Ever find a cache you weren't looking for?

[+TMDMom]

I still can't believe this happened!!!

 

Our last night on vacation we played mini golf, then got ice cream. A lady at the ice cream parlour asked us if we'd been to see any of the historic covered bridges, and told us about this one. I didn't have coords, didn't even know there was a cache here, just out sight-seeing with the kids. As I'm pulling out to leave, I spot "something". It basically looked like a shadow, but out of place.

 

Me: "Is that what I think it is?"

 

Oldest daughter: "Is it a Geocache?".

 

I go check it out...sure enough! A magnetic! I was laughing like a madwoman as we signed that log!

 

How often does that happen?

[+yabetterduk]

I still can't believe this happened!!!

 

Our last night on vacation we played mini golf, then got ice cream. A lady at the ice cream parlour asked us if we'd been to see any of the historic covered bridges, and told us about this one. I didn't have coords, didn't even know there was a cache here, just out sight-seeing with the kids. As I'm pulling out to leave, I spot "something". It basically looked like a shadow, but out of place.

 

Me: "Is that what I think it is?"

 

Oldest daughter: "Is it a Geocache?".

 

I go check it out...sure enough! A magnetic! I was laughing like a madwoman as we signed that log!

 

How often does that happen?

Once in a large city park, I found a cache while looking for a place to hide one.

I signed the log, wrote down the coords .

When I arrived home I tried to find it's listing ,and it's position on the maps.

Never found out who it was listed with , But I am signed in on the log.

[+wandering4cache]

Driving home from Cape Cod, I thought I remembered a cache hidden along the canal. No GPS, no real recollection of what the cache page said. Took a walk where I would hide a cache.....and found a letterbox! First letterbox & thought it was a cache at first. Cache listing I remember was actually over 2 miles away. lol

[+wandering4cache]

I still can't believe this happened!!!

 

Our last night on vacation we played mini golf, then got ice cream. A lady at the ice cream parlour asked us if we'd been to see any of the historic covered bridges, and told us about this one. I didn't have coords, didn't even know there was a cache here, just out sight-seeing with the kids. As I'm pulling out to leave, I spot "something". It basically looked like a shadow, but out of place.

 

Me: "Is that what I think it is?"

 

Oldest daughter: "Is it a Geocache?".

 

I go check it out...sure enough! A magnetic! I was laughing like a madwoman as we signed that log!

 

How often does that happen?

Once in a large city park, I found a cache while looking for a place to hide one.

I signed the log, wrote down the coords .

When I arrived home I tried to find it's listing ,and it's position on the maps.

Never found out who it was listed with , But I am signed in on the log.

 

You probably found the final stage to a multi or a puzzle. You should go back & get the cache name & log it. I would!

[+Dgwphotos]

Recently, I was looking for a cache that was a sprinkler head, and I knew there was another cache in the park that it was in that I had already found. I had DNF'd the cache that I was looking for 4 times, and I accidentally found the other cache, which was on the far side of the park originally, but had been relocated recently. Where it was relocated to was within 100 feet of the cache I was looking for, but the owner hadn't updated the coords and just noted a correction on the cache listing, so it appeared to be 0.1 of a mile from the other cache, but was really closer. There was one time also where I was looking for the final of a multi and found a letter box instead. I did find the final after realizing that I had a letter box.

[+gof1]

I have found two caches while looking for spots to hide my own. One was not yet published and the other was the final of a puzzle cache.

 

This happens more often than you would think. The subject come up evry now and again.

[the3gmen]

I think that when you have been caching for a while, you tend to look at things a little differently. You look at an area and ask yourself "If I were hiding a cache here, where would I put it ?" Or you see a pile of sticks that looks a little unnatural and wonder if there might be a cache hidden there.

 

That happened to me today. I was in a nearby wildlife reservation bushwacking towards one cache when I spotted a pile of sticks that looked out of place. Sure enough when I checked it out, it was a cache that I knew was in the area, but not the one I was looking for. I signed the log and continued on my way.

 

I'll brag to my friend that today wa s the day that I found 5 out of the 4 caches I was actually looking for.

[+boda]

On our first cache on our own, I entered the coordinates into our brand new GPS - incorrectly. I was actually about .2 miles south of the cache we were looking for. The "new" coordinates took us about 100 feet away from a totally different cache which we soon found. Instead of the micro we were seeking, we found a regular with swag and all. It took us a couple of days to figure that one out.

 

We then went to find a cache hidden by the person whose cache we had just found. It had just been listed. We DNFd it - but it wasn't our fault. The cache owner had listed the coordinates .2 miles to the east of where the cache was really located. It's a wonder we kept on caching!

[+El Diablo]

Kind of along the same line. My wife and I were hunting a cache when we both found it at the same time. Only we each found a different cache. They were both bison tubes hanging in an evergreen bush about 2 foot apart.

 

We found out later that the original cache was muggled and the owner replaced it. Apparently the muggle realized what the original cache was and put it back a few days or weeks later next to the replacement.

 

El Diablo

[+TrailGators]

I once found the final stage to a multi 16 feet away from the final to a mystery cache! It was awesome getting a twofer!

[+TMDMom]

 

You probably found the final stage to a multi or a puzzle. You should go back & get the cache name & log it. I would!

 

oh, I logged it for sure. I signed it, so I logged it. It wasn't a multi, and I wasn't there for geocaching. I just saw it.

 

Now, had I actually been there caching, I probably would have wandered around for 10 minutes staring at my gps...

[+simpjkee]

Twice.

 

1) I was in Austin TX caching along Barton Creek and I was still using paper. I had 20 regular size caches I was going for, but halfway through I got a bit disoriented and walked up on a plastic squirrel ziptied to a tree with a 35mm film canister by it. I didnt have the coords since it was a micro.

 

2) I was going for a cache in Papago Park in Tempe, AZ. Less than 150 feet from the coords, I stumbled upon a mystery cache container. I thought it was the traditional I was searching. The mix up led to 6 months worth of confusion before I finally got it all straightened out. Read the logs on this cache if you want to see the confusion it caused: GCT878

[+Zolgar]

Twiceish.

 

Once, my parents and I were hitting some caches on the way home from California. We stopped for one along side a river "Whitewater". Well, as I usually do, I jogged ahead of them to get to GZ and find the cache. Then let them find it.

I remembered a log said "by the orange boulder". And so I look at the arrow on my GPSr, look ahead, see this nice big orange boulder, pocket the GPSr and walk up to it, and find the cache right off the bat.

Then I get the GPSr back out and poke around (so I don't show my parents exactly where it is, ya know), when by sheer chance I actually look at the screen, and realize I'm about 500 feet away from GZ. I'm thinking "Okay, some difference is expected, but 500'?" so I grab the cache.

 

Turns out it was Barricade, which my Along Route PQ decided wasn't worthy of our attention.

 

The other occasion. I was looking for the Tail Doesn't Bite locally, my second attempt. I see this rock that's out of place about 20' from GZ, walk over and pick it up, there's a pill bottle underneath it.

I'm in the process of opening it when I notice it says "Letterbox" not "Geocache." I replaced it and had me a laugh.

 

Later I contacted the owner of said Letterbox, he was amused there was a cache in the area too.

[+Kiwi Nomad]

I was on a purely geocaching trip, just out to visit some caches that we would never get to other wise. Had used a mapping programme for directions between caches which takes you to the closest road not the best place to access the cache. So with no idea how to get any closer than 800m to the next cache I kept driving down the road I was on till I could work out where to go next or turn around safely.

At the next interstion their a monument. The information on the plaque reminded me of a cache page I had read but not printed off because it was not close enough to our intended route.

Less than a minute latter I found it and signed the log.

I had to skip the cache I had been intending on finding because the detour had used up to much time.

[Dinoprophet]

I've never found one without knowing there was one around. I did find one in a fairly large park where I was aware of two caches hidden but had the coordinates for neither. About a quarter mile in from parking, it was in the first place I looked -- a funky-looking tree about 100 feet off the trail.

[+DonB]

I still can't believe this happened!!!

 

Our last night on vacation we played mini golf, then got ice cream. A lady at the ice cream parlour asked us if we'd been to see any of the historic covered bridges, and told us about this one. I didn't have coords, didn't even know there was a cache here, just out sight-seeing with the kids. As I'm pulling out to leave, I spot "something". It basically looked like a shadow, but out of place.

 

Me: "Is that what I think it is?"

 

Oldest daughter: "Is it a Geocache?".

 

I go check it out...sure enough! A magnetic! I was laughing like a madwoman as we signed that log!

 

How often does that happen?

We stopped in a welcome center in Oklahoma and my wife was looking through some books that they sell. She showed me a book they had about geocaching and the lady said " we have one of those here, would you like to see it? So she brings out an ammo can. Without doing some looking I can't even remember what cache it was.

[+redtech]

There is a puzzle cache near my house. The guy that made it is really into math and I suck at math. I tried to solve it several times but always failed. The hint was "round". Now, I KNOW I'd seen a sign along side the road that had something to do with round so I thought the next time, I saw that sign, I'd just check it out.

 

About a month later, while looking for a different cache, I went down the right road and found the sign that I remembered! I was icy out and I screeched to a halt and slid 10 feet. Guess what was hidden in there? :-)

 

There's another one of his that I have a pretty good idea about. I just have to go down the right road!

[+TMDMom]

I still can't believe this happened!!!

 

Our last night on vacation we played mini golf, then got ice cream. A lady at the ice cream parlour asked us if we'd been to see any of the historic covered bridges, and told us about this one. I didn't have coords, didn't even know there was a cache here, just out sight-seeing with the kids. As I'm pulling out to leave, I spot "something". It basically looked like a shadow, but out of place.

 

Me: "Is that what I think it is?"

 

Oldest daughter: "Is it a Geocache?".

 

I go check it out...sure enough! A magnetic! I was laughing like a madwoman as we signed that log!

 

How often does that happen?

We stopped in a welcome center in Oklahoma and my wife was looking through some books that they sell. She showed me a book they had about geocaching and the lady said " we have one of those here, would you like to see it? So she brings out an ammo can. Without doing some looking I can't even remember what cache it was.

 

Now, that's funny! But you didn't find that cache, that cache found you...

[+Thrak]

There is a series in this area that has the caches placed by "farmer" signs. These are signs with a picture of a farmer driving a tractor. I was quite a bit out of my area and noticed a farmer sign. On the off chance that a cache had been placed there I stopped and looked. I found a cache placed by a different cacher who was continuing the series started by my local cacher. Also, I once found a letterbox while looking for a cache.

[+StaticTank]

Before I started caching. My family and I were taking pictures in the woods and I spotted an Ammo box just lying out in the open. I knew what it was and we signed the log. I had always been excited about the idea of Geocaching but even after finding this we didn't get a GPS until August of 2007.

 

Another time I was looking for a Geocahing and spotted a letterbox. it was less than 50 feet away. I was pretty surprised to find a small container when I was looking for an ammo box. I figured it out before I even opened the letterbox. I turned around and there was the ammo box.

[+XopherN71]

I found one just last week while looking for a good spot to hide one of my own, turned out to be a puzzle cache or something where the exact coordinates weren't known unless you solve a puzzle.

 

I have an issue with that system but that's another thread lol.

[MarcusArelius]

Yup

[+Iowa Tom]

I was in another part of the state of Iowa with my son once listening for the 17-year cicadas that were out at that time. We made our way to the top of a tall screened in tower and while at the top I droped onto my back to look underneath a white bench up there. Just as I began to say. "This would be a good place to hide a cache." I found a cache! Actually it was only a coordinate written on a piece of card that was taped in place. It was one stage of a multicache.

 

Last year a local guy was looking for a good spot to hide a new cache along a bike trail. He popped the lid off a hollow metal fence post and found a puzzle cache of mine that he hadn't been able to figure out the puzzle on! He then walked a ways down the trail, found a neat looking tree, climbed up into it and found another good place for a cache. He reached in and pulled out another one of mine. That one required that he find a key to get at the log. He managed to find the key 10 feet away in a hollowed out branch at ground level.

 

I allowed him to take credit for finding both.

 

-it

[+step2626]

Check out this cache: Big Spring - Lost and Found. It tells the story of how we found a cache that had been placed a year earlier, but never published. My daughter discovered it while we were on a little hike while heading home from a vacation and driving through northern California. We signed the log as FTF, but then we needed to find somebody in the area to get it published.

[+PilotMike]

Here's my log of one that I found, 2 years after it had been archived across the park.

 

I re-hid it somewhere else and temporarily 'owned' it. But due to some confusion with the old owner, they asked me to archive it again so they could put it back in whatever location they liked and it was muggled again... Fun while it lasted though!

[+GrnXnham]

While logging a FTF way out in the woods last summer, we found another cache about 50 feet away. The cache had been archived about a year before. The owner had given it a 5/5 for difficulty. It had never been found.

 

We ended up with two FTF's about 30 seconds and 50 feet apart.

[+J Loran]

Other way around... Hid a cache in our neighborhood park, none were listed nearby except a "false" mystery cache waypoint. Logs have since indicated that a part of a tricky multi is 8 ft. from my hide! Thanks y'all for the help with that one!

[+Pat in Louisiana]

Last week Squirt and I were looking for a cache in Slidel La and found a tupperware box with GPS the Game .com cards in it and a Hidden Treasure number written on it. It was about 20 feet from the GeoCache.

I could not find anything on line about it and the last log was in early 2006.

[+hzoi]

We went to a mega event near Bochum, Germany, last year and stayed for a CITO the next day. There were a bunch of mystery and multi caches set up around the area for the event, and we found some but not nearly all. The next day during the CITO, Kelly found the final for one of the mystery caches while looking for trash. We were happy to log it!

[+duck_hunt]

Once, we were looking for a cache in a park. We had the GPSr, but the trees scattered our signal, so we only knew the approximate location. We loooked for about 3 minutes, then found a letterbox! The cache page said nothing about a letterbox, it was a normal cache. We replaced the LB and found the other cache quickly. When we came home, we looked the LB up, and it was not on geocaching.com OR letterboxing.com. That was strange.

[+The Cheeseheads]

While bushwhacking to find a cache, I came upon a cammoed container hidden under a log that wasn't in my GPS. It was frozen in place, and after about twenty minutes of work to get it freed, it turns out it was actually a Letterbox. It took a little bit of searching online, but I was able to find it on one of the Letterboxing sites and logged my first real letterbox.

[+Harry Dolphin]

I went to a CITO Event in Pennsylvania on Saturday, and did not download the two caches in the park. Walking about looking for garbage, I came across a cacher with the cache in his hands. Found it! The same with the other cache.

I've found four or five letterboxes. But I've never logged them.

[+DrgnTrappr]

While looking for just the right spot to place my first cache, I reached up under a steel support beam and found a film cannister velcro,ed there, inside was a piece of paper that read " D=6 7=9 ", now I knew this had to be part of a multi and I replaced the cannister and tried to find the cache it belonged to but that was'nt easy. I ended up e-mailing a local cacher who seems to own every cache in the area and found that it was indeed part of a nine part multi but the cache had been archived for some time. The owner gave me permission to remove the cache and I was able to place mine about 50' from there.

[+GRANPA ALEX]

Found a bison tube hidden under a log in the woods while looking for a small tupperware that turned out to be a only a few feet away from the bison . . . turns out the bison was an archived cache that was not removed from the site by a long inactive cacher.

 

I removed the bison, added a new log and hid it somewhere else as a new hide

[+minnesotabrad]

I have had this happen several times. My first puzzle cache found while looking for a place to hide my first cache. One day stop at an area to be on a conference call and while standing outside the car wondered if there was a cache in the area and where would I place one, ended up walking right up to a cache. Another time going for a cache that was nominated for cache of the month by the MnGCA and did not load anything else in the area and while walking through the wooded area found two other caches that were in there.

[+BCandMsKitty]

I haven't found another cache,yet, but I was placing a new cache today, and found a great hollow log on it's side a few feet from the trail in the center of a big nature preserve. I was at least a quarter mile in from all sides of the preserve. As I was placing the ammo box, I saw something that didn't look "natural" and I pulled out a garden trowel! In the middle of nowhere!

My guess is that someone comes to this area regularly to dig up wildflowers, and has left their trowel there so as to not need to carry it every time. Needless to say, I found another hiding place for my cache!

[+jrope]

No, but I sure do come across allot of letter boxes...

[+Too Tall John]

My first geocache was one I stumbled across when I was a muggle. It looked official, and said "Do Not Disturb" on it, so I left it alone. Had to go back and log it once I started caching.

 

I found an "Off Your Rocker" cache when I was driving a bus load of people for work. Didn't have my GPSr with me, didn't even know there was a cache there. Was sitting on a rocking chair talking as we waited for everyone to come out from eating. There it was, peeking out at me.

 

I found an archived cache while using the coordinates from the cache to find the historic location it was marking. Didn't expect to find the cache, but there it was! It had been moved to where the owner couldn't find it, thus the archival. It's active again.

 

I found a letterbox right after I hid a geocache. The weren't close at all, but on the same trail. It had fallen from it's spot.

 

Last week I was out caching with a friend. We were after a puzzle, and weren't sure about the coords. He was fiddling around at GZ in a likely hole, and said "Got it!" As soon as he opened it, it was evident that he had found a letterbox, not the geocache. As I stamped into the LB, he found the cache 15' away.

[+Viajero Perdido]

Sort of. I was looking through the house for a notebook I could use in a new cache hide. Found this:

 

 

...but I have no idea where it came from! It's not any handwriting I recognize. I asked around locally with more details, but nobody else recognized it.

 

A mystery to this day...

[+carleenp]

This past weekend the group I was with accidentally found a letterbox while out caching.

[+chr15williams]

Have a look at this:

 

http://www.geocaching.com/track/log.aspx?L...29-5c10a75135af

 

Not only did we find a cache that had been swept away by floods, it was also our first ever day out cacheing ! What a way to start.

 

Chris

[+IANNA]

We got pretty deep in to a swampy section of woods last year looking for a cache and in our quest to find an alternative way out we came across a hollowed out tree stump with a letter box in it. (It's not a claimable cache, but it sure looked like a cache) we left some swag in it and then signed the book we didn't have a custom stamp. But once we got back we looked up some info on letterboxing since before this point we never heard of it. So we learned something and had fun

[+joranda]

I walked up to the final cache of a multi before I even got to the first stage. It had a pad lock on it so I still had to do all the stages before I could log it.

[+Flatouts]

I was at a local CITO event last Saturday and a few of us were walking along a road collecting trash. We had stopped in the shade of a nice tree to rest for a few minutes, when I just so happened to really look at the tree trunk and said to the others..."That's an odd place for a piece of trash to land....ah...hey...it's not trash...It's a cache!!!!!" I then did my fond it dance... It was wedged in a V shaped part of the trunk and I was standing about 20 feet away. It was a big tree. We signed the log but didn't take anything as we hand nothing but trash...couldn't find a name on it, but when we got back to the main meeting area a few other cachers knew which one it was so we were able to log our find and claim our smile

[+Orion Quest]

While out seeking the Spirit of the Falls cache in Western Massachusetts we found not one, but TWO hidden caches around the same coordinates! Neither of the caches we found were listed on geocaching.com. One was a Memorial to Keith Richards (not the Tribute to KR cache) and the other was only marked #45. Ironically, we did not find the original cache we were looking for DOH!

 

GRANDIZER GOOOOOOOOOO!!!

[+wing-nut]

Once I was looking to re-locate one of my caches. It was supposed to be near an outhouse but someone removed the outhouse) As I walked around I saw a tree whose branches made a great shelf about 8 feet off the ground. I thought it seemed too obvious but I would look in case that was the only place I could find for my cache. As I got closer I realized that there was something there and I found a cache that had been placed the day earlier and was not published yet.

 

Once while I was searching for one of the oldest caches in our area (ABACAB) I found a letterbox. I couldn't find the cache but since I was new at geocaching I thought that maybe it was both a letterbox and a geocache. Later I realized it was not the geocache I was looking for. I contacted the cache owner and asked if he knew the letterbox was there. Both had been placed for over 2 years and neither owner knew of the other one. It took 3 trips before I could register a find for the geocache.

[+Mushroom finder]

A couple of weeks ago I was out looking for mushrooms when I spotted a container hidden under a log. I've known about geocaching for a few years and have really wanted to try it but didn't have a GPS. So when I spotted this container I instantly figured it was a cache. It turned out to be a letterbox. I had never heard of Letterboxing but I signed their log and took a card with the web address on it and when I got home I got online and learned all about Letterboxing. I thought this would be a good alternative to geocaching since I didn't have a GPS and decided I was going to try it. The very next day I was looking for mushrooms some 40 miles away when I stumbled upon a geocache. It was laying in the open and had been muggled (perhaps by critters) but I found alot of the contents scattered about except for the log. I went to the geocaching website to see if I could find the owner but there is not a listing that I can find so I assume that it has been archived. I did however discover that there were three other caches very close by so I signed up and set out to find them. Armed only with some good descriptions, an intimate knowledge of the area and google earth, I found all three within a week and one was a multi. Hooked, I then went out and bought my first GPS. I should have my first caches out soon and I think it's only fitting that I make one of them a letterbox hybrid since that chance encounter was what really got me excited.

[Scamp]

I found a letterbox by accident once too while out hiking. I knew there was supposed to be a cache somewhere in the area, though I didn't have the coordinates with me at the time, so as I was passing through and spotted a likely-looking cache hidey-hole, I decided to take a peek inside. It wasn't the geocache, but the hiding spot was indeed in use. =p

[+dronnord]

It happened to my daughter and I. We where doing an event and looking for a new ammo can cache.I wandered around a group a trees and found a clue cache.It had a name and clue inside the lid but I have never been able to figure which cache it was a part of as it is in a large city area...go figure.Before geocaching how many people walk right past a cache and never see it? Lots I imagine!

 

 

I still can't believe this happened!!!

 

Our last night on vacation we played mini golf, then got ice cream. A lady at the ice cream parlour asked us if we'd been to see any of the historic covered bridges, and told us about this one. I didn't have coords, didn't even know there was a cache here, just out sight-seeing with the kids. As I'm pulling out to leave, I spot "something". It basically looked like a shadow, but out of place.

 

Me: "Is that what I think it is?"

 

Oldest daughter: "Is it a Geocache?".

 

I go check it out...sure enough! A magnetic! I was laughing like a madwoman as we signed that log!

 

How often does that happen?

[tolip_ck1]

This just happened to me! I am a rookie and I was walking from the ATM series in North Carolina. I stopped by a bridge and on the side of it was an altoid canister. Opened it up and there was a cache!! Being a rookie and only my 3rd find ever (by accident) I signed log but did not right down coordinates figuring I would find it on the website, it's not there. So now what do you do? Is there a way to post it so others can find or is it possible that this cache is using a different "listing website"?

 

I know dadgum rookie questions.

 

Thanx