I was walking up 30 floors, then back down to my "home" floor, at least once every work day.

 

I retired in January 2005, after 30 years with the same outfit. I used my exercise bike nearly every day, and took long walks in the neighborhood and in parks near my home, but that became boring over time (especially the exercise bike).

 

Then, this spring, I discovered geocaching. In a lot of ways, it's the perfect hobby for me. I was already a computer/Internet fanatic; I love electronic gadgets; and I really needed something interesting and challenging to get involved with that would also give me a good physical workout. And it also got me back outside breathing fresh air again!

 

Bottom line, to answer the original question, geocaching did give me a badly needed excuse to get outdoors again.

 

--Larry

[+nameless301]

Well I use to be in Boy Scouts then left that and geocached with my dad for about 3 months and then stopped with that and just stayed home and didn't really do anything but play video games, but then I moved to CA with my girlfriend and just got back into it and have been doing it avidly ever since.

[nonaeroterraqueous]

I love this thread.

 

We did a backpacking trip through the snow once, where I discovered that my orienteering abilities were not as good on the side of a steep mountain as on an open plain. It was a painfully tedious experience, and we traveled the last quarter mile in four hours. We almost didn't make camp before sunset, which scared me. We never found our way through the snow to our intended destination and had to turn back early. The next year we tried again and succeeded, but I footed the bill for a GPSr to make things go smoothly and not have to come so close to getting lost again. On the GPSr itself was a special function for geocaches, which sparked my interest. We've always been avid walkers and often walk for miles in a day just for the fun of it. Geocaching just made it more fun. We walk more often now, because of geocaching, but we walk far shorter distances, because so many of them are park'n grabs. Overall, I'd say we actually get less exercise now.

[+wimseyguy]

add on for me. had always been active out of doors-hiking, hunting, fishing, canoeing, backpacking. bought a gpsr in preparation for a trip through the ten thousand island region of the everglades. wound up not needing it to navigate (years of experience using map and compass). gpsr just laid around until 2001 when i read about geocaching in backpacker magazine. 900+ finds later, i've seen places near and far that i wouldn't have otherwise seen. -harry

And I've been to WILDLIFE places I would have never visited if harry hadn't put a cache out there. I don't think I would have just gone for a 3.5 hour swamp stomp for the fun f it otherwise. I'm quite proud to have been part of one of the three groups that has actually found this one, and I suspect there are a lot of missing DNF's or DNAttempts that belong on this cache page.

 

I'm not a huge outdoors person, but far from a shut in. Before geocaching I used to walk in the woods pretty often, just down the right side of the fairway looking for a sliced drive.

[+Jhwk]

basic answer is... yes

 

Although I do camp and hike and canoe/kayak and fish, I don't do them with the frequency that I can cache. My explanation to the spouse was that "this will get me back out into the woods again"

 

and help me loose some of my fat a**

[+Maingray]

Similar to Thrak here... MMORPG junkie, set up a pretty big cross-MMORPG guild ( http://www.calloffate.com ) in 1999, which is still going strong but without me due to Geocaching which I started three years later in 2002. I still moderate and maintain the site but no more gaming for a few years now.

 

Geocaching certainly helped me wean off MMORPGs, which are far too exclusive for non-MMORPG family members. We have always enjoyed hiking and other outdoor activities in the UK and now the USA, but now geocaching gives us a much bigger common reason to get out.

 

PS great thread.

Edited August 29, 2006 by Maingray