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Why do you Geocache?


Team A & M

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I do it for a couple reasons. One reason is that it's actually able to get me outside, and I go to places that I ordinarily never would have considered going. At my university, for example, I've found several caches located at monuments that I ordinarily never would have gone to (well, maybe I would have gone eventually, but caching gets me there quicker). I also do it because the thrill of the hunt provides a nice escape from schoolwork and life in general. And its fun, but I'm sure you all knew that already. :)

 

My university actually offers a Freshman seminar course in GPS technology, with geocaching as part of the course. I wasn't able to take it, unfortunately.

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I geocache because it gets me out of the house and in to my community. It is fun, adventurous, exciting, and sometimes dangerous (which is exciting!). It gives me a chance to think outside the box and be creative.

 

On top of that, it has given me the oppurtunity to meet and hang out with a ton of really really cool people that I may not have ever met otherwise.

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I cache because I enjoy it. It gets me out of the house to interesting places. It makes me exercise even when I don't want to.

It provides an activity that my wife and I both enjoy that we can do together.

It is a 99% free of cost activity that can be done almost anywhere, anytime and anyplace.

It brought me here to the forums where I waste much too much time. Even though I may not agree with everyone here, I respect most. Great group of people (trust me, I belong to many forums and this is one of the better ones)

 

But really.. I cache because I love the hunt. The idea of finding stuff that has been there for a long time but nobody realizes is there.

 

It's neat...

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I geocache because I love getting out and about and it's the BEST way to get my family off the sofa and out for a walk! Plus it's something we can do all together and I love that childish "I know a secret and you don't" feeling you get when you find a cache locally that other people walkng by are totally oblivious to! :laughing:

 

Ooh and I love telling friends about it and getting them into it to!

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I'm geocaching with my seriously autistic son and there is more or less 2 reasons. The short term gain is that he really enjoys going for walks in the woods as well as riding around in the car and we have discovered that these trips tends to keep him pleased and he is sleeping much better after an evening of caching. In other words, it brings a piece of tranquility to the family. The long term gain is that we are all the time trying new things and pushing the boundary futher away from the life in the livingroom. I've noticed a significant change in how he observes things out in the nature, it has become much easier to enter unknown places, out in the nature he may even try food he has never tased before. We have "evolved" from trips no more than 30 minutes from the safty of home to 8 days long trips in the mountains and sleeping in tents. 3 years ago we would never have concidered flying with my son and now we have booked a 12 hour long flight to the sun next winter :)

 

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I'm geocaching with my seriously autistic son and there is more or less 2 reasons. The short term gain is that he really enjoys going for walks in the woods as well as riding around in the car and we have discovered that these trips tends to keep him pleased and he is sleeping much better after an evening of caching. In other words, it brings a piece of tranquility to the family. The long term gain is that we are all the time trying new things and pushing the boundary futher away from the life in the livingroom. I've noticed a significant change in how he observes things out in the nature, it has become much easier to enter unknown places, out in the nature he may even try food he has never tased before. We have "evolved" from trips no more than 30 minutes from the safty of home to 8 days long trips in the mountains and sleeping in tents. 3 years ago we would never have concidered flying with my son and now we have booked a 12 hour long flight to the sun next winter :laughing:

 

 

Loved this entry, Galdrin! I work with children who have autism, and never thought to suggest geocaching as a fun family activity for the kiddies... And most families I've worked with spend so much time outside in the parks because their kids love it so much :( Will spread the word.

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Because I bought a $350 (at the time) top notch GPS unit, I have a ton of knives/backpacks/mall ninja gear, and a 4x4 and I needed a reason to justify it all. :D

 

Shoulda seen me last night trying to bushwhack to a location where I wanted to put a cache. I had just about every kind of tactical bag you could imagine, AND a gun (it's a known bear area). ;)

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So I can have a reward at the end of my walk/hike, and also to see what I can learn/find out about to it and back. It's always amazing what you can see along the way (see enclosed picture), and back.

 

Today I'm walking down the path, and see this emblem made out of tiles glued to a telephone pole. Anybody know what it is, or means?

 

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This is why:

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Getting to see places I didn't know existed and to rid my body of those extra pounds.

 

I've found one more great use: While driving around Iceland, we started using the cache-descriptions more and more instead of the guidebooks to see interesting stuff ;)

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For my trip in August I'm pretty much exclusively using caches and cache pages instead of guide books for the ride out there and back and for the actual place.

 

My friend's interest in caching is waning. I knew it would when it got hard. But I refuse to not cache on my vacation. He's coming with and he's going to have to suck it up and deal because the last thing I'm going to do is go to the wilderness and sit in a cabin the entire time.

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For me, it's a family thing. Me, Hubby, and the 4 kiddos pile in the yukon and go. The kids LOVE the adventure and I love the fact that we are making memories.. Sometimes it can get a bit irritating when the kids fight over who's going to get what out of the cache, but that's just part of the game I guess. LOL..

 

It's gets us out of the house and moving.. We have found so many places that we never wouldn've known existed. Not to mention that we find ourselves stopping and reading those historical markers along the way. Neat way to learn some local history..

Edited by mommix3
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I cache because what else would I do with my time? Clean my house?

 

I do it for the adventure,

 

exorcise

fresh air

a bit of nature time

a family and friends social time (when I'm not caching alone)

and to forget the high-stress job if even for a couple of hours.

 

Cheap and healthy entertainment and it lets me get my geek on and my bush on at the same time :P

 

I'm with Butterfly Fox and Lornix, I do it to forget about my high-stress job, time with my son and if I'm caching then I don't care that the house needs to be cleaned. :)

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Growing up my father always hid Easter eggs in the living room for me to find. We always made a competition out of it. I'm 26 years old now and my father still hides the eggs in the living room for me. So With that being said I love the hunt. I might find cheap trinkets, get all scratched up, etc. but I love it every time I get a :blink: . Plus im an outdoor kind of nerd so playing in the woods with electronics is right up my alley. Except I turn my cell phone off when I go hiking nothing worse then people ruining the serenity with a call that could wait till later.

Edited by Kenser321
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I was thinking about this the other day. I started caching this past spring. I had looked into it years ago but couldn't afford the equipment but really wanted to do it back then too.

 

I enjoy turning my phone off and wandering off. I like to have a mission. I've never been one to walk aimlessly. This gives me the excuse to be out. It gives me permission to look stupid. Not that I care on an average day but I care even less when I'm on my mission.

 

I like to play the game. I don't care if I'm first to find or 500th to find. I like to make the find.

 

I like having permission to get dirty again. This past summer was hot and humid around here and I can't think of a time I went out that I didn't come back a disgusting mess but I LOVED it. I loved the other day when I went into this cave with stagnant water in the bottom and walking through a bog in my sandals in the rain. I liked that I had the thought that I'm about to fall on my butt in this disgusting bog and I was ok with it and laughed about it.

 

I was out today and came out of the woods with twigs and crap in my hair, picking stuff out of my bra and it was ok. I made the find and had a blast doing it.

 

I'm watching my travel bug go to places I wish I was able to go to and hope to go back to. My travel bug saw Bernini's angels.

 

I get to see cool and beautiful places. Meet cool and beautiful people and read cool stories. And I can spend hours doing it.

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I am a youth pastor in Toronto, Canada, and we formed a geocaching team (www.chazownlife.com/chazowntrekerz http://www.chazownlife.com/chazowntrekerz). We're a bunch of newbie's, but it is a great adventure! We do it because life is about capturing moments and living out adventure! We want to take everything to the extreme. We still haven't made any 5 terrain caches yet, but if you check out our blog and watch our videos, we've had some pretty ridiculous adventures! Our video of Part 1 in Rouge Park really emphasizes why we cache... Geocaching is the best, and I always encourage everyone who I meet who hasn't done it to go for it!!!

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We loove the hunt and the adventure. But why do we do it? Because it's something to do, something to get us out of the house and even more it's something we both completely and wholly enjoy.

 

Plus we both really love feeling like we are in on something while everyone around us is clueless. We find the look on civilian faces when they catch a glimpse of us lurking around in the shadows waiting for them to leave :)

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It's something my grandson and I can do when there is no airshow and we both enjoy it. And we get find all of these cool new places (in a few cases less than two miles from home and I've lived in this area all my life). It's more fun than vegetating in front of the TV and a LOT more fun than mowing the cliff....I mean yard.

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The Dog really really loves being outdoors and going for walks. The Duck finds 'going for a walk' a bit pointless and doesn't tend to feel enthusiastic about going out without a purpose (though tends to enjoy it once there!).

 

Geocaching gives the Dog walkies and the Duck something to hunt for (Duck loves messing around, looking in holes and discovering treasure!)

 

It's a way for us to enjoy the outdoors together.

 

:D

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I'm a bit of a history buff, so I really like caches that bring me to historical sites, or any interesting location that I didn't know about. If I learned a little something that I didn't know before, I'm happy.

 

I like having an excuse to use some of my outdoorsy skills and gear. Around here, "outdoors" always means hunting and fishing, which I used to do some, but I don't care for it anymore. Geocaching gives me a new reason to get off the couch.

 

I like the fact that geocaching is still kind of an "underground" activity that not everyone is into or has even heard of. It's different from the same old "hunt/fish/watch LSU sports" that EVERYONE else does around here. It's unique.

 

I like that it's something we can do as a family. I did a lot of camping and Cub Scout stuff with my son when he was little, and I've always felt that my daughter got short changed on that. But she likes to cache so now we have "our" thing that we do together.

 

I like that it doesn't cost a lot. :rolleyes:

 

Finally, I realized that I REALLY needed a hobby. For the last 20 years I have been a volunteer firefighter in my community, and I still enjoy that. But once I became chief it became a lot more of a responsibility. I came to realize that all my free time, all my social contacts, revolved around the fire department. So my life is full of "have to do" stuff instead of "want to do" stuff. Geocaching gives me an opportunity for some "me" time, which is something that I think I've been missing for awhile. B)

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We are really new to this, and were wondering, why do you Geocache? We do it for the hunt, the adventure, and that it has brought us closer. We'd love to hear what everyone has to say!

:(

 

Pretty much the same here...

 

I love being outdoors, love parks and woods, getting in a good walk...

 

For me, its all about exploring and the thrill of ""The Find"... For alot of folks its about getting or trading the swag, but I pretty much never take anything (swag wise) while I do try to leave stuff...

 

I do like to pick up and drop of trackables and see how far and where they go...

 

Mostly, I cache by myself as my wife can't won't get off the couch and away from the TV, my daughter won't get off Facebook and most of my friends think its kinda cool, but don't want to give up their spare time caching....

 

So, I plan a route or bunch and off I go...

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I Geocache because it helps me think. Seeing things I haven't seen before or variations of things I have seen before helps give me ideas for just about anything. It's hard to explain but it helps me clear my mind and think of solutions to problems in my life. Every single time I've gone out geocaching regardless of being in a group or alone, I always return feeling better than before and have new ideas handy.

 

It's also fun seeing the previous logs and thinking about how each person found the cache. Did they go through the same troubles you did? Did they find it at the same time of day that you did?

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We only started Geocaching recently thinking it gave us something to do on our walks with the kids and the dog..... WOW that soon took a turn,and pretty quickly too! Didn't realise just how addicting it could be?! We find them on our way shopping,home from work, my other half has even dragged me out of bed at God knows what time in the morning, to go trailing round some creepy woods in the dead of night because a cache was 'released' pretty close to where we live and he wanted to be the FTF? hehe

 

this is going to be one very fun year!

 

The Peckwoods (Lancashire UK)

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For me, it started with a hat my colleague was wearing. It was just an ordinary Kmart hat, but it had a flynet incorporated in the brim. I went and purchased one immediately, then showed my best friend, who was visiting at the time. She loved it, and we went and bought a heap more, for friends and family.

Then we needed something to do outside to try them out.

We had talked of trying geocaching years ago, in about 2004/5, and all of a sudden, armed with iPhones and no real idea, we were galloping about in a local cemetery. The fly net was invaluable. We traveled over 300km in the next few days, looking for caches. Totally hooked!

Now I have a new 4WD, for those tricky terrain ratings (ok, I did need a new car), cycle randomly about with my iPhone and a preloaded Oregon550, and love the way my life has changed for the better. It was pouring down with rain the other day, but I was up a muddy hill, grinning insanely at peak hour traffic I could see from two bridges I had wedged myself between, having the time of my life. I fell down the muddy hill, had to wash absolutely everything I was wearing, but it was brilliant fun.

My best friend and I have roped our families in too, and her son loves it. We are planning an interstate holiday around good caches. Sad, but true.

I only started caching in December, but what a blast!

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It started out as something cheap to do with the kids. We do it more without them.(they are only here everyother weekend. It is great excercise. making excercise fun is the only way to get my arse of the couch. I have been caching only a short time but have been thru some really neat places that I would have never have seen otherwise. It is a great stress reliever until the kids are arguing about who wants something out of the cache. I can deal with that though.

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