Ever find a geocache you were not looking for?

[stoptolisten]

my ladyfriend and i went on a geocaching road trip last year. we were in san antonio walking the riverwalk waiting to meet up with some friends in town when i saw some serial letters on an electrical box, and joked to the ladyfriend about how it might have been a magnetic cache. for kicks, i decided to check on it. lo and behold, a cache. definitely one of my my favorite finds.

[+Hoosier Ranger]

Several years ago I was doing some maintenance on a rails-to-trails in Indiana. Spotting a discarded Seven Up can along the side of the trail I got out of my truck and went over to pick it up. As I reached down I noticed a pile of railroad ties along the trail's edge in some woods and said to myself: "That would be a good spot to hide a geocache." I looked at the area a little closer and then said to myself: "Holy Smoke, there already IS a geocache there!" I recognized it as the final stage of a multi, the first stage of which I had never found, even after three tries. I signed the log and made a trade. Never did find stage one. I refer to that find as my TOCI find, that is Trash Out Cache In.

[+tylerebrandon]

This happened to me today. I was in the library picking up a camping book and noticed this really large geocaching book that I'd never seen before. Picked it up and it rattled...opened it up to find a logbook and other swag. The best part is I was the FTF! The cache still hasn't been published yet...I've been checking to see if it's been listed yet but not yet.

[+hzoi]

Had this happen twice so far.

 

First time, we were at a CITO after the first German mega event, and we stumbled across the final for a puzzle cache that was set out for the event, we just hadn't bothered solving it.

 

Second time, I had just finished a multi at a ruined castle in Germany and was heading for the road when I saw a tree with a suspicious pile of rocks. Checked it on a whim, and it was the final for a multi that had been muggled a couple years back and archived. Apparently whoever took it came back and replaced it where they'd found it. Signed the log, figured out what the cache was by the FTF log, and contacted the owner. They ended up bringing it back online, though they had to move the final a bit.

 

We also cleaned up geotrash and removed an old one that was archived due to policy (in a national park). And heck yeah we logged it -- we find it, we get to log it.

[+TSI!]

well i learned my neighbor has a really hard puzzle outfron of his house so i asked him what cache it was and he wouldnt let me log until i solved soooo like 2 monthes later i loged the find:)

 

recently i was going for a nano in a forest and came across a ammo can so i poped it open to fine the last date was in 2008 and i knew a bunch of the loggers(caching) and looked up the dates and found out it was a tb hotel that got archived so as bad as it is i kept it and sanded it and repainted it so soon it will now be put out but my biggest problem is that the reviewer wants written proof of permission to place it in the forest next to my house and wont alow my letterbox hybrid because of the proximity rule but yet somebody placed a letterbox only 106ft from my cache...

kinda got side tracked haha but i have accually found alot of caches on accident mostly because i am ALWAYS looking for new places for caches and then i find caches already there or i post mine and get told its _ft from a cache so i go and make the find kinda cheating but idc its still fun making the find

~TSI!

Edited February 19, 2012 by TSI!

[+lamoracke]

wish more often when am in a trail system that seems to have a logical 528 foot pocket (and am out of the area from my normal puzzle radius) that I could uncover more of these bonus finds by "accident" but never seems to happen for me. Have also occasionally looked for obvious spots while hiking in areas that could have caches, but to no avail. One day. Have found like 10 letterboxes by accident though.

 

Did find an unpublished cache once which had a trackable that had been stuck there for 4 years. My research guessed it was blocked by a nearby puzzle and CO never bothered to retrieve it or the TB once he was denied.

[+sholomar]

this is how I found my first one in October however the container did not have the word 'geocaching' written on it anywhere so it took until I got my droid 2 in January before I actually knew what geocaching was.. and for whatever reason Feb before I signed the log.

 

I found this one

 

http://www.geocaching.com/seek/cache_details.aspx?guid=866e955b-578a-4fce-891f-c13cae2cbb6e

Edited February 19, 2012 by sholomar

[+Doctroid]

Two and a half accidental finds.

 

If you look at my caching stats, my first find was about four years before my second. That's because back then I was doing letterboxes, not geocaches. I was looking for a place to plant a letterbox, found a perfect spot, there was even a pile of bark there I could hide my letterbox under... wait a second... that looks too perfect. Sure enough, there was a cache there. I created a geocaching account and logged it. Didn't get around to buying a GPS until four years later, though.

 

Second was last December, I was in Auburn, NY to claim a geocoin at the tourism office for finding ten caches in the Seaway Trails Geotrail series. Then I decided to go look for some nearby benchmarks. Despite the geocoin I really didn't have caches on my mind, so was taken by surprise when I approached one of the benchmarks and saw a plastic tube stuck in the hollow at the base of a tree a few feet away.

 

The half one was a cache in the woods I was about to go looking for, but having gotten as I thought near but not quite to where I needed to start checking my GPS for proximity, I decided I needed to take a break to relieve myself. While doing so I looked around and saw a plastic container sitting there not ten feet away... not in the line of fire, fortunately. It was indeed the cache I'd been on my way to find, and it was wet on the inside, but only with rainwater.

[+GeoCacheKat]

My boyfriend was the one who told me about Geocaching. He said he had gone gc'ing with a couple other friends, but he didn't really care much for it. But, as I am naturally curious and LOVE to explore new places, he knew I would get a kick out of it. We were hanging out in a park while he told me about it, and told me where I could find one of the caches (right down to how it was hidden and what the container looked like). I had no clue about geocaching at that point (this was about a year or two ago), I didn't have a gc handle, but I signed the log anyway. Over the past year, I have also traded out items in that same cache. I probably won't actually log it because I didn't actually *find* it based on the gc rules but I enjoy knowing that it is there and I am sure I will revisit it again at some point.

[+Totem Clan]

My boyfriend was the one who told me about Geocaching. He said he had gone gc'ing with a couple other friends, but he didn't really care much for it. But, as I am naturally curious and LOVE to explore new places, he knew I would get a kick out of it. We were hanging out in a park while he told me about it, and told me where I could find one of the caches (right down to how it was hidden and what the container looked like). I had no clue about geocaching at that point (this was about a year or two ago), I didn't have a gc handle, but I signed the log anyway. Over the past year, I have also traded out items in that same cache. I probably won't actually log it because I didn't actually *find* it based on the gc rules but I enjoy knowing that it is there and I am sure I will revisit it again at some point.

You found it. You signed the log. That sounds like a "Found It" log to me.

[+Hot Pepper Crew]

I spotted a geocache while barreling down a road at 45 mph one time. We were camping, and on our way out and had just left the camping area and were on the backroads. As we were driving, I noticed a piece of tupperware sitting on top of a barrier on the side of the road. I told my wife, "I think we just passed a geocache!" I then turned the car around and went back. It turns out someone had found it and not replaced it as they should. We signed the log book, logged it online, and went on our way. Fun stuff!

[+Postholedigger]

A few weeks ago I was bush whacking a straight line up a fairly steep hill from one cache to the next and almost tripped on a random tin can. I picked it up and pried it open (it took some work since it was rusted shut). It had some swag and a log book. I signed the log, took some pictures of the log and put the tin back where I almost tripped on it. When I got home, I checked the names and dates on the log against the users' found cache logs for those dates and was able to ID the cache as a traditional cache that was archived over a year ago due to the owner not wanting to maintain it. I found it fair and square, so I claimed the find.

[+GrateBear]

Sort of. I was looking for a puzzle cache, but in loading the GPSr, the listing with corrected coords did not load. So, I pulled out my smartphone and use c:geo. Which led me to the final location, the only problem being that the cache was a different one, not the one I was looking for. When I went back with my GPSr, turns out c:geo was 180 degrees off

[+geocat_]

I was looking for a place to hide a cache and was walking past a GR fairly close to my house. I spotted a container in the end and it was indeed a geocache. Problem was it was a mystery cache and I had to email the CO to find out what I had found

[+OZ2CPU]

I love those Finds by incident,

some times I walk in a forrest to find a cache I also find others,

they are not on the map offcourse, so I sign the log book,

a find and sign log book = found it :-)

this is only possible due to extreame luck and awareness,

those finds I remember the most..

once I did a FTF hunt with out stable online access, it was a puzzle,

but the questions was a lot of googling and web pages searching and such

no luck with the phone and only a few bits comming tru..

so I simply drove to the parking cords and looked arround in the area compleetly without the GPS,

it is amazing how much you see, if you dont look at the GPS screen all the time :-)

YES I did find it.. as FTF..

[scidawg]

Yep...we were at the beach a couple of years ago. On the bike ride back to the condo, we stopped to look at some birds wading in the marsh. While we were checking them out, I spied a hole in a tree and thought "nice place for a cache"...looked in the hole and there was an ammo box. Nice surprise.

[+softballmom19]

I was working on finishing up a multi that I was doing but my geo-dog wandered off in a different direction then where I was going. He wasn't coming when I called him so I thought great he got hung up on something. He did this once before catching his collar on a small branch while sniffing under a log. I wander back to where he was and he was digging at something. Long and behold he found an ammo can that wasn't part of the multi I was doing. I was going to find that cache after I had finished the multi and it was already in my gps.