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How Did You Discover Geocaching?


Melancholy43920

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Great thread and this is my first forum post. I have heard about geocaching several times; a History Channel segment, web surfing, etc but what got me into geochaching was my 11 year old grandson. He joined a group at his school and he has talked of little else ever since. What's a grandfather to do.

 

I have had a sequence of GPS devices since 2000 so I am quite familiar with the technology. I currently have a Magellan Meridian Color GPSr (since 2002) and a TomTom 720. I started geochaching way back on October 25, 2008. The Magellan unit works great for hand-held use. I dug it out of a cupboard on Friday, put new batteries in it, loaded a couple of way-points and we were off.

 

We found two but struck-out on three others. I suspect that we just didn't know exactly what we were looking for. This is a great opportunity for some grandson/grandfather bonding and it's great fun. I had a basic account on geocaching.com for 2 days.

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I was hiking with my friends and playing trivial pursuit, just with the cards. A question came up describing geocaching and none of us knew what it was. I didn't think about it for a while and then one day I remembered it and looked it up. I searched for a cache and didn't find it and didn't think of it again. About a year later, I thought of it again and found that there was one where my sister worked! I found the easy ones in Cayman and didn't think of it again. (I seem to have not thought of geocaching a lot) I came back to Nova Scotia and am HOOKED HOOKED HOOKED.

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This is my story which I posted in the log of my first 'find':

 

I signed the cache logbook too, but this is sort of offbeat and unusual - I hike in the Dracut forest quite a bit, and I stumbled on this cache having no idea what geocaching is. In any case the cache was dry and in good shape. I read the logbook, took a look at the stuff inside and traded a small soccer ball for a dollar bill (all I had on me to trade). So to the next lucky finder, have a coffee on me. Help keep the forest clean! I think I might have stumbled on a new hobby!

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I bought an '88 Jeep Wrangler, joined up over on JeepForum.com, stumbled across a thread titled "Jeeocaching-Jeeping+Geocaching", and the rest is history. I've had my Jeep for a little over a week, and I'm trying to come up with the money to buy a decent handheld GPSr so I can really get involved. That's how I discovered geocaching, and I think I'm hooked now.

 

Now if only that Wrangler got better gas mileage so I could afford to drive farther to find caches. . . lol

i heard about it esveral years ago, took me awhile to start looking into it.

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Sorry if there's another thread like this already but I thought it would be cool to start a topic for people to discuss how they first came across this game/sport/hobby.

 

For me it was about a week ago...I was watching a program called Modern Marvels on The History Channel. It was about 90's tech, things like Furbies and DVDs and digital cameras and a cellphones, etc. Anyone that's ever watched this program knows just before they go to commercial they show a little interesting factoid. Well this one was about a 'game' involving items called geocaches so, being the gaming nerd I am I actually got back out of bed to come look it up on the computer to see what it was about. I already had a car GPS unit (TomTom One) so I thought this sounded like a unique and fun idea. And now a week later I have 15 finds and I'm hooked!

 

I saw the same tv show about a 2 weeks early and saw the same factoid. Thats when I started.

Edited by harris6775
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My brother gave me his old gps. I looked on the internet to find out more about the gps. He lost the owner's manual. Geocaching came up as "other suggestions." That was last Monday. I am going out this weekend to start looking. I found out that several caches are hidden with in two or three miles from my home.

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I remember coming across the gc.com website quite a few years ago. I was broke and in college at the time, so I couldn't get a GPSr to try it out. I also live in a very rural area, and there were no caches close by for me to try and find, so I kind of forgot about it for a while.

 

Then back in 2005 I got a GPS for my birthday. I was searching online for things to do with it, and came across the site again. I went out and tried unsuccessfully to find a cache. I was a little dissapointed that I couldn't find it, of course it turned out to really be missing, but I didn't know that at the time. The next day a brand new geocache popped up about three miles from my house. I knew about where it was at, but put off finding it for a couple more days.

 

After it had set there a couple days my wife (girlfriend at the time) and I went out to search for it. After a few minutes of searching she spotted it out. It was our first find, and our first FTF as well. Of course, we didn't know what an FTF was then, and we were just happy to have got to find something.

 

It's been a little over three years now, and we haven't found an amazing number of caches, but we still go out and find a few from time to time. We FINALLY hit 200 the other day. It's for the most part been pretty fun, we've met some good people, a not so good person, and been to many great places.

 

We were discussing the other day how geocaching has changed over the years. It went from us finding pretty much all 15 in the area, to now there being hundreds in the area and we are still searching for those. A first to find could be accomplished even if you put the hunt off a day or two, but now you have about an hour to find it before someone else does. There have also been several other changes, but it's what keeps it interesting.

 

It's like an ever evolving game.

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Came across a site with a Canadian video host speaking about GEOCaching in Canada (YouTube). He spoke of GEOCACHING.COM and gave a brief Tutorial on Pocket Queries.. My interest peaked... Moments later I became a member, updated my Garmin Legend, and went caching with the Kids then next day. :)

Edited by Magnesium
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Ahh..my first geocaching experience was a dud...my mom took me out int the woods with a tom tom and a compass.... "we can find it" were her words.

We never did find "it" that day, but the very next day....I was checking out the GC site and found a Podcache...ordered my Garmin the same day..and here I am almost 1000 caches later..

still hooked.

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I was SCUBA diving along the base of some cliffs far below historic Manzamo Park in the crystal waters of Okinawa, Japan. An hour into our shallow dive, my buddy Paul and I spotted a partially submerged cave, which I insisted that we explore. We meandered our way along the vibrant living coral to the entrance of the cavern. The opening measured about 40’ high with only 15’ showing above the surface of the water into the jagged volcanic cliffs. As we swam into the cave, the water became brackish from the mixture of the fresh water dripping down from the huge stalactites above, into the salty East China Sea. Once in the cave, small dive light in hand, I weaved between great stalagmites, swimming in and out of their eerie dark shadows until I surfaced about 50’ in. What I saw was breathtaking. I was in a cathedral-sized chamber with beautiful blue reflected sunlight dancing along the cave’s rough walls and smooth stalactites. The blinding brightness of the cavern’s entrance contrasted harshly with the pitch black void that watched us from the other end of the cave.

A small ledge no wider than a sidewalk, but in some places narrower than a board started from about 20 feet from the entrance and ran along the cave wall into the darkness. Since the ledge was about 6’ above the waves, Paul and I had serious difficulty climbing (with HEAVY dive gear) to a wide section of a rock shelf. We left our gear and crept along the ledge toward the blackness that waited ahead. We noticed small finger caves peppered throughout the cavern’s walls, but we kept to the ledge. In places we had to climb the damp stone to keep moving further to the unseen rear of the cave. A few hundred yards in, we noted large alcoves off to the side, which had faded Japanese Hiragana and Kanji written on the walls- Paul and I can’t read Japanese. As the entrance faded into a small, bright mouse hole, we finally spotted the end of the cavern. It was rough, like the rest of the cave, with the odd exception of a smooth rectangle section, about the size of a standard door. The ‘door’ was clearly just as solid and seamless as the rest of the cave, but about belly-height, we noticed an anomaly that made our hair stand on end. Etched into the smooth stone wall were three names, American names (we think); George, Catherine and Chelsea. How did they get here? Who were these people? What’s up with the smoothed rectangle- it was obviously done by man, right?

Thoroughly shaken, we left the cave with a since of unexplained urgency.

 

This was a defining moment in our lives, years later Paul and I still spoke of the “George/Catherine/Chelsea” door on a weekly basis. It was a great, unsolved mystery in our lives that cemented a friendship for over three decades.

Paul died from a skydiving mishap in 2003, on the day before we were scheduled to fly to Okinawa and document the cave for a friend of ours that was a professor at Rice University. Always the enigma, Paul had told me that he would take that mystery to his grave unless we solved it.

 

True to his word, under his epitaph, in small letters was a secret nod to me. It read Geo/Ca/Che. So I did.

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I was SCUBA diving along the base of some cliffs far below historic Manzamo Park in the crystal waters of Okinawa, Japan. An hour into our shallow dive, my buddy Paul and I spotted a partially submerged cave, which I insisted that we explore. We meandered our way along the vibrant living coral to the entrance of the cavern. The opening measured about 40’ high with only 15’ showing above the surface of the water into the jagged volcanic cliffs. As we swam into the cave, the water became brackish from the mixture of the fresh water dripping down from the huge stalactites above, into the salty East China Sea. Once in the cave, small dive light in hand, I weaved between great stalagmites, swimming in and out of their eerie dark shadows until I surfaced about 50’ in. What I saw was breathtaking. I was in a cathedral-sized chamber with beautiful blue reflected sunlight dancing along the cave’s rough walls and smooth stalactites. The blinding brightness of the cavern’s entrance contrasted harshly with the pitch black void that watched us from the other end of the cave.

A small ledge no wider than a sidewalk, but in some places narrower than a board started from about 20 feet from the entrance and ran along the cave wall into the darkness. Since the ledge was about 6’ above the waves, Paul and I had serious difficulty climbing (with HEAVY dive gear) to a wide section of a rock shelf. We left our gear and crept along the ledge toward the blackness that waited ahead. We noticed small finger caves peppered throughout the cavern’s walls, but we kept to the ledge. In places we had to climb the damp stone to keep moving further to the unseen rear of the cave. A few hundred yards in, we noted large alcoves off to the side, which had faded Japanese Hiragana and Kanji written on the walls- Paul and I can’t read Japanese. As the entrance faded into a small, bright mouse hole, we finally spotted the end of the cavern. It was rough, like the rest of the cave, with the odd exception of a smooth rectangle section, about the size of a standard door. The ‘door’ was clearly just as solid and seamless as the rest of the cave, but about belly-height, we noticed an anomaly that made our hair stand on end. Etched into the smooth stone wall were three names, American names (we think); George, Catherine and Chelsea. How did they get here? Who were these people? What’s up with the smoothed rectangle- it was obviously done by man, right?

Thoroughly shaken, we left the cave with a since of unexplained urgency.

 

This was a defining moment in our lives, years later Paul and I still spoke of the “George/Catherine/Chelsea” door on a weekly basis. It was a great, unsolved mystery in our lives that cemented a friendship for over three decades.

Paul died from a skydiving mishap in 2003, on the day before we were scheduled to fly to Okinawa and document the cave for a friend of ours that was a professor at Rice University. Always the enigma, Paul had told me that he would take that mystery to his grave unless we solved it.

 

True to his word, under his epitaph, in small letters was a secret nod to me. It read Geo/Ca/Che. So I did.

 

Outstanding.

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Lamp post skirt was my introduction to geo-caching. I worked at a Walmart in the lawn and garden dept, and while helping people load mulch, I noticed some people go to a lamp post and lift the skirt and take something and open it then put it all back. After the third find, I went to the lamp post to see what was going on. I found a film canister with some paper and a list of names and dates. I asked the next person I say what it was all about and they told me about geochaching. I then looked it up on the net and the rest is history. Only one thing, my pocket queries do not include micros. There are plenty of others to look for which I can enjoy. Every one to their own.

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