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How long do people geocache?


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I seem to hear the same comment all the time after I tell another geocacher in the field how much I like the game… They almost always say “hopefully, you will stick with it”…. Do a lot of people quit after just a few months, a year, etc…?

 

This has been a blast… I can’t imagine quitting :lol:

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I've only been caching for a year now and have learned of many people dropping off the face of the earth. I don't know what they're motivation was to begin with......I've bumped into two of these former cachers and one said it wasn't a challenge for him any longer and the other said they had a baby and the baby takes up too much of their time. Neither excuse came across as a valid reason but that was their reasoning behind their decision.

 

I sometimes wonder how long will I geocache. I've come into a nest of micros hidden in the woods and that can be more frustrating than fun at times. I'm the kind of cacher that will look for one cache for 45 minutes to an hour before giving up. I hate to post a DNF. Searching for waterproof match containers isn't my greatest joy in geocaching. I figure that once I have to start driving 20+ miles just to find a WPMC then I'll be slowing waaaaay down.

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I used to force myself to go even if I wasn't in the mood. After going "cache crazy" one weekend and getting a lot of finds, I realized that you don't have to go bonkers to have fun at it.

 

Now if we wake up and just want to hang around close to home, we will, going to the park to fly a kite, going to the river and hanging out watching boats, something like that.

 

But then the itch will kick in and I'll want to cache really bad, maybe doing a 17 hour numbers run or doing a long, hard hike up a mountain or only doing 3 caches at a pretty ocean park where we spend most of the day hanging out and having a picnic.

 

I can't imagine ever quitting, but I've now made caching a part of my life rather than my life. Okay, I need to go now. Have to plan a big cache run. :lol:

Edited by Skippermark
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Over the years, I have introduced well over 100 local folks to Geocaching. Some never even tried it again. Some went out and found 10 -20 and never again. Some got very interested, found a few hundred, planted a few dozen and then faded away. Sometimes one of those older names will pop up again and find a few but then disappear again for months or years. These days, I know of only 15 or so indvividuals within 40 miles of me that cache anything like I would call regularly. Only 2 of those I introduced to things.

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I wanted to add that it seems like a lot of people will learn about caching from an outdoor event sponsored by a town or something like that and go out and find 20 or so over the next couple weeks and then suddenly stop, never to log on again.

 

I just wish they'd drop the TBs they're holding before quitting. :lol:

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I wonder if there is a section of people that get excited about it but don't travel a lot, clear out the caches in their immediate area and lose interest in the idea of driving an hour for a cache or two... Some places are obviously a lot harder to clear out than others obviously so I wonder if that's a factor in 'setting the hook.'

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I am what you will call a social cacher. I have 1500 caches loaded into my gps and while out for a drive with my family we may stop and check out a cache on the way. We haven't gone out for a days worth of caching but we may do so one of these days. As long as my GPS works I will be looking for them.

 

Caches that I make a point to located are the ones with the trackables in them. I travel 100 miles south of me at least once a month so I take the trackables I find around home and take them down there, and I find trackables down there and bring them back home.

 

It can get expensive running the gas out of a vehicle looking for caches. But on a side note, it is cheaper to take the family caching then it is taking them to an amusement park.

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I guess the good news is that the area that I live in seems to be teaming with caches. I personally like the "hidden in plain view" caches. It is always interesting to see how a fellow cacher has created a naturally looking container....

 

I just crossed over 300 recently and I have made a practice to look for caches every time I hike, go fly fishing, visit a park, etc... I don't see the fun stopping any time soon.

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I was wondering about this topic myself the other day. In my area it seems quite common for people to find about 20 caches, place 1 cache of their own and then give up.

 

By the time someone has found 100 or so, they seem pretty committed to the game.

 

Originally I enjoyed finding hidden things that non-geocaching people didn't know about. If that was the only interest in the game for me, I would have given up along time ago. That excitement wanes after a few hundred finds.

 

Fortunately, geocaching got me intested in hiking and exploring so I was able to branch out to more difficult and remote caches. That's kept me going for quite a while. Developing a whole new circle of friends kept me interested. Group hiking/caching trips are now my favorite aspect of the game. Without these changes I might have lost interest in the game by now.

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Yes. A lot of people try it out for a while, then give it up. 100 finds sounds like a dividing line. Some people cache on occasion. (My sister is up to 800 caches after 4 and a half years.) Some people cache all the time. (One brother is over 7000 in four and a half years.) Another brother has 210 finds in 6 years. Hmm... We're an obstinant bunch! I'm at almost 2000 finds in almost 5 years.

 

I just wish they'd drop the TBs they're holding before quitting. :lol:

 

Second the motion!

I met a nice family who cached after church on Sunday. They had 20 finds. Picked up the TB I left, and haven't been herd from since...

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I wonder if there is a section of people that get excited about it but don't travel a lot, clear out the caches in their immediate area and lose interest in the idea of driving an hour for a cache or two... Some places are obviously a lot harder to clear out than others obviously so I wonder if that's a factor in 'setting the hook.'

 

This is the category we are in. My beloved hates travelling by car, plane, or bus but he loves to hike and loves to search for caches. So, as long as the time we spend hiking and searching for the cache seriously exceeds the time spent travelling to the site, we will geocache. At the point that we run out of caches within a reasonable distance he will probably refuse to do it anymore. I am hoping that if we edge up the distance to travel to a cache very, very slowly he won't even notice and we will keep caching even as we use up the close-in caches.

 

On the other hand, we have fantastic caches near us and people who keep placing excellent caches nearby. Plus there are a number that are a real challenge to us and will take a long time to learn enough about hiking swamps to get the cache, so it may take several years for the nearby caching to run dry. I hope so.

 

Carolyn

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I've been caching for a few years now and I still enjoy doing it as much as the first time I ever went.Here where I live,the weather sometimes makes it difficult to go,but I go every chance I get even in nasty weather if I can get to where the caches are.I just wish more people would get into it here so that there would be even more caches to find.I have done several hides and plan on doing more which I also find very fun as well.

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I wonder if there is a section of people that get excited about it but don't travel a lot, clear out the caches in their immediate area and lose interest in the idea of driving an hour for a cache or two... Some places are obviously a lot harder to clear out than others obviously so I wonder if that's a factor in 'setting the hook.'

 

This is the category we are in. My beloved hates travelling by car, plane, or bus but he loves to hike and loves to search for caches. So, as long as the time we spend hiking and searching for the cache seriously exceeds the time spent travelling to the site, we will geocache. At the point that we run out of caches within a reasonable distance he will probably refuse to do it anymore. I am hoping that if we edge up the distance to travel to a cache very, very slowly he won't even notice and we will keep caching even as we use up the close-in caches.

 

On the other hand, we have fantastic caches near us and people who keep placing excellent caches nearby. Plus there are a number that are a real challenge to us and will take a long time to learn enough about hiking swamps to get the cache, so it may take several years for the nearby caching to run dry. I hope so.

 

Carolyn

 

Also hopefully more caches will be added during that time to keep the set fresh :lol: Additionally, I dont know if you hid any caches under your previous split accounts (if you had em -- i seem to remember you posting something about it) but hiding caches in your area can not only help extend the interest in caching in general and can be a really fun creative thing involving finding good locations but also can be a stimulant to the local caching community to do the same :sad:

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It varies widely. There are many gecoachers still active who started in 2000, 2001 and 2002, but I personally know a good number who started years ago who have disappeared from the scene, or geocache very rarely. Some of them were avid geocachers with hundreds of finds (back when hundreds of finds was a big deal) and numerous hides.

 

It's like any sport. Some people stick with them and some don't. I know one guy who was a softball nut, playing in 5-6 leagues and about 150 games a season and he stopped cold turkey when he was 33 and hasn't picked up a glove or bat since. I know a once avid SCUBA diver who doesn't even own a wet suit or tanks anymore. I was once a bowling fanatic, bowling in as many as 5 leagues in a year and I'd roll a few dozen practice games every week in between. I haven't bowled in 4 years. I mean to get back into it but it's not a priority. Garages and basements across America are filled with sporting equipment gathering dust. Kayaks, fishing poles, golf clubs, tennis rackets, skis, you name it. Geocaching is no different.

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Locally, we've had a handful of high-profile caches all but disappear.

 

One woman found around 3000 caches in her first year or two and placed about 100 caches. She hasn't logged onto geocaching in two or three months. Many of the micros she tossed out are now showing up as missing, wet logs. It's a maintenance nightmare.

 

Another prolific caching couple a few years ago, they found several hundred caches, hid a dozen or so good caches, and as of about two years ago, nobody has heard a word from them.

 

We also had one very copious hider up and disappear one day. Even his wife posted on the local forums asking if anyone had seen him. We were checking to see which caches he might have gone to look for, fearing the worst. As it turns out, he'd been busted for drug dealing and was sitting in jail. :lol:

 

I know I've gone long stretches without caching, but it's never been on purpose. Twice I've had my GPS stolen. I've taken some long-distance trips where caching wasn't involved... and in addition, I kind of got burned out on the quality of local caches (see my first story above) so I pretty much stopped searching for local caches. But I do go out once every week or two and grab a couple good ones that other cachers recommend.

 

Jamie

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I've only been caching for a year now and have learned of many people dropping off the face of the earth

...I've bumped into two of these former cachers and one said it wasn't a challenge for him any longer and the other said they had a baby and the baby takes up too much of their time. Neither excuse came across as a valid reason but that was their reasoning behind their decision...

 

Hrm, I take it you've never had children? :lol: Or maybe you just didn't have the right kind... If it wasn't for my folks living close enough to babysit from time to time, I'd have to give up caching, too!

 

I did take about a 2 year break from it for awhile, but I just picked back up recently to relieve the boredom of being laid off. Now that I'm gainfully employed again, my numbers may start to slack a little, but I don't have plans for another long hiatus.

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I wonder if there is a section of people that get excited about it but don't travel a lot, clear out the caches in their immediate area and lose interest in the idea of driving an hour for a cache or two... Some places are obviously a lot harder to clear out than others obviously so I wonder if that's a factor in 'setting the hook.'

 

This is the category we are in. My beloved hates travelling by car, plane, or bus but he loves to hike and loves to search for caches. So, as long as the time we spend hiking and searching for the cache seriously exceeds the time spent travelling to the site, we will geocache. At the point that we run out of caches within a reasonable distance he will probably refuse to do it anymore. I am hoping that if we edge up the distance to travel to a cache very, very slowly he won't even notice and we will keep caching even as we use up the close-in caches.

 

On the other hand, we have fantastic caches near us and people who keep placing excellent caches nearby. Plus there are a number that are a real challenge to us and will take a long time to learn enough about hiking swamps to get the cache, so it may take several years for the nearby caching to run dry. I hope so.

 

Carolyn

 

Also hopefully more caches will be added during that time to keep the set fresh :lol: Additionally, I dont know if you hid any caches under your previous split accounts (if you had em -- i seem to remember you posting something about it) but hiding caches in your area can not only help extend the interest in caching in general and can be a really fun creative thing involving finding good locations but also can be a stimulant to the local caching community to do the same :sad:

 

We are still fairly new and you do remember correctly that we used to have separate accounts but since we are better as a team, we've merged.

 

I am planning to set out at least one cache, perhaps two. It really depends on how my ideas work out. At first I thought I could only possibly have one good idea, but as I've been thinking about it other ideas have occurred to me, so I am keeping notes. My beloved thinks we need more experience before we can place a cache so there is that as well.

 

The other issue is that some of the caches here set a very high bar for creativity and natural beauty. Jamie Z's most recent cache is breathtaking in its simplicity and its perfect resonance with its environment. We found it this weekend and after the first bit of wonder at how perfectly it fit, I felt far more unsure of my ideas and I realized that I had completely glossed over the whole cache fitting into the environment part of the equation. So I am trying to think where and how my ideas could fit into the world neatly and aesthetically. It seems that designing a good hide is as much a work of art as the design of a book or a sculpture or anything else artistic.

 

We are going to GeoWoodstock and my beloved says that we will get a better sense of things meeting people, seeing vendors, and so forth. Hopefully things will be clearer by the time we get home. If not, additional geocaching research will be fun. :D

 

Carolyn

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According to my calculator we have been caching for 1,964 days, going on 5 1/2 years. We average nearly 1.2 caches per day but certainly don't go caching every day or every weekend. I try to hunt caches when I am visiting customers and have some time before or after my meetings. Having the flexibility to hunt caches when we feel like it is one of the big things that keeps it fun. I think being open to finding something to enjoy about every cache also helps keep it fun. Sometimes the fun aspect can be a bit of a challenge but we do a pretty good job of it.

 

Road trips always involve at least a few cache hunts.

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