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What came first, the cache or the GPSr?


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I'm always hearing about folks that bought a GPSr just for caching. I would never have thought it would be that way. I had my GPSr long before I heard of caching. In fact I had own a GPSr before caching was conceived of.

 

Just curious here, but did you have a GPSr before you heard of caching, or did you buy it because of caching?

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I bought mine for caching. I stumbled across gc.com and read up everything I could, decided I had been looking for something like this since I was wee and there you have it. :D

 

I'm always hearing about folks that bought a GPSr just for caching. I would never have thought it would be that way. I had my GPSr long before I heard of caching. In fact I had own a GPSr before caching was conceived of.

 

Just curious here, but did you have a GPSr before you heard of caching, or did you buy it because of caching?

Edited by Ursamajr
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I got my first GPS (Garmin GPS II) in July of 2000 at the MCAS Miramar PX.I really didn't use it much until we started heading out into the desert on the weekends.I mainly bought it for hunting/fishing trips when I got home.I wish someone would have told me about Geocaching back then.It would have been a great thing to do and not have to spend money doing it.Not to mention totally dope charter membership yo.. :DB)

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My stepdad has had a GPS for sailing since long before caching..

My boyfriend (PolskiKrol) bought his GPS after we got lost in a park that, well, turned out to not be a park anymore, with the idea that Geocaching might be another perk to having a GPS (little did we know, additional thing we could do with this tool would soon become an obsession).

Mine was a christmas gift explicitly for Geocaching.

 

Back to that "park" we got lost in; it's a pretty good story. A long one though. It was still listed on the Florida State Parks Site. The gate to the parking lot was wide open. There was a log to sign in, and one other car parked there. Sure looked like an active park. Actually, the other pair that had signed in that day signed the log as "geocachers" piquing our interest...I suspect they placed the multi that I have since located (on a map) in the "park" the timing seems right.... I digress...

We had a trailmap gotten off of the web. We were just planning on a quick short loop before meeting my grandmother for lunch. We made all the right mistakes: not bringing water, no sunscreen, etc. Luckily I had a cellphone. The trailmap turned out to be horribly inaccurate and we got VERY confused b/c half of the trails in the park were marked, and there were ALL sorts of trails that were just not on the map. Also theres a relatively new highway that cut off a section of the park, twice we were on a trail that deadended at a HUGE fence. We could see freedom but not get to it... We came to deadends, and circled around the park for hours. My fingers were puffing up like they do when I get dehydrated and I was getting dizzy and scared. After what seemed like forever, we saw a marker on a tree...I don't remember whose marker it was, but it had a serial number on it...and not to far from the marker we saw a spine. It was probably a deer, but I freaked out and we ended up calling 911. The person who answered the phone did not care about the marker, and it didn't seem the E911 location features were working, she hung up and called back a few times; finally a helicopter flew around and we waved our hands until it spotted us (it felt like a movie). The sheriff came in a truck to get us. He said he knew where we were just from the description; and that apparantly people get lost out there ALL the time. In fact, he said a couple of weeks prior he found a girl and a boy, accidentally, who did not have a cellphone and had been missing for awhile. They were searching for the boy because they thought he had killed her.

 

It also seems that the park was no longer a park, or maybe it was closed for the season? The additional trails we saw were actually, barriers (all the trails, real and fake, were sand) because they do "controlled burnings" of the area; and we got really lucky they weren't burning it that day. He also told us we should buy a GPS :D

 

Looking at a map of the area, its not THAT big, but we did a lot of winding back and forth... Next time we're in Florida maybe we will have to find out if it is an active park (again?) and try that multi. Now that we have a couple of GPS' we should be alright...right...?

Edited by ThirstyMick
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I'm always hearing about folks that bought a GPSr just for caching. I would never have thought it would be that way. I had my GPSr long before I heard of caching. In fact I had own a GPSr before caching was conceived of.

 

Just curious here, but did you have a GPSr before you heard of caching, or did you buy it because of caching?

 

Well, technically I bought mine because I heard of caching, but I was planning on getting one "someday" for marking out morelle mushroom locations and for car navigation, so I guess geocaching was what pushed me into actually spending the dough because I thought it looked like a great thing to do with the kids.

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I picked my first GPSr out of a company gift catalog as my 30th company anniversary gift. It was a low-end Magellan with only TWO decimal minute positions. I selected it because we had recently been relocated to CT, and it seemed a good way to keep from getting lost. That was in late 2001. Before it arrived in the mail, I had discovered my first geocache when I came across some geocachers in a park and helped them find it. When the GPSr arrived in early 2002, the first thing I did with it was go geocaching! I found about 275 caches with that GPSr before I upgraded.

 

So answer is, got it for other reasons, first use was geocaching!

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I'd been wanting a GPS since I heard they had consumer versions available. I heard about Geocaching in a youth oriented magazine sometime around when it was starting.

 

I didn't get my first GPSr until early 2005.

 

---

I figured this question would be more of a Chicken or Egg thing.

 

Which came first: Leaving some type of 'caches' or GPS?

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I'd used a GPS-12 for awhile for hiking, camping and paddling around the Thousand Islands in Cocoa Beach. After I bought a yellow eTrex, I found out about Geocaching through a Google search for uses of a GPSr.

 

My third (GPSMap 60c) was bought to make caching a little easier. Gotta love color maps!

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My first one was a Magellan 2000 XL I bought in 1994 for $138.00 at Wal Mart, as I recall.

I took it to Colorado that summer and loaded a ton of waypoints into it for later use, then on my next to the last night I knocked it out of the overhead pouch in my tent and didn't notice until morning. It was fine, but the batteries had fallen out and all my precious waypoints were lost. With the 100 meter accuracy it wasn't much use for precise work but I still had fun with it for several years.

Just wish I'd known a few years earlier that SA was turned off in 2000, I would have been a charter member here asa well.

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I'm always hearing about folks that bought a GPSr just for caching. I would never have thought it would be that way. I had my GPSr long before I heard of caching. In fact I had own a GPSr before caching was conceived of.

 

Just curious here, but did you have a GPSr before you heard of caching, or did you buy it because of caching?

 

 

I got my Magellan GPS2000 in 1995. I got it mainly to mark the coords for the spot in the John Muir Wilderness that I want my ashes scattered to put in my will.

 

 

I found nearly 200 caches with it.

 

 

BTW- I was hiding caches in the 80's. They just weren't geocaches.

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Um, both? I bought my husband a GPS to use for his work. He drove a truck over-the-road then (he is regional now) and I thought it would be nice for those times when he had to go around a wreck or when the directions he had been given were inferior. I stumbled across the gc forums while I was researching which unit would be best to buy. The day he opened his gift, we went out to find a couple of caches near our home. A couple of months later, he bought a GPS for me so we wouldn't have to argue over who got to hold the unit on the way to the cache.

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I bought mine because it was another cool gadget that I happened to spot in the open box section at Cabela's.

 

Did some looking online for the manual that it was missing and found a bunch of stuff about geocaching.

Within a day I was out searching for our first one.

 

Now we're hooked.

 

Oh yeah, we also use the Vista Cx and the Legend C for urban navigation.

~k

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I bought the GPSr only because I heard about geocaching. It "saved" me in a manner.

 

I was an online gamer. A MMORPG called DAOC. I gamed everyday for anywhere from 2 hours to a couple of 16 hour days. I was hooked. We have a block breakfast every year and one of the neighbors (I think he was 65 at the time) came down the street for some food. Some folks asked him what he'd been up to and he got a big grin and said, "Ttreasure hunting!". They all laughed and asked what he meant and he said, "Geocaching!". He proceeded to explain what geocaching was and most of the neighbors shook their heads and laughed good-naturedly. However, being a bit of a geek, I asked him for the URL and, after breakfast was over, I went home and immediately made an account so I could check out the forums. Within a week I had purchased a Garmin 76CS and started caching as soon as it arrived in the mail. I never gamed again.

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I bought my first GPS about a month before we discovered caching. It was a Garmin GPS 12. My dad had a GPS 12XL for use on his boat, and I thought it was cool, so I bought one off ebay for $50. As I was showing it to another friend, she asked if we were GeoCachers and we said What is that? Went home and looked it up... the rest is history. We since have purchased a Magellan Meridian Gold and a Garmin GPSmap 60C.

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I wanted a GPS when I was pretty young. I can't remember how old but I'm sure it was my early teens.

 

Finally I got my AirMap 500 when I was about 16 or 17 for use with my flight training. I got one I knew I could use for pretty much everything, and I did use it for everything. I packed it around like people do cell phones before I even heard of Geocaching, and still do.

 

I found caching browsing a Kayaking website, someone mentioned it in a product review for a GPS and I got curious. I had seen the word used only once before on my 2nd GPS, a Garmin with the "Geocache" symbol.

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I bought the GPSr only because I heard about geocaching. It "saved" me in a manner.

 

I was an online gamer. A MMORPG called DAOC. I gamed everyday for anywhere from 2 hours to a couple of 16 hour days. I was hooked. We have a block breakfast every year and one of the neighbors (I think he was 65 at the time) came down the street for some food. Some folks asked him what he'd been up to and he got a big grin and said, "Ttreasure hunting!". They all laughed and asked what he meant and he said, "Geocaching!". He proceeded to explain what geocaching was and most of the neighbors shook their heads and laughed good-naturedly. However, being a bit of a geek, I asked him for the URL and, after breakfast was over, I went home and immediately made an account so I could check out the forums. Within a week I had purchased a Garmin 76CS and started caching as soon as it arrived in the mail. I never gamed again.

Funny, just this week I mentioned to my wife that since we've been caching, I haven't played any serious computer games. We just got a new PC with Windows Vista and I had to make sure that GSAK was Vista-compatible, but I still don't know if my favorite game will run on it or not - and have no inclination to check. Cache on!

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Just a few months before I found out about geocaching I had been offered an older GPS. I played with it for a bit but decided to let the guy donate it to a charity auction rather then to me (I think it only brought in like $20)... when I learned about geocaching I cursed myself because I really wanted to try it... a few months later I found my first cache without a GPS then I broke down and bought a new Garmin Legend.

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I had mine for a year before caching and learned about caching because I had it with me. I got it because my brother showed me his and I wanted better trail maps of county parks who's maps were really wrong, like bad wrong. Those maps got me so lost I am still out there trying to get back.

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Hmmm, both! I bought a Garmin Nuvi 660 because I am terrified of driving highways so I can use it to get where I want to go and avoid them. Then I found out about geocaching while searching info about my garmin a few months later.

 

That very day I read the post about which one to buy, went to Canadian Tire to pick up a Magellan Explorist 400 and found my first cache that day after my kids came home. Little did I know I could enter coordinates in my Nuvi although I find the combination of the two work great. It's been exactly one month today and only 27 finds but doing my best to get out as often as I can!

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I bought my first GPSr on a rainy day in Lake Placid. Cockroach and I were up there camping, with the intention of "bagging a few more peaks." Remembering a past instance where we had a difference of opinion on how to read a map and where we were, I was intrigued by the Garmin Vista. One of my hopes was that we would climb Esther, a trail-less peak. However, not only did I want us to make it to the top, I also wanted us to make it back down before nightfall without getting lost.

 

The next day took us out to Whiteface Mountain, one of the more popular of the 46 peaks, as it is the ONLY peak that non-hikers can drive to the top of. It's also the only peak where you can be served a fresh cheeseburger and icy drink at the summit of. During the 4-1/2 hours it took to hike to the top, I found out that there were a lot of bells and whistles to the unit, more than I felt comfortable using. I also knew my limitations, and that means MANUALS! I don't understand 'em half the time, so I learn by doing, not reading when it comes to technology.

 

The day after we got back from that High Peaks trip, I remembered the Eternal Flames geocache page that I had stumbled across on the net a year ago. At that time, I had been looking for a trail map leading to the Eternal Flames in Chestnut Ridge Park. I perused the geocaching website, and the next day, I set out to find the closest cache to my apartment. I had not a clue what I was looking for (50 cal? What's that? A low-calorie soda can?), and luckily I ran into another cacher on my first hunt.

 

Let's just say the rest is history. I now own four different Garmins, teach geocaching and GPSr classes for Eastern Mountain Sports, and enjoy caching on nearly a daily basis. Using geocaching to learn how to use a GPSr was a successful goal, and so much more.

 

By the way, I hiked within 100 feet of a cache on the way up Whiteface that first day (it's now archived ;) ), and I still have to bo back to hike up Esther! The irony in this hasn't been lost on me. :huh:;)

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