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Accidental Caching


Lucky46

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I have been caching for about 4 months now and I must be developing an eye for good geochaching hide sites. A few weeks ago I was walking my dog along a lake and as I was looking around at the scenery I found myself thinking of all the good hiding places around me. A few minutes later I noticed a funny lower branch in a tree and sure enough, it was fake and had a small micro attached with a log. (Which I logged into) and later logged online. Anybody else stumble on one? Is there a term for this kind of caching, other than blind luck? :D

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i am ALWAYS looking in hollow trees and suspicious piles of sticks and such. so far, such has not been fruitful.

 

However I did find a cache in a covered bridge that i thought did not have one while I was scouting out a place to put mine.

 

I don't know if this has a name or not, but I call it "muggling" a cache because i found it the same way a muggle would.

 

I don't know if a cacher can truly be a muggle though, since cachers are aware of the existence of caches, which awareness muggles are assumed not to share. It makes finding them much more likely when we know they exist.

 

I like finding muggles' logs in caches. That is a rare treat. You can usually tell by the person using a real name (or none at all).

 

Just last week a muggle beat me to a FTF. :D

Edited by Confucius' Cat
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I was introduced to Geocaching by my bro-in-law, a park ranger in Indiana, who stumbled upon a cache several years ago in the park. He investigated it and discovered the sport himself. As he puts it, "It's the one thing you can do sitting in front of the computer that encourages you to get up from in front of the computer and get outdoors".

 

As for myself, no, I've never stumbled upon one accidentally. Heck, I'm lucky if I find the thing using my GPSr...

 

:D

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I found my #100 by accident.

 

The Truly Unpleasant Mrs. Shop99er and I were looking to set a cache in a local park. I found what I thought was the perfect spot, and crawled in.

 

I was right, it was a good spot, cuz there was one there. It had just gone active that afternoon. In fact, we were the STF.

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I haven't found any accidentally, but the other weekend I was out with some non-caching friends in a place where I had looked for a couple of caches before. I remembered what the cache pages said and looked at the sites with fresh eyes...and sure enough found one of them that had eluded me for nearly a month. And without my GPS in hand.

 

-CJ

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I just found one the other day. I was in a park looking for three caches, and while I was waiting for 'traffic' to clear (it was like this guy was following me), I saw a piece of wood propped up inside a hollow tree. The one cache I wasn't going after (don't ask) was the only one I found in there that day. Go figure.

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I found a cache that was never listed (I'll be FTF if/when it does get published!) while I was scouting out a location for a hide of my own. I later found out that there had been multiple caches at that very spot, all of which had been archived for similar reasons, but that cache wasn't one of them (I'm guessing it was archived for those same reasons before it was ever listed).

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i am ALWAYS looking in hollow trees and suspicious piles of sticks and such. so far, such has not been fruitful.

 

However I did find a cache in a covered bridge that i thought did not have one while I was scouting out a place to put mine.

 

I don't know if this has a name or not, but I call it "muggling" a cache because i found it the same way a muggle would.

 

I don't know if a cacher can truly be a muggle though, since cachers are aware of the existence of caches, which awareness muggles are assumed not to share. It makes finding them much more likely when we know they exist.

 

I like finding muggles' logs in caches. That is a rare treat. You can usually tell by the person using a real name (or none at all).

 

Just last week a muggle beat me to a FTF. :D

Ahem. The "proper" technical term for this phenomena which is employed in the peer-reviewed scientific and sociological literature is "accidental unintentional discovery of a geocache container in the wild by a geocacher while pursuing any of a number of manifold outdoor recreational activities other than geocaching" and it is often referenced by the short and easy abbreviation "AUDOAGCITWBAGWPAOANOMORAOTG".

 

 

:D

 

 

:)

 

:D

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I TECHNICALLY have, sorta... but this was a special case. Two caches were literally located in the same bush. I was looking for one and found both :D

 

The reason this occured was that one was the final of a puzzle, and the other was just a traditional, so the posted coords were quite different. The reason it STILL wasn't caught was that the puzzle was put there before geocaching.com had the ability to include additional waypoints for the reviewer to see the location of the final.

 

It's currently in the process of being rectified now though.

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Once, when I saw a container laying out in the open at the edge of a Pioneer cemetery. It had apparently been muggled and was about 6 feet from its' proper hiding place. I called my wife and gave her the coords and got the proper name for the cache since it was not on the logbook. I sealed the container better than it had been and put it where it belonged with a couple of sticks over it. Still an easy find.

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I actually found one today while looking for a place to put out a new cache in a nearby park. My girlfriend and I went walking down a treeline and noticed a pile of logs...flipped the top one off and there was a cache! We signed the log and put it back and realized we should check our GPSr a tad better when looking for a hiding spot!

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I was introduced to Geocaching by my bro-in-law, a park ranger in Indiana, who stumbled upon a cache several years ago in the park. He investigated it and discovered the sport himself. As he puts it, "It's the one thing you can do sitting in front of the computer that encourages you to get up from in front of the computer and get outdoors".

 

As for myself, no, I've never stumbled upon one accidentally. Heck, I'm lucky if I find the thing using my GPSr...

 

:laughing:

 

Me too.. I was told about geocaching by a guy that had seen one in the woods while out on a training run. I've only found letterboxes by accident.

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Actually, my first cache was a muggled cache. It was a regular sized cache and in the log, the last logger mentioned she had found it while walking her dog and took it home. That night she went through it and got it figured out and returned it the next day. Would like to think that it was interesting enough to maybe get her started. :laughing:

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While CITO-ing through an urban park last Saturday, my group stumbled across no less than four unlisted caches that had been planted by various classes from the local schools. Different schools - they've got some sort of project going on here. None are listed on GC.com, nor are they likely to be - they're pretty close together.

 

One cache caught my eye from a distance, because it was just too brightly colored to be a piece of trash. It was a plastic box covered in bright yellow/red/orange fake leaves, in best New England style - which really stood out against the shades of grey that are common around here right now.

 

All in all, it was quite charming. We TNLNSL'd with kind notes and re-stashed carefully.

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I found one today while hiking. I stepped off the trail to answer the call of the wild and found a plastic container that looked familar. It was half full of water and the name of the cache and the letter telling what it contained was so wet I could not read it. It had a rubber turtle that I took and put in GC102CV but the rest of the stuff was too moldy.

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I found a cache on Quandary Peak (a 14er) a couple years ago. It was an ammo box sitting next to two skis and looked like a memorial (I think that's what it was meant to be) to an unfortunate skier, sitting in plain view on the summit. Unfortunately, since I thought it was a memorial, I didn't want to disturb it and didn't find out it was a cache until I was looking for caches in the area later on and stumbled across the cache page, complete with a picture. I didn't feel justified in logging it since I didn't realize it was a cache at the time, ha!

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I was taking a fellow Geocacher around to some caches that I had already found. She found the cache that I had found previoulsy and after logging it, we jumped into my truck and started heading out of the area. On the drive out, I noticed a tiny micro (nano) container hanging from a tree branch that was kind of a tall reach. My partner jumped out and retrieved it. Sure enough, it had a log to sign. We contacted the owner of the first cache we found and they said that what we found must have been one that was beleived to be lost and they would check it out. Finally starting to get the eye for this kind of thing.

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:D

 

I shocked a newbie I took out caching when I stepped behind a tree for some relief and came back carrying a cache. He had been experiencing some frustration when I had found several that he had not yet developed geosense for. It was the final of a puzzle multi that I had passed on because it was "too difficult". Have found a couple of letterboxes, accidentally. Both were in New York.

 

Vtbiker

Vermont

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1. Found the final of a difficult multi that I hadn't even looked at online while searching for and DNF'ing a different cache.

2. Found a letterbox while doing a multi along a lake in North Carolina

3. Found a geocache hidden by the side of the trail while doing a 10k hike (multi) around Elk lake in Victoria BC.

 

2 extra finds and one letterbox-not bad :D

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I was in a military surplus store a month ago looking for ammo boxes, and one sitting on the counter caught my eye: it already had a "official geocache" sticker on it. I asked the store owner if it was a real cache, and he replied that it was... so I opened it up and signed the logbook. I got back home, and couldn't find the cache online. After emailing a few local cachers, I finally figured out that it had been archived by a reviewer several months previously for being a commercial cache.

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i am ALWAYS looking in hollow trees and suspicious piles of sticks and such. so far, such has not been fruitful.

 

However I did find a cache in a covered bridge that i thought did not have one while I was scouting out a place to put mine.

 

I don't know if this has a name or not, but I call it "muggling" a cache because i found it the same way a muggle would.

 

I don't know if a cacher can truly be a muggle though, since cachers are aware of the existence of caches, which awareness muggles are assumed not to share. It makes finding them much more likely when we know they exist.

 

I like finding muggles' logs in caches. That is a rare treat. You can usually tell by the person using a real name (or none at all).

 

Just last week a muggle beat me to a FTF. :D

Ahem. The "proper" technical term for this phenomena which is employed in the peer-reviewed scientific and sociological literature is "accidental unintentional discovery of a geocache container in the wild by a geocacher while pursuing any of a number of manifold outdoor recreational activities other than geocaching" and it is often referenced by the short and easy abbreviation "AUDOAGCITWBAGWPAOANOMORAOTG".

 

 

:D

 

 

:D

 

:D

 

:D:D:D:D:D

 

I haven't had that happen to me though.

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I found one while searching for another cache. Never found the cache I set out to find though. But as I was walking down the trail which looped around, I happened to notice a coke can stuck in a tree a few yards off the trail. Being the nosy cacher I am, I had to investigate WHY the can was in the tree WAY over there. The can proved to be nothing, but after rooting around at the base of the tree, I found a cache that was SO OLD and moldy. There was a cacher name and phone number in the box, but when I called the number, they didn't know who the person was and the cacher name was no longer active on the site. Oh Well. I doctored it up and next time I am in the area, I am going to "adopt" it.

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We were looking for a fairly new cache once when I found the broken remains of a cache at the same time my wife found the cache that we were looking for. Had she not found the real one, I would have figured that the one we were looking for had been destroyed. I did a little research and determined that it had to be a waypoint on a very difficult multi in the area. I think this explains why the multi had been stumping people for quite a while. The intermediate waypoint was simply missing, but with it being as difficult as it was no one could know for sure. I sent a message to the owner of the listing asking if it was his; he didn't reply, but he did archive the listing, so I guess that would be a "yes."

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I find myself quite surprised at how many caches I'm hearing about that have obviously been abandoned and forgotten from this thread. I too found a container with the name of the owner and the cache written on the lid. It was strewn with other garbage in the bottom of a ditch. I looked at my printout of the cache and saw that someone had logged it as muggled a month earlier and someone else logged it as same a few days before I came looking and it was still listed as okay. I emailed the owner with the news and haven't heard anything yet. I guess some people move and their caches don't. Although, that one wasn't an AUDOAGCITWBAGWPAOANOMORAOTG because I was there actually trying to find it. :(

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Never found a cache accidently but keep an eye on the lookout every time I'm hiking.

Occasionally I've looked for the final of a multi or mystery without going through the initial steps but have as yet had no luck.

 

What I have found is about 10 letterboxes while looking for caches. They are the only true letterboxes, except for 1 intentional hunt, that I've found, i.e. I don't mean letterbox combo's. In a few of those accidental letterbox finds I still have yet to actually find the cache I was searching for, but being 125 miles from home I'll be there during my next vacation and don't yet know if the caches are still there.

 

Oh, and once I found a cache that has yet to be approved and the owner never intends for it to ever be approved. It's only to be found by cachers searching for another nearby puzzle cache.

Edited by trainlove
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I did, while looking in an area for a place to park and spread the ashes of my father in law we drove past a rock that was spray painted and noticed a purple container that was along the rock. Instantly geocence kicked in and I wanted to stop and see what it was. Unfortunitly the misses and 17 mo. old said no. later that night while doing a search in that area for caches, lo and behold there it was. The thing i saw was indead a cache. went back and loged it and wrote a note about its discovery. I wouldent put a T.B. or a coin in it though becouse of its high visibilty to everyone who drives past it though.

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I stumbled across one out in the woods. I spotted a rock that just didn't look right sitting at the base of a tree. Sure enough, there was a film canister and log under it. Signed the log, then went through my GPS and couldn't find it. When I got home and back on GC.com I realized the coords in my unit were from one stage of a now archived multi. The original hider reused the same coords but with a different cache, lol. Moral of the story: Update your cache list occasionally in your GPS...

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We were travelling around in New Zealand and we also did come Geocaching. But sometimes, we couldn't get to the Internet so we didn't always know, if there are caches around. So one day, we did a hike to a little waterfall and on the way, we where talking about that this would be a nice place for a cache. :blink: And as we arrived at the viewpoint, we discovered a little box just lying in the woods. :wub: Funny, it was a cache that wasn't hidden anymore! Of course we logged it and hid it again!

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Just found one last week. I was looking for a place to hide a cache and scouting around this structure in the woods and BINGO, there was an ammo box hidden right in the spot I selected. Turned out it was the final stage of a multi that started a half mile away.

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I did that once, but it was a stellarcache and not a geocache, which is no big difference, because stellarcaching evolved out of geocaching. Here is my tale of my serendipitious accidental find: Several months ago, I was co-piloting a starship across the galaxy and we were doing a high-speed run through the center of a Class B blue star (located in the gas cluster loosely referenced as the "Orion OB1 Association") in order to take advantage of the gravitational slingshot effect to allow us to modulate hyper-light speed and, as we transited into the inner photosphere of the extremely luminous blue star, we discovered, thanks to our craft's state-of-the-art remote sensing system, a minor problem on the outer shell of the starship. Because any such shell defects can be fatal at such hyper-light speeds and in such environments, we threw the ship into temporary stasis mode while I crawled outside with a roll of Gorilla Tape to patch the damage to the shell. While I working on the Gorilla Tape patch, I happened to look around me, as it is not everyday that a human gets to see the inner photoshpere of a Class B blue star, and off in the distance, about 30 yards away, I noticed a stellarcache (even though an earlier search of stellarcaching.com website had told me there were no caches in this cluster (...it turned out later that the cache had been misfiled as a mystery type cache rather than a traditional type.) I immediately used my suit communicator to beg my co-pilot to hold the ship in stasis for just a few more minutes (a rather risky thing to do, but these smilies are important, you know...) while I retrieved the stellarcache and signed the log, and then, my repairs done, I procceded to unravel the remaining Gorilla Tape, with one end attached to the outer shell of our starship, to use it as a convenient safety tether in the face of the buffeting 44,000 degree Kelvin solar winds of over 8,000 km/hr. In short order, I had opened the container, signed the log, taken a travel bug, returned the container to its hide spot, and returned safely to the welcoming interior of our starship. My co-pilot continued to bug me for the remainder of the trip about the fact that my antics had taken us right to the fatal edge of stasis duration, but I was happy, as I had signed the log and earned my smilie for the serendipitous accidental find!

 

BTW, if you should decide to go looking for this cache, the star was the first Class B highly luminous blue star which we encountered upon entering Orion B1 Association from a point directly antipodal of the location of our solar system. Another way that you can identify this star is that it exhibits strong ionized metal emission lines for Se II, in addition to the more commonly expected emission lines for MG II and Si II. As you already know, I am limited to sharing these rather primitive hints about the location of the stellarcache with you because I am not allowed under Geocaching.com Terms of Service (TOS) to disclose exact waypoint coordinates for stellarcaches listed on stellarcaching.com, due to that unfortuante brouhaha a few years ago when some stellarcachers from Arcturus system found a TB hotel in Nevada and ate all the travel bugs, mistaking them for food; that about killed the cross-listing arrangements between the two sites for a while. sigh!

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We found our first letterbox in Maryland last August. We hadn't loaded any geocache coordinates since we didn't know how much time we would have and thought (erroneously) that we would have easy computer access once we got there.

 

Anyway, we went to a state park near Baltimore (Ann Arundel county, actually... a bit of a drive) and were hiking on one of their trails, and noticed a plastic bag under some branches. Geosense kicked in, and we checked it out. Nope, it was a letterbox.... and it was one that had been "suspected missing" and not found for several years. It was very wet, though, and we didn't even have a pencil to write in it. I noticed the name (Sandy Point Bay Bridge letterbox) and checked it out. The placer had quit letterboxing, so I found the main yahoo group and posted a note. A local letterboxer adopted it, reused the original stamp, and carved a second stamp (in honor of our finding it) to also place in it.

 

Letterboxing is fun, kinda... but there are so few finds, and so few actually do log anything online, so we never really know how well our letterboxes are received. We have placed 2 letterboxes locally, too. I think there are only about 20 in Williamson county at the most? Also, I really enjoy reading the online logs of geocaching, and there really isn't the equivalent on the letterboxing site.

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I found a letterbox once while hunting for a cache, didn't find the cache for a year! :(

 

I found a cache on the way back to my vehicle at night. I wrote in the log but never found it on the site. I believe it was put out by the original cache hider and then lost.

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The closest I came to accidentally finding a cache while doing something else was when a little girl walked into the video store where I was working holding this little tiny notebook. It looked like a good one to use in a Cache, so I asked where she had gotten it, and it turns out it came from a Cache near my house that she had muggled. (micro in a newspaper machine at parking lot of a state park) Anyway, I convinced her to trade it to me for a nice brand new notebook, and logged the find. I then went to the site later and replaced the missing cache, with the uriginal logbook.

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Just found one last week. I was looking for a place to hide a cache and scouting around this structure in the woods and BINGO, there was an ammo box hidden right in the spot I selected. Turned out it was the final stage of a multi that started a half mile away.

Similar sorta thing happened to me two short months ago. I was trying to be FTF on a new cache hidden just outside of Oklahoma City (Cylindrical Whatzit) when I realized that I'd been in that very location before on another hunt. Actually stumbled upon the final stage of a multicache I'd previously logged before finding the new cache hidden not 20 feet away up a concrete tower! Claimed the FTF, informed the new cache owner that his cache was in conflict with another's, and ended up being the first and only finder as it was promptly archived! <_<

 

P.S. In fairness to our local reviewer who okayed the new cache, the multicache is an older one and the FINAL co-ords for it were probably not on file with Groundspeak.

Edited by JamGuys
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While out replacing a container on my first cache, I bumped into a couple who were hunting for the cache. Come to find out, they'd gotten into geocaching by accidentally finding a cache. It was at the site of ee cummings' "Tree House," which is just a cellar hole now. (I haven't researched this enough to fnd out how a tree house can have a cellar hole.) I went home & tried to look up the cache. It had been reported muggled & archived. <_< Recently, I decided it might be fun to put a new cache there, so I punched in the coords for the old cache so I'd be sure to find the cellar hole. Sure enough, there was the hole, andjust feet away, the green cornerof an ammo can was peeking out at me! <_< I contacted the owner, who went out tocheck on it, someone had "hid it better," about 6 feet from the original spot. The cache is reactivated, here.

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