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***MY FIRST TIME*** COINTEST


opalsns

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Folks,

I have had such a great time here reading posts, seeing coins, and entering cointests, that I'm inspired to have a cointest too. Here Goes .....

 

Tell us about the first time you learned to cache.

 

The cointest is open to all, everywhere and the winner will be chosen by the Random Number Generator on this Friday evening. The prize will be a Unactivated, Trackable Geocoin of my choosing, Maybe from the winners wish list.

 

Here's My Story ...

 

I had my big brother up for Thanksgiving in 2007. He got on my computer to check his geocaches. When I asked about it. He told me , then showed me. We went to a cache here in Canaan, Maine and he let me find it !!!! WOOOOOOOOOOO HOOOOOOOOOO. I was hooked. The next day he got up early and went to WallyWorld and bought me my Old Yeller GPS as a surprise. That's the day I joined GC.com. For Christmas I sent him the 2007 Thanksgiving Day Geocoin as a ThankYou and a reminder of our Day.

In February he snuck up to Maine, Surprised me to tears and made my first placed cache his 100t find. :)

 

Now there's a memory!!!!

 

Opalsns

Edited by opalsns
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We found out about geocaching from a friend that is a member of my ambulance station, he is a scout leader and had been geocaching. He told us about it and we thought that sounded pretty dumb, we tried it and been hooked ever since. We thank Him all the time for turning us into the great sport. Now we arriange family and friend visitings around the sport, camping trips around geocaching, weekend trips and sightseeing around geocaching, we even plan our vacations around it. We were geocaching tho before we knew we were caching, my wife bought me a waterfall book of the U.P of Michigan after we just met, and we were visiting waterfalls when we were together, we were using the Scouts/Rescue Team since I am on the Search and Rescue Team their GPS, and I had maping programs and was programming all the waterfalls into the GPS to find them. Only things now that we know and been in the sport of Geocaching it brings us back to these fantastic areas and now we have a cache to find, and many of them that we didnt know then have been right under our feet. The hobby of geocaching has keep our marriage alive and we enjoy each and every time we can get out there to do it. If it wasnt for geocaching we be missing out on so much. I have lived in my area all my life and it is brought me to places I never knew existed. Learning to much From Earth caches and Virtual caches and all the History of your area, what is better then that. We are so glad we were introduced to Geocaching. Not to mention all of the great friends we have met along the way on the trails and by attending events. Happy Geocaching and Cache On!

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(first attempt timed out and didn't post)

 

I work for Environment Canada. A co-worker introduced me to geocaching when our department purchased a bunch of GPS units to help employees in the water monitoring section do their field work. I borrowed one of the units and entered the coordinates for the nearest geocache. It was a mystery cache, so I also had to decrypt the morse code clue. Once that was done, we headed off to find it.

 

My office is downtown, so I wasn't surprised when the coordinates brought me to the front of the building. But when I saw what building it was, the clue made sense! I was in front of the library, and the clue was the dewey decimal code for a book in the reference section. Someone had hollowed out a book and placed it on the shelf (with the library's blessing).

 

I was hooked!

 

I now have a similar cache (with a much more fiendishly difficult puzzle) in my local library. I am planning another for yet another library that is still cache-less.

 

Thanks for the cointest!

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I was on vacation with a friend of mine. We went down to Gettysburg, PA - we are all history geeks, pretty much. Well, the Battlefield is full of virts - interesting ones that are sooo cool. And then we went to a small park and found a ammo can..... Between the history stuff and the treasure - I never looked back. Geocaching is still one of my most favorite things to do on vacation in a new area - cachers can take you to the best places!

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I first found out about Geocaching when I was working here in Cyprus in an internet cafe in 2007. A customer came in to use the internet and as it was quiet, I asked him what he was doing- so he told me. I had other customers to serve so I waited until he had gone and it was quieter and did a search online and read a little bit about it- but didn't have much time to do anything with it.

Last week I was chatting to a friend online about Letterboxing- something she had just started and I looked at the information about it and then found it was similar to Geocaching- hey ho! That sounds familiar- so I popped along to GC.com and signed up to find where our nearest caches were- and this morning we popped out and found our first cache. :) Love it!

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i really have to blame geo.Error for put me up to this :D

 

i was visit her one day and she start tolking about it so when i came home i was so excating and tell Ed about it... :D

we did go buy a GPS and we did`t had a clou how it all works but we figger it out (after calling Geo.Error a 1.000.000.000 times ) :)

anyway we started to cache and after a while when we know how the GPS works and when we found some cache`s :D Geo.Error tell me about coins and this forum and i had again no idea what it was :laughing:

but as always i was curious and i did like it all....

 

so i blame my sweet friend for bring me in the cache~coin world but i can`t thank her enough for it,

cause it is the nicest thing she bring me in :)

she brings me in contact with the most lovely people :P

and she learn me how i can discover places that i normaly won`t discover :laughing:

 

the only thing i can wish now is that 2009 is going to be a better year then 2008 so that

i can do where geo.error made me addicted to :D

 

CACHEEEEEEEEEEEEE and have fun HEREEEEEEEEEEEEEE... :laughing::laughing:

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I had always wanted to try letterboxing, but didn't know how to use a compass, might get lost, etc. I made excuses not to try something new even though I thought it might be fun. In September my grown daughter told me about geocaching and asked if I wanted to go with them. I went, and was hooked! I bought a GPS so I didn't have to wait for them to be available and now I go by myself or with my dog. It's more fun to go with others, though.

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I already owned a GPSr (Magellan Explorer 200) when I came home from vacation and happened to read about geocaching in the Sunday paper, they interviewed a local cacher. I thought this would be something to use my GPSr for, I hadnt used it for much a 200 is a pretty basic gps. So I logged on and lo and behold there was a cache within 1/4 mile so off we went my daughter and I spent about 30 minutes looking for the cache. We couldnt understand why the cache wasnt right where the GPSr said ground zero was, finally found about 20 feet away. We've been hooked ever since

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My closest friend and her husband told me about geocaching over a chat...they were living in Australia at the time and we kept in touch by chatting online. I think they started the explanation by saying "now don't think we're geeks but let us tell you about this thing called geocaching...". When they flew home for vacation and we were away together with friends, they took a few of us in search of a couple of caches. I LOVED IT! We already had purchased a Magellen GPSr a few years back as a high tech navigational toy so we put it to good use and it has been helping us (or actually, sometimes hindering us) to find caches ever since. The first one my family team found together was too far on a trail to take the baby so my husband turned back while I continued by myself. I still remember the smilie ball that I triumphantly exchanged for as my reward! I didn't stop smiling for the rest of the day!

 

Thanks for the cointest opalsns!

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My mom was reading the blog of a cousin who is ill with cancer. The blog mentioned a vacation they had take to CA where they had rented a beach house, taken the kids to Disneyland, and spent a couple of days geocaching. Mom was curious to know what geocaching was so she searched for it and then sent me the wiki. I read that and then came to geocaching.com and read some more. I also found a few caches that were nearby that I thought we could try without a gps. We found the first one right away but the second one was a little harder. All we had was a general idea of where it was and it turns out that the general idea covered about a mile long trail of trees and brush around a pond. :) We finally gave up but it frustrated me that we didn't find it so I checked Google Earth and pinpointed the location better. We headed back and found the cache within a few minutes. We were totally hooked so that night I went to WallyWorld and picked up a cheapie GPS. A couple of days later I took it back and ordered a little better one from Amazon so I could download waypoints instead of manually entering them. Once I could do that we started going every chance we got. There aren't a lot of caches in our area but we've found just about every single one of them and are already planning our summer caching trips! When we started getting low on ones to find we decided to start hiding them too and have hidden a bunch already! We're known as the two crazy ladies because the guys up here never know what to expect next from us.

 

Thanks for the cointest!

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About three months after my wife was killed, some patients of mine (luvs2walk,) told me about geocaching...a good thing to get me out of the house, and something I could do with my dogs. My first cache was at a local brewery. My nephew also got interested in what I was doing, and actually found his first 30 or 40 caches without using a gps, using clues given in description, and riding his bike over to find them.

 

gl with your cointest!

 

ILYK
Edited by drneal
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I was minding my own business during the International Mathematical Olympiad in Madrid, Spain, when one of my friends back home in South Africa excitedly told me (via chat) that she had found her very first geocache! I, of course, had no clue. She sent me the URL, I checked out the website, and decided to create an account and to check it out.

 

I was in luck - there were three caches listed within walking distance from our hotel. The only problem was... two of the three had cache listings in Spanish only! Oh dear... I put Google Translate to use, which gave me a paragraph which didn't make much sense, but I want looking anyway, to see if it makes more sense once I'm at the location.

 

I found my first cache (the one with the listing in English only) after a rather long search. Of course, I had no clue back then. :) It was fun to try and retrieve the film cannister hidden in a very busy place like an uber-spy. Even put in a South African coin as trade item, before I knew that caches normally have trade items as well.

 

I didn't manage to find the other two caches - the translation was simply too bad - but it got me hooked nonetheless. Back home in South Africa my caching took off, and now I boast with just over 300 finds to my name in just under 6 months.

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Hmmmm. My first time Geocaching?

It started after I read an article in my OutdoorNews paper. The article was a good one. I decided that since I already had a gps I might as well give geocaching a try. What a great time. I love being outdoors and this gave us another reason to be outside. Now whenever we go places I try to find a cache in the general location we are going. The first cache I found was with my daughter and it was Larry's Treasure Hide. Now we are hooked. There have been alot of good times spent with my family caching and I am positive there will be plenty more.

 

-Dardevle

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I found out about caching while i was doing another organized scavenger hunt, we found a cache at one of the locations, but it was a black round container that said do not remove, so we didnt touch it.

 

After we were back at the organizers house tallying points we were talking about the day and someone said o it must be a geocache. It sounded really interesting but by that night i forgot all about it.

 

A few weeks later, a friend on facebook posted a photo album called geocaching, so i decided i must inquire, i sent a message to her asking about it and she said it was their first time and gave me the website.

 

I created an account and was so pumped to find one that i went on my spare at school and looked for one without a gps, i had about 2 hours between spare and lunch and decided i wouldnt leave until i found it. I was armed with a map and the clue that it was in a stump (which turns out the stump is no longer a stump) i knew it was between two rivers a mill and a construction site, it was a pretty big area to search but i found it after about 30mins! I didnt know much about geotrails so i searched some unlikely spots in thick bush (the cache was pretty old!)

 

The rest is history, a little over a year later and 725 finds!!! What can i say im hooked, i purchased my first gps a few days after that, and now im on my third unit!!!

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I bought a gps to know my position during horseriding trips.

I remembered vaguely reading about treasure hunting in the past and thought that might be fun for the kids. So a few hours after having bought the gps i found geocaching.com and another hour later me and the kids were off on our bikes to look for one! we did not know wther we had to dig, our how exact the position was. We even checked the garbage bin. Which fool would do something like that? We did not understand that we could use a hint. We found nothing, but had fun and went home checking the pc again. We did had to go for the garbagebin! Back on the bikes again and learned about hiding geocaching techniques! No need to tell you we're hooked.

By the way I also did 2 caches with my horse!

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I read about geocaching in 2006 in Backpacker magazine in an advertisement for the Jeep Contest. I thought the game sounded like fun - the modern-day treasure hunt was what got me, I think! - and I already had a GPS for my graduate research, so I created an account. My first cache did have a Green Jeep in it, which I then promptly moved from Arkansas to New York, and that was it for 2006. 2007 had more caches and two states: Arkansas and Texas. 2008 has been the "cachiest" so far, and my enthusiasm for geocoins and trackables of all kinds has a lot to do with that. I try to fulfill missions and take pictures for each trackable (TB or coin) and at each cache, although I must say this is difficult to do AND maintain stealth. 2009 is the year I graduate, and so will hopefully cache in more new places (and get better at micros) as they year goes on.

 

Thanks much for the cointest, and happy caching in '09 everyone!

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Well, I signed up to the website way back in March 2005. Being an outdoors type person the idea of the "game" and the geekiness of having an excuse to get a GPSr really appealed to me.

 

I then didn't get the GPSr. Until Christmas '08. I had been reminded about the game by a local Scouting colleague and asked for a GPS for Christmas. Santa was lovely and a Garmin eTrex Legend was sat waiting for me.

 

I spoke about nothing else all day(ask my wife and I am still talking about nothing else - I have also posted primarily about geocaching on my blog!) and on 26 December I went to find my first cache. It was a multi cache with clues. I studied the cache page for about two hours, printed the information, grabbed the GPS and entered the details, put the lead on the dogs and went for a walk. They couldn't understand why I wanted to keep stopping, but they were good and waited for me to figure out the clues.

 

I picked up the final clue, worked out the location and decided not to get the cache as it was about half a mile from where I was in the wrong direction. When I got home I looked at the clues again and realised I had walked within 300 feet of the cache on the way home.

 

I went and revisited the final location last Sunday and now have it chalked up as find number 3. Only 707,239 to go then!

 

Yes, I'm hooked! Just got my first geocoin (Eclectic Penguin) in the post today too - it looks fabulous!

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Back in '02-'03 I had read an article about an interactive role playing/spy game out in the big wide world, but when I went back a few years later to try to find the details on it I had no luck. Fortunately my search for that elusive game on the web led me to this thing called geocaching. As soon as I read about it I knew that resistance was a lost cause, I ordered my GPSr from the next paycheck.

 

My first cache was Rock Springs 2 in O'Fallon, IL. It took me about thirty minutes to find the pile of bark next to the log that was hiding the tupperware. The funny thing was that on my way back up the trail afterwards I ran into a friend of mine who I'd been telling about my planned outing the night before. By complete coincidence she was on her morning walk in the park while I was hunting the cache and she came along with me for my second.

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Well, I became a geocacher because of a geocoin!!! :laughing:

 

Yes! Really!!!

 

I am a coin and a banknote collector! I am trying to find cheap banknotes and coins I do not have (especially old or silver, or both! :) ), in low prices! I do not care much about conditions etc!... Anyway, because of this, I have to search a lot in the net, and especially in Ebay! One day I saw a strange but very beautiful coin or medal! It was a Greek one! the auction was saying... the first Greek geocoin!

 

What was that??? Was it a medal? It was colorfull, very well designed... I loved it!!! I had to know more about it, It was a must have!!!

 

I had seen the geocaching.com on it, so I started searching! Then I found the site! I started reading about the game and I got excited!!! It was like a treasure hunt!!! WOW!!! Time to be a child again! :laughing:

 

I was registered , it was free... why not? :) , and searched in the map for the caches in my island! One was very close to my house... an other was so easy....

I didn't have a GPS, but I gave a try! :laughing:

 

My first cache was a micro one, in Enydreio (aquarium) in Rhodes! It was a very easy find! Of course the next caches were not like that! :laughing:

 

For the others I needed a GPS! I didn't have the money to buy one! I was not working! I still do not have one! Thank God, Luck was with me! My brother in law bought a GPS, for his car! they had gone to Athens with my sister while they were prepairing their house to get married, and it was not easy to find the streets etc, so he bought the GPS to make things easy!!!

 

That was my chance!!! I started telling them about the game and how nice that would be! They wanted to get some exersise too, so geocaching looked something good for them!

Yes!!! We made a team! both my sister and my brother in law are under my code name! :P

 

At first, things were hard, but we managed to find almost all caches in the island! We are missing one micro that we will find soon, and an earth cache that published today!!! :D

 

When we went out for geocaching as a team for thefirst day, we couldn't find anything! We were desperate and to tell you the truth... my sister & my brother in law were not very happy! they wanted to quit!!!

 

In our last try I found a normal size cache!!! Inside there was a geocoin!!! that was it!!!! :D

 

Just to inform you, I have in my possesion a similar coin like the one I found in that cache, and of course I have the greek geocoin too!!!! :D

I love both so much!!! They are my treasures!!!!

 

Till some days ago, I was feeling lonely! I thought I was the only geocacher in the area! there was a cache placed from a local geocacher in Rhodes, but I thought she was not active anymore!!!

I was wrong!!!! :D

We spoke via emails and she will be in Rhodes (she is in Denmark now), on February!!!! YES!!!!!! :D

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Thanks for the cointest Opalsns!

 

In November of 2005, I saw something about Geocaching either on-line or in print somewhere - exactly which one and where is a blur. I did join GC.com that day. I spent some time lurking and reading all the forums and instructional pages. Went to Geocaching U, too. Finally when the annual early December question was asked by hubby, "What do you want for Christmas?", I said, "A GPSr." It was history from there.

 

Christmas morning I opened a Garmin GPSmap76C (and I have only found one other person in Maine using this one to date). I had no idea how to work it but started reading the book. In early January, I took a class given by a Maine Guide on use of a GPSr. I guess to navigate with a map, compass, the GPSr for hiking, his instruction might have been ok - for finding caches it did little.

 

Found my first cache, The Pound in Orrington ME, in January 2006. It's been full speed ahead ever since. This hobby, sport or whatever you might like to call it has changed my life - and also gotten me through a very serious family medical catastrophy!

 

Hid my first cache in April of 2006 and the disasterous result of posting the wrong coordinates (there was no wonder I was having a hard time finding most caches) resulted in me meeting a great caching buddy. Geocaching has reconnected me with some lost friends too.

 

In addition to finding the caches, I like the trackables and naturally gravitated to the Geocoins as I was raised in a family of numismatics. My collection got a bit to big but I am working on really looking for special things - Native themes are very important to me.

 

I never expected to do 500 finds my first year, but hey, being partially retired helped. Have been fortunate to complete the Maine DeLorme challenge and get another 500 caches per year. Enjoyed attending 2 mega events and local events are a ton of fun too.

 

My husband is physically not able to find caches with me but rides with me sometimes. A lot of my caching has been done with friends and family. My two adult children, spouses and the one grandchild all cache - but not as gungho as me.

 

Well, that's hollora in a nut shell. Thanks, again for the cointest. :)

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Our first find was in July 2006. I bought a GPS to use on the lake with topo maps and also got a mapping version so I could use it in the car. I have zero sense of direction, so I would rarely venture out into unknown cities and such. One of the other functions that the GPS had was "geocaching". So, I tried it out and was pretty enthusiastic about it, but didn't know how to enter the caches electronically. I didn't do much geocaching for almost a year, and then I learned that I could dump 100's of geocaches to the GPS as once. At that point, it was game on! I've been hooked ever since.

 

I'm kicking myself that I didn't get involved in caching earlier, b/c I did quite a bit of traveling to different countries for work and would have loved to log caches in each of them.

 

Now, geocaching has become almost a daily event and I've even gotten my mom hooked. There's just so many levels to it: searching for caches, geocoin tracking and collection, pathtags, TB's, placing caches, and the various cache types. It's quite addictive!

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Well,

I first heard about caching on TV, when a famous comedian talked about his hobby...

 

Half a year later I was in Nuremberg for an internship and did not have anything to do on an evening, when I remembered this... I looked it up on the intrnet an searched the area around me...

 

There was one cache that couldbe found just by description, so printed it and followed it and found it :)

 

From that time on I cached just by description and googlemaps and -earth untill I bought my GPS a month later :)

 

Am still addicted to it, even though time is short...

 

By the way, thx for the cointest, i enjoy reading the posts :laughing:

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I had overheard a friend saying his neices and nephews were up from Texas and did a little geocaching while they were here. I had never heard of it. When I got home I decided to go online and look it up. I thought it was a great way to get out and do something together as a family. My son was very interested so the next day we went out without a GPSr and found the 3 in our town. Since then he and I have been hooked.

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I was ''caching'' (well...the word is a bit strong thinking about it...I was going with my geohubby, You Ke Té, we walked and he found the caches-HE HAS THE GPS) for 2 years, and getting in arguments for all the money on gaz he was spending for a signature on a little piece of paper until my geodaughter, Moustaches de chaton, wasn't interested to go caching anymore. I started to go more often, still more for the exercise than finding the cache., especially in Ontario where I can shop at Michael's and Cotton Ginny and we do a day of caching. Got my ID on sept 2008 and I got hooked on my first geocoin event by winning the 2007 Lackey geocoin. Got to build my coin collection and going caching for regular caches with... geocoins.

Lots of time You Ke Té ask me to come and find the ones he couldn't find ( this, he won't brag about !!) :)

Edited by Turlutortue
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Well my story is nothing sexy. Got a Garmin Nuvi 650 for christmas to use for driving. Browsing the menu on the gps i kept hitting "extras". Told me to go to garmin.com/extras, so i went and saw geocaching. Wondering what the hell is that, clicked the link, and was intrigued. Reading more i then though, eh i cant use my nuvi for this, this is for people who hike & use handhelds ect ect ect.. I began looking for a cheap handheld when i came across a page on the forum for paperless caching with your nuvi. Followed all the instructions d/l the stuff i needed and went along my way. Its been about a week since ive started, 18 finds so far with my nuvi and no need for a handheld. Now i find myself thinking about caching while at work.. Go figure..

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We started this Christmas. Just a few weeks ago I stumbled across the website via a link. I had a heart attack this Halloween and as part of my rehab, needed to walk. Walking the subdivision, track or treadmill made me feel like a gerbil. Instead, geocaching provides exercise and adventure. The best part is it's something we can do as a family and my 11 year old daughter loves it.

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Back in the beginning of 2008, we had to change our vehicule and asked the dealer that we'd like a GPS in it. He gave us a Nuvi 250W. I went to Garmin's website to check for updates and by surfing, I read something about GeoCaching.

 

After some investigation, I found a French forum were I asked for someone to show me what is GeoCaching. My 11 first caches were with a girl called Hirondelle. She had a better GPS than me but it didn't matter. I had snow to my knees but I liked it.

 

There was a cache in the park in front of my house...It took me 4-5 times to find it....Beginner...

 

The GPS model wasn't an issue until the time I was a Km away from the vehicule and I saw that the batterie was almost empty...No Car Plug or USB port to charge it... Now I have one that I can change the batteries....

 

At 445 caches found, I'm happy and ready to continue caching...

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The first time I heard of Geocaching, I was in a meeting for our Central Wisconsin Adventures Board of Directors and we were working on some mystery events for our Adventure Race that we hold each spring for junior high and high school student teams. The adventure race already had trekking, bicycling, canoeing, and other physical challenges but we also needed something that was more cerebral and/or mentally challenging, something puzzling. One of the members mentioned geocaching as a friend of hers did this. As a gadget kind of guy, I took the reins on it to check it out. I purchased a Magellan explorist100 on eBay and went out after the nearest cache to my house. Tracked it down and made the find. That was neat. Went after another, found that , yup, pretty cool. searched out another one, found it, Yea!, this is great. ~J >'}>< (does that look like a fish going after a hook?) Yup.......HOOKED. The first year we did geocaching for the adventure race it was more like a letterbox type find but the next couple years we used the GPSrs and had a multi course set out. I think it went well and may have made a new cacher or two.

 

Hard to say what my hobby might be now if it were not for that first geocaching experience.

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My biology teacher was always bringing it up during our independent study, and eventually the 4 of us were like alright, take us. So he took us across outside in the bitter cold and snow to a cache that was across the road from our highschool, and after a good 20 minutes of searching, we had dug it out of the snow, i went home and got on the website made an account and logged it and i have been hooked ever since.

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I listin to talk raido during the day while working,

 

one day this last year, on a raido show called Tom Martino The Trouble shooter, He had asked

 

"what do you do with your free time?" I usually used to DJ in my home studio, for over 10 years Ive done that, making quite the arrangement of mostly eletronic music, with odds and ends of all kinds of other happening,,its an art for me.

anyway

so some cachers called in(at that time they were just people)and explained what it was very breifly, I did not think anything of it as I was working very busy that day ,,,,a few other cachers called in agreeing thats what they did and still it had entered my head enuff to ask whats that? That night I wanted to look it up but could not think of the name, so the next day the same question came up again,, with a recap of the previous day, and another caller/cacher called in to say how great it was.. iIstoped dead in my tracks grabbed a pen and wrote down the name.

 

Now at this point I'm wondering about it but still unsure and hadent looked it up ,, thought it would be some cheezy online game,,,, so when I did look it up- still not getting it very well , I told my wife about it,, she thought it sounded weird,, so I jumped on craigs list and found a old trailblazer gps,, for 20 bucks,, drove half an hour to grab it and never knew a thing about a gps before this --- read the manual---- it seriously took me 3 days to figure it out and our first try I was lost as all hell. after a few trys we found it!! I was hooked,, to find boxes full of stuff planted was way cool so we dashed back home to find out that there were soooooooo many caches,, our first month of caching was very tricky for us ,,with no one showing us the ropes,, time and effort found our first bunch of caches,, weve upgraded gps 2 times scence then and have donated our other good gps to a fellow cacher here on the forums.

 

my thought of what it was gonna be like and my final thought after the first few months was flip flop,, the more I couldent find them,,,,the more I wanted to go out there and find them. thyen during a log i was reading some others comments and stumbled across this forum and geo-coins,,, now its all over for me, and my daughter loves it too,,, so we have alot of fun togeather,, we just found our 150th cache over this weekend.

thank you DJ.J.ROCK

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Some time in 2004 - June or July, I believe, I read an article in our local paper about Geocaching & thought that it sounded like a lot of fun. About a month later there was another article in the Parade magazine in the Sunday paper. A few weeks later I bought a yellow E-Trex. I didn't even read the manual so I didn't know how to plug in coordinates but there was a cache in a local park so I went there to try & find it. I tried & tried to get the coordinates on the GPS screen to match up to the cache page I printed out. Doh!!! Never could get them to match up and I didn't realize that I was looking for a micro so I never did find that cache - that day. I went home, read the manual on how to plug in coordinates so I plugged in the coordinates to the cache closest to home and headed out again. This time I was successful and the rest is history. Six months later I started dating my boyfriend - who, incidently, is also a cacher. :unsure: Three years later we are still together & still caching. :blink:

 

CF30

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Well, I will tell you tomorrow how my first time goes... I just received my ETrex Legend C in the mail today and set it all up, downloaded some caches near my house, and was planning to go out.... but it got all dark, and I didn't have a working flashlight. So tomorrow, I will be looking for find #1!

 

I'll let y'all know how it goes!

 

~TimeTraveler09

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We read about geocaching in the newspaper.

 

We found information at geocaching .nl :D

 

And there we go...with a pda with tom tom :unsure: to find a multicache from 8 km.

 

what do you think what happened... the tom tom program did us not let go into the woods.

 

So we search and search but could not find anything. :)

 

We thought everything was alright. :D

 

but we keep on circling around the woods but we did not go in the woods :blink:

 

After a midday trying .finally the quarter fall :D

 

We went home and find the right program but it take us 3 times before we found the multicache.

 

It give us such a good feeling that the addiction was started. :D

 

We still love to cache..even can not think a life without caching..caching makes me sure happy :D:D

 

:D Thanks for the cointest, it was fun to remember our first start..still makes me laugh :D

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First Time you ask well sit back and let me tell you…

When we started to cache there was none of this fancy stuff, “no GPSr, it was all done with a map and compass, and you had to walk 3 miles in the snow, even in Summer, and up hill both ways, with no shoes”

 

Alright so maybe that is a stretch….

I first found out about caching from a PA DEP employee, we were discussing hunting and the local PA Gamelands, when he told me about this game that he played and that there was this CASH? Right near where I was heading to put meat on the table.

 

Well some time passed and this game as it were was still in my mind, strange for me since most items are gone quickly. So I contacted the man and arranged to meet with him again and asked him to go over this Geo-Cashing thing with me again, he went over the game with me again, and as I must have had a glazed look on my face, normal for me little did he know, he said here and brought up Geocaching.com. I said OOOHHHH……

 

So I read, read, and read more, consuming everything I could read, so I went home and explained this to the family over dinner and how we were going on to Geocaching.com to get an account and that we were heading out this weekend to do this new Geocaching thing. As you can imagine this was not met with the WHOOPS and Enthusiasm I expected.

 

Well I rounded up the troops at least the ones who had to listen to me, note I am not the BIG BOSS no surprise here hugh Men? Well so the kids and I got into the truck, now Caching mobile with TB sticker…. and we headed out, not for caching but breakfast then we were on the road to the cache a whole 4.3 miles from the house. I re-bundled up and insisted the kids do so as well and we headed out.

Note: This was with the Garmin Nuvi 750 from the Truck, not the best GPSr for caching, getting there yes in the woods not so much.

Well we did finally get to the spot and we searched, and searched as the cache was not exactly as listed on-line but the Daughter found it. To my surprise the kids were smiling ear to ear we signed the log did a trade for the McToy, and well other junk, re-hid the cache as was listed and headed back to the Truck, the easy way this time via the path. This seems to carry on till today Bushwhack in Trail out, must fix this soon!

 

Well we headed toward home I asked how the kids liked it and I heard I’m hungry can we get something to eat…., well during lunch I was asked when are we caching again?

So now with one over 100 finds, one getting close, and a third coming up quickly as well, she is our Dancer, and can not always go, we sneak out while Mom and Daughter are at performances, competitions, etc… we have a budding Coin collection, have our own Caches, and have been to events, we are hooked.

 

I hope I am not alone and this rings true to everyone’s core with kids.

 

Thanks for making me think of the First Time, I am SMILING EAR TO EAR. :blink:

 

P.S. Here are the kids at the first find:

794e0098-07e0-4c25-bcf5-42449cd58384.jpg

 

P.S.S. Last week I introduced a Muggle Friend to Caching his Wife started on the Website reading into the wee hours, short story they are doing their 1st Cache this weekend. HEHEHEHEHE :unsure:

Edited by The Finding Irish 4
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I first heard about geocaching a few weeks ago. I was chomping at the bit until I got a GPS unit for my birthday/Christmas present. Last week, I went out to find a cache that had just been placed. It would have been awesome to get a FTF on my first cache ever! But alas! Badly drawn trail maps, 4 lanes of highway, and a fenced-off golf course lay between me and my prize. I gave up after an hour. Later that night, I checked the log and it turns out the cache had gone missing anyway!

 

Anyway, I went out again several days ago and found my first cache. Very easy find but fun nonetheless. I'm still not sure how I got hooked on caching as I had never done it before. I must have been bitten by a bug, because beforehand I thought geocaching was "that silly GPS game." Well, there you have it...

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Thanks for the cointest!

We had a pretty pathetic start, and almost gave up completely. We went to find a cache in a heavily forested park near home, and although we searched for almost an hour we couldn't find the cache. Twice more we went back, and twice more we went home discouraged. Small children can play this game, so why was it so hard for us!? Then we tried a different cache, a multi, and thanks to generous hints and spoilers we found that cache. We still weren't sure we liked this game, but we stubbornly wanted to find the first cache we'd looked for. This time when we went to the park we didn't use the GPS; instead we printed off a picture from the cache page that someone had taken near the cache. It showed the forest in the cache vicinity, so we wandered up and down the trails until we found some trees that looked like the ones in the picture. Then we found the cache, about thirty meters east of where we'd spent so many hours looking for it the first few times. After struggling to find a few more caches we noticed a pattern - the cache was always about the same distance east of where the GPS was telling us to look. That helped a bit, but it wasn't until we placed our first hide, and of course our coordinates were no where near where our cache was, that a kind local cacher (who found our cache anyway!) suggested that we check our map datum setting. Yes, we had the wrong setting. Caching was much easier after that, and we've been hooked ever since.

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i officially became a geocacher may of last year. i had heard about geocaching way back in 2005 but never attempted it as i didnt have a gps at the time. i forgot all about it until about the start of may when i read on a friends blog they had got into geocaching and were enjoying it. from that time i really got into it, and tried to find a cache with a car satnav, but failed badly as it wouldnt let me leave the road to go into the woodlands. after trying and failing to win a gps on the ebay my husband bought me one for my birthday. it arrived intime on my birthday and we went out and made my first cache find on my birthday.

i love geocaching and although i dont have the choices of accessible geocaches for me alone or with my young son, its given me back my love for exploring places i dont know about, in the hope to find a nice place to set a geocache.

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Great idea to collect geo-stories. One of the things I really like about this is meeting new people and hearing about different adventures people have had. Thanks for setting this up.

 

Our story ---

 

I read about geocaching this summer in What's Up Annapolis magazine, a local rag about events and actvities in Annapolis, MD. It sounded like something I could get the kids to do that was outside and away from video games and computers/tv. I had in the past tried to teach them about compass use but wasn't really successful in grabbing their attention. They are now 10 and 8 so I thought to try again with the added incentive of "treasure hunting." I had to plan it all out though to capture thier attention. So...

 

I told them of the artical and explained the geocaching game to them at dinner that night. After dinner I brought out the compass and made a little game for them to play that made them use the compass to find something in the house. I explained the basics of the compass and how to use it and then gave them each a sheet of paper with directions on it. My littlest had to start at the back door and walk 5 paces at 270 degrees, then 5 more paces at 180 degrees, then 5 more at, did you guess it, 90 degrees, and last, 5 paces at 360/0 degrees. That last one needed a little explanation about how many degrees on the compass. But she got to the final destination, looked up from the compasss, and with her hands on her hips said, "But Dad, I'm right back where I started at!!!" To funny was her indignant look. But I WHOOPED! and told her she did it exactly right. She beamed at me then and asked if we could do another one. Between the two, I had to setup a few more "courses" before they would even hear of bedtime.

 

Now that they knew how to use the compass to follow a bearing, the next night, I hid a test cache in the backyard and showed them how the GPS worked to give us a bearing to a mark and distance. Starting off from the front door, they had to learn they couldn't always follow a straight line to the mark. Turned out to be a good lesson but I really hadn't thought that out. Just kinda stumbled into that lesson. They eventually found the cache and immediately wanted to do it again. After about 2 hours of hiding and re-hiding the test cache, I announcecd that they were ready to go into the wild and find real caches. They were jumping up and down to go but it was, yup, bedtime.

 

That weekend, I looked for caches at GC.com and found two hydro-caches on the river near us. We love boating so I got the little inflatable boat out and had them plug-in the coordinates to the first cache. I new the cove this was hidden in as it was right next to a house of some friends we play on the water with so felt pretty confident of the find. We shoved off from the beach and they navigated prefectly. One had the compass and the other had the GPS calling out bearing changes and distance to the first. They were sooooo excited!!! When we got to the cove (couldn't do the straight line thing so first test cache lesson was a success), they recognized thier friends house and from the cache description knew where to head from there. They found it within about 2 minutes in a hollow under a tree along the community beach they had played at many times without even knowing it was there. Yeay!!!

 

The second cache we also found that day was further up the river than we had ever gone and by now the kids were WAY HOOKED! Check out our profile and gallery for the sunset pictures near this cache.

 

Since then, we have bought the premium membership, cached along a route to Niagra Falls for a vacation trip where we became "international geocachers, been 2nd to find on another hydro-cache, traded for a Pirates of the Cheseapeake geocoin (Way cool coin!), created our own cache to give back to the game, released a TB, started a TB Race for our family members to suck them into our new world, got 5 new geocacher families hooked and playing, and are starting 2 challenge caches in MD (All counties, and new MML Geo Trail). What a fun game this is and such a great family activity.

 

Thanks to everyone who has helped make this such an enjoyable new activity.

 

AquaDad and the Magothy River Aqua Trekkers crew

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I was researching local points of interest on the internet, following links, as you do, I found an image which had been uploaded to a cache page, I somehow found the cache page but not being signed in I could not see any location information. I registered and read more, I entered my post code and was astonished to see so many in the immediate area, although now of course there are very few that haven't been ticked. I quickly looked through the list and selected one or two to look at and read. I realised that I knew the location for one, not even needing a map to get there. I persuaded hubby to get in the car and come help me look for a cache. Well we searched the area high and low for an hour or more. When I got home I took another look at the cache page only to realise that it was a virtual, there was nothing hidden anywhere. But I was hooked and it wasn't long before I bought my Garmin Gecko 201, and apart from caches hidden in the woods, it has served me very well. Thanks for the cointest and good luck to everyone :unsure:

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hmmm.. first post seems to have timed out somehow. Sorry if ends up as duplicate.

 

Great idea to collect geo-stories. One of the things I really like about this is meeting new people and hearing about different adventures people have had. Thanks for setting this up.

 

Our story ---

 

I read about geocaching this summer in What's Up Annapolis magazine, a local rag about events and actvities in Annapolis, MD. It sounded like something I could get the kids to do that was outside and away from video games and computers/tv. I had in the past tried to teach them about compass use but wasn't really successful in grabbing their attention. They are now 10 and 8 so I thought to try again with the added incentive of "treasure hunting." I had to plan it all out though to capture thier attention. So...

 

I told them of the artical and explained the geocaching game to them at dinner that night. After dinner I brought out the compass and made a little game for them to play that made them use the compass to find something in the house. I explained the basics of the compass and how to use it and then gave them each a sheet of paper with directions on it. My littlest had to start at the back door and walk 5 paces at 270 degrees, then 5 more paces at 180 degrees, then 5 more at, did you guess it, 90 degrees, and last, 5 paces at 360/0 degrees. That last one needed a little explanation about how many degrees on the compass. But she got to the final destination, looked up from the compasss, and with her hands on her hips said, "But Dad, I'm right back where I started at!!!" To funny was her indignant look. But I WHOOPED! and told her she did it exactly right. She beamed at me then and asked if we could do another one. Between the two, I had to setup a few more "courses" before they would even hear of bedtime.

 

Now that they knew how to use the compass to follow a bearing, the next night, I hid a test cache in the backyard and showed them how the GPS worked to give us a bearing to a mark and distance. Starting off from the front door, they had to learn they couldn't always follow a straight line to the mark. Turned out to be a good lesson but I really hadn't thought that out. Just kinda stumbled into that lesson. They eventually found the cache and immediately wanted to do it again. After about 2 hours of hiding and re-hiding the test cache, I announcecd that they were ready to go into the wild and find real caches. They were jumping up and down to go but it was, yup, bedtime.

 

That weekend, I looked for caches at GC.com and found two hydro-caches on the river near us. We love boating so I got the little inflatable boat out and had them plug-in the coordinates to the first cache. I new the cove this was hidden in as it was right next to a house of some friends we play on the water with so felt pretty confident of the find. We shoved off from the beach and they navigated prefectly. One had the compass and the other had the GPS calling out bearing changes and distance to the first. They were sooooo excited!!! When we got to the cove (couldn't do the straight line thing so first test cache lesson was a success), they recognized thier friends house and from the cache description knew where to head from there. They found it within about 2 minutes in a hollow under a tree along the community beach they had played at many times without even knowing it was there. Yeay!!!

 

The second cache we also found that day was further up the river than we had ever gone and by now the kids were WAY HOOKED! Check out our profile and gallery for the sunset pictures near this cache.

 

Since then, we have bought the premium membership, cached along a route to Niagra Falls for a vacation trip where we became "international geocachers, been 2nd to find on another hydro-cache, traded for a Pirates of the Cheseapeake geocoin (Way cool coin!), created our own cache to give back to the game, released a TB, started a TB Race for our family members to suck them into our new world, got 5 new geocacher families hooked and playing, and are starting 2 challenge caches in MD (All counties, and new MML Geo Trail). What a fun game this is and such a great family activity.

 

Thanks to everyone who has helped make this such an enjoyable new activity.

 

AquaDad and the Magothy River Aqua Trekkers crew

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Here is my first Caching expeience:

 

Please see my Dad's post #36 to get some background

 

He does start most things off with with a talk as he said here:

When we started to cache there was none of this fancy stuff, “no GPSr, it was all done with a map and compass, and you had to walk 3 miles in the snow, even in Summer, and up hill both ways, with no shoes”

 

So you know what my Brother and I are dealing with. :unsure:

 

As Dad said he told us all about Caching over dinner and then we went to Geocaching.com to get an account and that we were headed out that weekend. We showed Enthusiasm just no WHOOPS. :blink:

 

Dad woke us up early and we headed out for caching but did get breakfast , as Dad says "It's the most important meal of the day" then we were on the road and headed to the cache

We all re-bundled as Dad picked the coldest day in a month to go caching.

 

Dad wrote:

Note: This was with the Garmin Nuvi 750 from the Truck, not the best GPSr for caching, getting there yes in the woods not so much. He was so proud of his GPS and convinced it could get us there, we now have a Garmin Rhino, for each of us, Dad;s is color ours is Black & White.

 

Well we did finally get to the spot and we searched, and searched I found the cache as Dad and my Brother were looking in the wrong location as usual.

 

Dad also wrote:

we headed back to the Truck, the easy way this time via the path. This seems to carry on till today Bushwhack in Trail out, must fix this soon! If he would listen.....

 

Well we headed toward home and my Brother said I'm I’m hungry like always so we get something to eat…., during lunch we did ask when were we going caching again?

 

Dad has over 100 finds, my Brother is getting close, and yes I am a Dancer, and those two do sneak out while Mom and I are at performances, competitions, etc… thats nor fair, but they don't care.

 

We do have a budding Coin collection, have our own Caches, and have been to events, Dad is correct we are hooked. :D

Edited by Queenie-Boo-Bay
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I had seen a program on geocaching years ago and thought it was interesting but didn’t think about it again after the show. Since I have summers off I watch my stepson while his mother works. I always take him to the local library and sign him up for the Summer Reading Program. They have fun activities for the kids. They had a geocaching demonstration so I signed him up. There were a couple of cachers who explained how a GPS works with the satellites and had the kids stationed around the room with tennis balls. Then they passed around different containers. Then they explained about signing the logs and trading swag. after the demonstration the kids divided up in groups of 4 with a leader and given a gps and paper with clues. We went outside and began following the arrows on the gps to different types of caches hidden all over the library property. I WAS HOOKED!! After reluctantly giving back the gps I drove home and told Joe, my hubby all about it. We looked up geocaching.com and read more about it, found a gps unit on EBay for a reasonable price and we were off on the biggest adventure of our lives! We haven’t looked back yet. I have seen places I never knew about through caching. I’ve even found new places in my own neighborhood didn’t know existed.

 

mrs catsnfish

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My friend Temacon told me about geocaching after attending an event with his children then coming to the local roller skating rink in July 2008. I was excited and started looking up information about it because I really enjoy the outdoors and hiking, hiking with a purpose sounded fun. September 28th 2008 Temacon and I went on our first date and guess what we did??? Yup, he taught me geocaching and my first finds were logged the next day! We have now been dating just over 3 months, I have 80 finds almost all of them at his side. That was the most fun I have ever had on a first date! I am hooked, I now have my own GPSr and we have a great time together geocaching.

Edited by CCWashburn
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From the time I had heard about geocaching and signed up for geocaching to my first find was about 9 months. You see I’m one of those people that has to find out everything before I get into it and in geocaching there’s a lot to learn (there really isn’t but that’s my excuse and I’m sticking to it).

It was a local salesman that got me interested, he was always just a little late or showing up just to say hi, anyway I think at first he was cautious on telling me what he was up to, in fact I can remember his one explanation was that he had been on a nature hike near some old elevators in a near by town, he eventually explained geocaching as a treasure hunt.

Not that got me thinking I like finding things but had to do all the research about this game. That brought me up to my birthday the day I signed up, my daughter had given me my first gps, now to make the story a little shorter it was great for the auto but not for geocaching so more research into gpsr’s and bingo an etrex (in case I was wrong and didn’t really care for the sport).

First day I got it loaded up the cords and off to claim my prize (dnf on both). So back to research, I took a waypoint reading in a lovely large park in the town I work in and evey lunch and sometimes after work I’d practice going to the location figuring out that margin of error.

But it was in this same park that my first find came, a nice walk got close to GC and the heart was racing from excitement, looking all around making sure that when I headed into the bush (trees) and came out there wouldn’t be a crowd there (like the first dnf, many funny looks from the two ladies walking by but the one husband actual smiled and gave me a nod?) and there looking around think maybe I’ve gotten to old for this game, not able to think like I did when I hid things when I was young, there it was stuck perfectly in between the branches. I left a coin, pin other swag I’m surprised I didn’t fill that container, my prize was a golf tee, another passion and expensive sport.

Oh BTW still have the etrex, ki uses it, I on the other hand use the Colorado I think I’m in for the long haul. :unsure:

Thanks for the cointest love reading all the posts every night.

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Finding Irish 4 & Queenie Boo-Bay -- loved your accounts of the first time you went caching. Very humourous and hits home for me (though I was dealing with a less than enthusiastic spouse instead). You obviously enjoy caching together and what a wonderful way to spend time as a family. (hope you win!)

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Here is my first Caching expeience:

 

Please see my Dad's post #36, and my Sisters post #43 to get some background

 

Dad does start most things off with with a talk as he said here:

When we started to cache there was none of this fancy stuff, “no GPSr, it was all done with a map and compass, and you had to walk 3 miles in the snow, even in Summer, and up hill both ways, with no shoes”

 

So you know what we are dealing with.

 

As Dad said he told us all about Caching over dinner and then we went to Geocaching.com to get an account and that we were headed out that weekend. We showed Enthusiasm just no WHOOPS.

 

Dad woke us up early and we headed out for caching but did get breakfast , as Dad says "It's the most important meal of the day" then we were on the road and headed to the cache

We all re-bundled as Dad picked the coldest day in a month to go caching.

 

Dad wrote:

Note: This was with the Garmin Nuvi 750 from the Truck, not the best GPSr for caching, getting there yes in the woods not so much. He was so proud of his GPS and convinced it could get us there, we now have a Garmin Rhino, for each of us, Dad's is color ours is Black & White.

 

Well we did finally get to the spot and we searched, and searched I found the cache not my Sister as Dad and my Sister were looking in the wrong location as usual.

 

Dad also wrote:

we headed back to the Truck, the easy way this time via the path. This seems to carry on till today Bushwhack in Trail out, must fix this soon! If he would listen..... I agree with Sis here

 

Well we headed toward home and my Sister not me said I'm I’m hungry like always so we get something to eat…., during lunch we did ask when were we going caching again?

 

Dad has over 100 finds, I'm getting close, and yes my Sister is a Dancer, and we do sneak out while Mom and Her are at performances, competitions, etc… thats nor fair, but they don't care.

 

We do have a budding Coin collection, have our own Caches, and have been to events, Dad is correct we are hooked.

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Hey All,

I am so thrilled to see turn out on this cointest. Each and everyone of the stories are so fun to read. And it looks that those flashback memories are bringing a tear and a chuckle to many.

I'm SOOOO glad I chose to use the number generator to choose a winner because each story is as wonderful as the next and it would have been tough to just choose one. :unsure:

2 more days to go and tomorrow night there will be a winner.

So keep those stories coming, and

Keep On Caching,

Opalsns

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