How did you get started?

[+Bossmyers]

Well, the way I got started geocaching is an odd kind of way I suppose. I was recently divorced and I had met this handsome brown-eyed man who worked at one of the state parks close by. The first year of our relationship he kept talking about this event he was doing on Earth Day Weekend at his park. He would try to explain about it, but was never real clear. I just could not fully understand what he was talking about.

 

He was a bit reluctant to let me come to his first event, ( that male macho thing) but by the second year he was over the "meet my friend" jitters and was willing to let me come to his event.

 

He hooked me up with a few couples that had been to his very first event and they were veteran cachers , not to mention just absolutely wonderful people. They took me under their wing that day and introduced me to caching. They were as excited about teaching me as they were about hunting the caches.

 

Being a teacher of 20+ years I loved the idea of using my brain for fun, especially since I do have a very competitive nature any way. The thrill of the hunt took me back to my childhood years when we played similar games but without technology to help us. I was hooked immediately.

 

The next year we worked together on his event at the park and we decided to change it up from just simple hides in very traditional styles and places to complex caches hidden in some very original ways. I like to think I have a creative side to me so I was thinking of creative ways to formulate unique caches for the participants all that winter. When spring came we started getting caches into place for the event. We put out about 45 quality caches and had a great event. The feedback was fabulous, the event was a great success. We have since earned a devious reputation in the caching arena.

 

On October 4, 2008 we were married and now we are the dynamic duo of caching in our area. In April during his last geocache event we had a record number of participants and hid over 60+ mind bending geocaches which took us about 4 weeks of planning and working until dark after I would get home from school. We put numerous hours of work in plus a lot of heart and soul. Together we worked to put on a first class event and the results are evidence that everyone had a great time.

 

The feedback we get from participants helps us plan better events and create better caches. If we stop in a hobby store or craft store, my husband will look at me and say...I know what your thinking... and he is usually correct, cache ideas!

 

This will be our 4th event together in 2010 and we plan to make this event even better than the last. Yes, I am still looking for unique ways to hide and also clever containers. If you take a notion to join us In April 2010, one thing we guarantee is that you will not leave bored or unchallenged. Plus, you will meet some of the nicest people that we are fortunate to call friends.

 

Where does this event take place?

 

The event takes place on Earth Day Weekend , this year April 24 - 26. It is not mandatory to be there on Friday night to register, but it is a good idea. We meet on Friday night and discuss the event and what is new in caching, and usually have a time for meet and greet. We usually meet Saturday morning to give out cords and go over the event rules. The event is posted on the Lake Cumberland State Resort Park, Jamestown, Kentucky website usually by the end of February or early March

Edited October 28, 2009 by Bossmyers

[+DragonsWest]

Hauled out for a hike with some friends, back in 2003. They asked if I heard of GeoCaching. "Yeah, saw something about it on Slashdot. Looked interesting, but I wasn't looking to buy a GPSr." We found a few that day and I was pretty interested. Bought an Etrex Vista and handlebar mount, so I could use it to track mountain bike rides, too. Worked rotten in the woods, so I just used it for travel and geocaching.

 

Took up road cycling and left off of caching for a few years, but got back into it in 2007. Now having a lot of fun with it. Takes me a lot of interesting places and we have parks galore out here.

[+GIDEON-X]

At 73 I Have Trouble About What & Why I Did Things Last Month........Let Alone Back In "01" Oh Well The Sport Has Evolved (Cycles-Changes-Waz Hot Waz Not)

[vagabond]

Well being a couple of years younger then Gideon and a member for a few days longer, I seem to remember that I was looking for something for my old Lowrance Global Nav 212 on the net and happened onto the site and found my first 2 caches 2 days later and I had to drive about 30 miles to the cache area.

Thats my story and I'm sticking to it.

[+canpaddle]

It was Christmas of 2005, when I received a Garmin Etrex Legend, from my girlfriends sister. I thought whoa, a gps. Huh, hmmm, what am I supposed to do with this?

Id known what a gps was, but in my 45 or so years had never used one much less ever seen one. I dont fish that much so I thought Id use it to go hiking with it.

I remember taking it to a local State Park and walking around with it and trying to look at the directions in the manual and just trying to get it figured out some on how to use it. I did this and walking around the neighborhood and having it in my truck watching where I was going and stuff like that.

It was a gps, no big deal, I didnt really understand it, seemed rather, well, boring really, I had no clue!!

After doing this idle type of activity for several weeks, my girlfriend came home one day and told me that a co-worker had told her of a website called Geocaching.com, that I should check it out.

Did not know what geocaching was or nothing about it. Somehow I figured out how to put in waypoints and went out in search of my very first find.

I looked and looked for the first six or so not finding any of them. I wasnt impressed with this activity, and not even knowing if this gps worked or not.

Then one day right around that time I found my very first find! Yes Yes Yes!! My very first one! I signed the log and left .32 cents in the container, all the money I had in my pocket at the time, drove home as fast as I could and logged my first find ever on the cache page.

Now Im coming up on caching for four years now. Geocaching is great!!

[nbailey17]

I know this is bumping a kind of old topic but I enjoy the stories other people have so I'll share my own. It had been raining off and on for the last few weeks of my junior year (2008-2009) and we were off school for something or other (or maybe I was "sick" I forget >.>) anyway I had been watching movies online for a day or two and was completely bored out of my skull so I decided to ride my bike around. Within 5 miles of my house ,probably more like 2, we have a boat ramp, a protective park (something to give u access to a saltwater "lake" in the intercoastal I'm not sure what it is exactly), and a state preserve park. I rode around on my bike for a while to the former two places i mentioned and then decided to go to the state preserve park ,which being the furthest away was a slightly more ambitious endeavor, as I approached the entrance I had no idea what was in store for me. I rode my bike through some sugar sand that still haunts me to this day with memories of leg cramps (well one), muscle soreness (I should really get outside more often), and unquenchable thirst (90+ degrees in Florida with scrub pine environment you would think I would think about water right?). But I digress, I rode down the south trail without realizing how long it would take to get all the way around. Although I live in a cityish area I have always loved nature so being in the woods alone kinda took my mind off the heat and everything for several hours, and I just rode at a leisurely pace taking time to look at animal tracks and things along the way. I saw what was housing the container and thought I'd peak in to see what was inside and it was not what I expected. I saw something that looked clear so being curious I opened it up and inside i found...Tupperware!... I couldn't understand what it was so I looked inside that and found some small toys, a few scraps of paper with some names on them and and an explanation of geocaching and the site. I had heard of it several years before bug from what I had seen of the article I thought you had to have a GPSr and that people only did it in big cities so it just left my mind. Well once I saw this cache i knew there had to be more so I went straight home (on the way back the thirst thing really kicked in with the black pavement and all) and looked up geocaching.com I went on searched my zip code and looked for what I thought was the geocache I had found. I logged the find and started getting excited enough about it to look for more. I told my friend about it and we searched for some without a GPSr and i think we found maybe 10 or something. So I told my family and took my parents to some I had found and had them find the caches themselves. A few days later my dad convinced my mom that it wouldn't cost too much to get a GPSr so we got a Garmin etrex Venture HC at Walmart. Most of my caches now have been with my dad and since he works alot its nice to spend time together. My mom comes along for the urban ones but she had some illness that messed up her joints when she was younger so she cant join us for the caches in the parks that we prefer . It's still a lot of fun though and I look forward to many more years of caching!

[+buzzy_cacher]

I was browsing through the "Apps" on my iPod Touch under the Maps category. The best selling item was titled Geocaching. Out of curiosity, I opened it and read the description. A little confused , I went to www.geocaching.com for more info (as this is what it said to do). And there you have it. That's how I got caught up in this global treasure-hunting game - which I think is the COOLEST thing ever!!! I spend all my free time looking for or preparing to hunt for other caches. I also enjoy hiding them but currently only have one cache out there. I will soon post an AWESOME 007: James Bond Multi-cache

[+Jeep4two]

November 2001, I arrived at work where I was a network technician for a school district. My boss was a true techie that had risen up from the ranks and was a real gadget guy, like me.

 

He had seen a story on the evening news about Geocaching and was telling me about it. We got on the Internet and pulled up the site. We lived in a very rural area and were quite surprised to find that there were a few caches close by (within a mile or two) and we were all about it. Ooops - only one problem. Neither of us had GPSr's.

 

After some research into the game we began to see the educational value and decided to work on developing a lesson plan for using Geocaching and GPSr's in the classroom as math, science and geography lessons. We met with some others in the district that were tech savy and started developing the curriculum while we waited for our first GPSr to arrive (a Street Pilot to use with our Palm III).

 

It arrived and we headed out to try our first cache. Less than a mile from the office, 4 of us hopped out of the vehicle and headed up into the woods where the GPSr was directing us. An hour later we left empty handed, my first DNF, my first cache. A note to the owner in our logs and we were met with a little hint in our e-mail the next day. Off we went again... This time success! We had miskeyed the last digit of one of the coordinates the first time and were down the hill from the cache the first time. A quick trade for a Geocaching.com sticker (still on my cachemobile) and we were off to log our find.

 

So - basically what started as an educational adventure and part of my job, ended up being one of my favorite things to do. As it turns out, that was my first cache hunt, first DNF and we ended up being the FTF. Awesome.

 

(NOTE: This was under the profile "Tech Crew" that I used only for that group back in 2001. I still hold the account, but cache under Jeep4Two with my wife since getting back into caching several years after my first experience).

[+Wooden Cyclist]

I was chatting with a friend about our BlackBerries. He told me to download "this piece of software" ( Cacheberry). When I asked him what it was for he just said "figure it out, play with it then we"ll talk about it in a week or so".

 

A week later my first words to him were "Thanks one heck of a lot, the last thing I needed was a new obsession".

[Rocketsteve]

I had a Magellan GPS 315 that I used for hunting and my brother-in-law asked me if I geocached. He took me out a few times and I was really surprised how many caches were in the vicinity of my neighborhood. When we went out, he would make fun of the accuracy of my GPSr, so he gave me a Venture HC for Christmas that year.

Edited December 5, 2009 by rocketsteve

[+Loony Londo]

My wife heard about it on the radio and told me about geocaching knowing I liked playing with GPS and I was hooked!

[+CacheFreakTim]

I was watching a video podcast called "The Totally Rad Show" and they did a segment on Geocaching. They did it with an iPhone add which I downloaded after. I thought it was silly until I found out there was one right down the street at a dog park that I visited all the time. After I found it I was in!

[hammyaz]

We bought a Garmin Nuvi 360 to make traveling easier. I found Groundspeak.com by accident, and thought it looked fun. So far it has been a blast.

 

hammyaz & lady hammyaz

Tonopah, AZ

[Bolivar Bill]

I do a lot of hiking and I recently was given a GPS as a gift. While reading the paperwork I saw the part about geocaching, googled it and found geocaching.com- look, there's a cache right down the street! I went down and found it after about 10 minutes of looking around. That was 6 weeks ago and I've found 111 more since then. Also got the Mrs. into it, she's registered too and has 79 finds logged. Winter just hit so we'll be slowing down for a while but I can see vacations built around geocaching next year. I'd heard of geocaching before but didn't really give it much thought. The pursuit has already taken us to some great places- it's an excellent way to find new trails and parks that I hadn't noticed before.

[+indigoyota]

A year and a half ago I took a course about collecting GIS data using GPS technology. At the end of the course, the instructor hid a few items around campus as a fun exercise for people who wanted to stay after class and play with the pro-grade Trimble units while being introduced to geocaching. I liked the idea of an outdoor activity that involved cool gadgets and was even vaguely related to my professional interests!

[+debaere]

A co-worker introduced me to it while we were both on a business trip to Belgium. Its interesting to me becaise I'm Canadian, he's American, but my first 5 finds are in Belgium, which is kinda cool I suppose