first finds, tell your storry

[dediles]

I wanted to know peoples first geocaching stories, so spill 'em out

 

mine wase monte casino chapile

 

easy find, had fun with geese

Edited May 3, 2009 by dediles

[+Pork King]

I had read about geocaching in the local paper. I thought it sounded really fun so I went out and bought a GPS (Little yeller Garmin) and learned how to use it. I called my friend and told him about it, and he wanted to go, too. So I looked for some caches around his area (60 miles or so from my home, and he wasn't too familiar with the area, also) and headed out to meet him. For those who don't know, The yellow Garmin eTrex does not have a base map, only an arrow pointer and a distance. We went out in an unfamiliar area with NO MAP AT ALL, only a little arrow and a distance. We, against all odds, went right to the first one we were looking for. A short hill climb and one encounter with a snake later, we had our names in the logbook. I think I traded a Tropicana NASCAR model matchbox car for a pack of toy airplanes. I wonder whatever happened to my planes?

 

The second hunt of the day, we drove all round this huge lake, looking for a boat ramp the cache was located on. We managed to get a look at it from across the lake, but never managed to find a way to it. Spend HOURS looking...the whole rest of the day, in fact. We didn't get too discouraged. We managed to go back and find that one a few months later, with help from a MAP.

[+Jeep4two]

In 2001 I had seen a news story on the national news about Geocaching. At the time I worked for a local school district as a network administrator with two other techie folks (my boss and a peer).

 

I shared and we browsed the website and talked a bit about the possibility of integrating this technology into the local curriculum. After some time we had a plan.

 

We picked up some "Street Pilot" GPS units and Palm IIIc PDAs and started learning.

 

Our first cache as "Tech Crew" was GC2A80, a quick micro log only that had been muggled before even the FTF. We found a stray log sheet and tried to salvage it too but it was in a location that was not very cache friendly and very muggle prone.

 

Unfortunatley it wasn't a real earth shattering moment. The Crew consisted of 3 of us out for a quick find. Our 2nd find was more challenging and took 2 trips to locate. That cache had some cool 'home made' Geocaching.com lasercut stickers in it. I got one and it's still on the back window of my truck today (that find was on GC2B1C in Dec. 2001 - we were the FTF purely by luck). I recently went back to pick that one up again under my new user ID and found it had been moved quite a few feet from its original location.

 

I had a number of years of inactivity due to the fact that the idea didn't catch on with our teachers, and I eventually moved on professionally. In addition I didn't get my own personal GPS until 2006.

 

Long story short - my first find was fun, but the 2nd was still one of my favorites. People still strike up conversation about the Geocaching.com sticker on my trucks back window all the time. I'm back into this hobby big time now - I might even have formed some sort of addiction.

Edited May 4, 2009 by andynshe

[+skeezicks]

Mine was in December 2006...my folks and my sister and brother-in-law had flown up to spend Christmas with us.My brother-in-law kept talking about geocaching and said he found out about it from a magazine article.He and my sisiter had been doing it for a little while already.I love to hike and be in the outdoors all the time,so I told him it sounded fun.He got on our computer and found 5 or 6 he said were in Helena,Mt. which we live about 25 miles outside of.The night before we were going to go into town,he decided to look from where his GPS put his coords here at our house instead of using the city zip code like he had before.Lo and behold,there was one less than a mile down a dirt road right by where we live.We got up the next morning(the whole lot of us) and walked down the dirt road and up the hillside and after about 10 minutes of looking we had found it.I was hooked right away.Later on that afternoon,we went into town and found the other ones ( which included a really cool mystery cache with lots of walking and information gathering to find).They flew back home a couple of days later.I bought a GPS within a week and have been geocaching and finding benchmarks hot and heavy ever since..."takes a breath"...

[+Zoey's People]

We got our first FTF last weekend. Quick PNG, but got there RIGHT before 4 other cachers! Their logs all mentioned that they saw us reach GZ.

Question, though- how do you log something as a FTF? I wasn't able to log the find until about 10 that night and someone else had already logged their find.

I would really like this to show up on my stat screen.

[+bnpkidz]

Ours was in 2005. A coworker and I were talking one day about GPS units because we were trying to measure distance or something. Out of the blue, he asks, "Have you heard of that game where you use a GPS to fund stuff hidden by others?" That was it for me. I spent the rest of the afternoon at work researching geocaching. By the time I left I had targeted three caches close to home and I raced home to tell my wife about it. After dinner we headed out to a local park and the rest is history. We are still as addicted now as we were on that first night.

[+Knight2000]

Looked online for cheap family fun. About.com said geocaching.

 

Bought GPS. Our first was a micro. We didnt realize the size and were looking for something bigger. Oh well. We never did seem to have problems finding them.

 

We got our first FTF last weekend. Quick PNG, but got there RIGHT before 4 other cachers! Their logs all mentioned that they saw us reach GZ.

Question, though- how do you log something as a FTF? I wasn't able to log the find until about 10 that night and someone else had already logged their find.

I would really like this to show up on my stat screen.

FTF is the same no matter when you log it. It is simply a fact. When I log them i just put the time I signed the log. FTF will not show up on a stat screen unless you make it yourself.

[+tfc0869]

Ha, newbie here, my first find was about 10 days ago, down at my favorite local park. Cache was "normal" sized, plastic tupperware. I did enjoy the "a-ha!" feeling when I found it, then the fun of furtively raiding it, signing the log, etc. etc. Found 22 more since then, and am well addicted.

Edited May 4, 2009 by tfc0869

[+Pork King]

We got our first FTF last weekend. Quick PNG, but got there RIGHT before 4 other cachers! Their logs all mentioned that they saw us reach GZ.

Question, though- how do you log something as a FTF? I wasn't able to log the find until about 10 that night and someone else had already logged their find.

I would really like this to show up on my stat screen.

 

FTF's are not "official" stats. You can claim FTF on your online log, and you can post them on your profile page, like lots do (including me... check my page if you want an example) but there is no official way of logging them on the geocaching website.

[Penguin_ar]

Well, my story is a bit embarassing... I'll just give you my log:

 

Found this- my first- cache without meaning to Went walking with the dog, and we went a bit off the path to avoid a family of bicyclists. I noticed a metal box; upon closer inspection, it was a ammo box! I rang my husband, as I was not sure what to do- wasn't sure if I should ring the police, should I touch it or is it liable to explode (we just moved from Ireland, where a ammo box find would mean suspected terrorists...). He told me to pick it up and see if anything was in it. As I did so, I saw a big green sticker on the other side, saying "OFFICIAL GEOCACHE" I had heard about geocaching before but never joined, but decided this is a sign I should- it'll give me an incentive to explore the local area a bit more. I took the little tickes keyfop, as I have 13 months old twins, and left a d10 dice and a small Irish coin.

[+SkellyCA]

I first heard about it online last year. I checked it out more and realized that geocaching is a great way to get outdoors, get excersize, walk the dog and learn about new place all at the same time. I realized there were several caches in and near where I walk my dog every day. I soon got a GPSr. First cache I found was a regular size cache(Cookie Tin) and it still took me two trips of about 20 minutes each to find it!

[+Boxer_Britt]

I've wanted to tell this story since it happened!

My friend and I were on msn at two am, both couldn't sleep and he suddenly asks me "have i heard of geocaching"

I said, of course, it's something I've always wanted to do but haven't had a chance. Googled a bit and found geocaching.com, saw how many there were in winnipeg and my jaw dropped. I told my friend we should go find one.

I wasn't expecting him to ask 'right now?' but I instinctively said 'yes' because who doesn't want to go trudging through the bush in the dark at 3 in the morning?

We looked for two and didn't find them, then went to one at a nearby intersection and it was on the back of the stop sign, a magnetic altoids container.

I was hooked! That was a few weeks ago and I found my tenth cache yesterday

[tjsports]

I've been a sports/outdoors writer at a small daily newspaper for more that 12 years and heard about geocaching some time ago. I finally bought a Garmin Colorado 300 to get started, and as part of some research for an article I wrote. The GPS sat in my vehicle for about three weeks until I found some time yesterday to look for a cache only about a mile from my house.

 

The cache was easy to get to, but finding it took about 30 minutes of searching a little wooded area with numerous broken and fallen trees. I was ready to give up and take care of all the cuts and scrapes on my legs, when I turned my head to the left and saw the camo-tape covered tin.

 

It was a cool rush to find my first cache and now I'm looking for ideas of things to put in these caches. Anyway, one cache down, many more to go!

[+natenrose]

I had heard of geocaching but never gave it a thought, really, until a month or os ago, when it was on the Travel Channel. I live in a msall town int he middle of nowhere so I didn't think there would be any near here, but I decided to check anyway. Sure enough, there are tons and tons of geocaches here - one was in the cemetery next to our church, and I thought it was so cool that there was this thing that only a few people knew about. (Well, I guess "a few" is relative...)

 

I went out that day and bought a little inexpensive GPSr and since then we have found 16. We have 5 or 6 DNFs, but I only logged one. The others were simply because we didn't have more than a minute or two to search an area, and that doesn't really count as a true DNF.

[Pontoffel Pock]

Always loved GPSrs, had them for years. Always used them for hunting, camping, and 4wheeling.

I had gotten a new Triton 400 and found a great website that tought me how to make all sorts of maps including satellite image ones. Started spending a lot of time on that site and saw there was a 'geocaching' topic. I never went on that, didn't think the caching 'thing' was for me. I finally went on there and read some threads. Then I found the 'geocache.com' and thought I would check if there were any around my house. WOW, these things are everywhere! As soon I saw there was one just over a half a mile away I had to go look, so in the hail and pouring rain I found it WooHoo! I am for sure hooked and my family loves it too, this is great.

I had no idea there was a secret society right under our noses! I am a newbe, and there are 854 caches in a 25 mile radius from me (and am 18 miles from the original stash plaque that I will save for our #100), so I had better get busy !!

Edited May 5, 2009 by Pontoffel Pock

[Lukas_Larsson]

I had heard of it before from my uncle, and we had talked about it, but never gotten to it. Than, on the second of May, before the Hattan boxing match, we went to find 2 that were less than a mile from my home. It was an easy-to-find micro, and than I signed my first log. Since than, I have been out everyday, but today looking for them. Not really any in my area though....

[Lukas_Larsson]

Did a lag double post...

Edited May 5, 2009 by Lukas_Larsson

[+jeffgod]

It was 2 weeks ago. I had been lurking on the site and my curiousity got the best of me. I went out and found three caches on my first try. It is a good chance to get and get some exercise and fresh air.

[Sainth]

It was yesterday

 

I'd heard of geocaching once, a year or two ago, but never looked into it. My friend and I were just wandering around near a little aqueduct we'd been by many times, and while pausing for a moment he spotted a camoflauge wrapped box concealed beneath some bark in a tree. I think I might have to get into this as my new hobby.

[+roziecakes]

My first cache was in Denver, CO on March 11, 2006. A friend of ours knew we were interested in GPSr's and GPS in general because we work for two GIS (Geographic Information Systems) companies; actually my hubby made an online map for a company tracking their vehicles with GPS...

 

so he took us caching with him thinking that we might be interested.

 

Our first find was "What Lies Beneath" in Cheeseman Park in Denver, CO; a micro that was pretty hard to find, and is no longer there nowadays.

 

Funny thing is, now we're caching addicts, and he's only ever logged 16 finds and hasn't been caching since 2007 that I know of...

 

-Rozie