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Tell Us Your Geocaching "Discovery" Story!


danno68

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Hey fellow cachers!

 

Recently I've been reading many "new to geocaching" threads started by new cachers and they've all inspired me to start this thread!

 

I began Geocaching on October 12, 2011, just barely five weeks ago, and it feels like I've been doing it forever! I've become so hooked on the game that I look forward to each and every block of time I can put aside to cache!

 

My story isn't one full of glamour, that's for certain. On October 10th, I was browsing through the Apple App Store "Top 25 Free Apps" and saw the Geocaching Intro app was featured. Not having seen something like it before, I decided to give it a try. I hadn't heard anything about Geocaching beforehand, and was incredulous when I realized that it was a game spread throughout the world! So I downloaded the Introductory app and went searching for my first cache. I didn't find anything that first day, but I was not discouraged. I read a lot more about the game and decided that I thought the $9.99 purchase price for the full application was worth it. A day later, I found my first cache (GC2V0J3) and haven't looked back since!

 

The perfect combination of outdoors adventure and technology!

 

So, fellow cachers...

 

Share your story!

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I had heard about geocaching from a friend, but I didn't have a GPS, so that was that. A few years later, I received a iPhone 3GS for my BDay (2ish years ago), and decided to see what the heck geocaching was all about. I downloaded the app, and saw that there was a cache 0.2 miles from my house, GCZNQY Safari Trail, so I went there and searched for about 15 mins and made the find. I was elated! An altoids tin, with rocks glued on top, in a pile of rocks, under a rock!! The logbook had cachers sigs from 2 yrs prior!!!

 

I found another cache close by after that, and i was hooked!! Again, another altoids tin, with rocks glued on top, in a sea of rocks!! (Arizona)

 

Had it not been for my iPhone, I would have never gotten into geocaching.

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Years ago (too many years ago), I had heard through news reports of this new "high-tech" 'sport' where people hid items for others to go out and find, using a GPSr. Supposedly it was a big hit, worldwide. That was it, nothing more.

 

A couple of years later, searching for some out-of-the-way fishing locations (yes, fishing holes) I and my crew stumbled across a cache that apparently was not replaced as it should have been. We looked it over, and I promptly remembered the news report(s), and told the others about it. They did not seem to grasp the concept very well, and one wanted to take it, another wanted to take things from it. I managed to shoot down both ideas, reclosed the container (a cheap ****ware container) and re-hid where it obviously belonged. Thought little more of it.

 

Time passed, when the boss returned from one of her occasional get-away-with-the-girls outings, bringing home with her a book about geocaching.

 

Thinking that she was interested in it, I bought her a GPSr. Boy, was I wrong (again)!

 

Finally, it was a year or so later that I looked at the website, grabbed up a user-name and pitched her in the truck. We did ONE local cache -- not the one previously found -- it seemed like forever to find it. From that point in time, she (and I) were hooked.

 

Today we are serious cachers, though very busy with family and lots of other things, so numbers ARE NOT a priority. Having found all local caches (not a cache-rich area), we cache only while traveling, so basically we are relegated to "route-caching" except when we have time at our destination where we will grab up those that we can, before leaving. Both of us view caching to be the "hunt" or the "location" far more than the find. We will readily admit to be taken to places that we otherwise would NEVER have discovered. For us, THAT is the reason for geocaching. Thank You to others that place those caches. For caches that are placed just because there is no cache near, well... it gets a thank you (without the capitalization).

 

End of story.

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A good Internet friend told me I needed to try geocaching. I didn't pay him much heed...(1) I didn't have a GPS, and (2) this would be the same person who told me that I should count birds and enter them on some website...("What kind of birds?" Any old bird? What on earth's the point of that??? Fun? You call that fun???"). I kinda figured he was nuts, but I created a geocaching.com account...I read a little bit and said "meh, that's as dumb as the bird thing."

 

A few months later I realized my daughter's phone had GPS. She was giving me the "there's nothing to do" routine one afternoon and I told her we should go to the park and find "treasure" with her phone. To my surprise, she agreed.

 

We didn't find the cache, didn't have any app for her phone, just used the satellite map, but I had a blast. I couldn't have picked a worse cache to hunt as a beginner - a small rock, buried in a sea of other rocks. I came back the next day and sifted through rocks until I found it. I was hooked.

:)

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My husband was always dragging me out for hikes up mountains/hills,like Dunderberg, Monodnack, North and South Sugarloaf and Beacon. We read about this somewhere, the newspaper maybe, and I decided that we might like it so I got him the yellow eTrex. Well, he's a Luddite to the core, and I appropriated the gift and started to cache while I was out with him. He's OK with it but gives me a 2 cache a day limit. What I regret is that I didn't have the coords for the caches for those long hikes I took b4 I started caching! Monandack especially and Beacon were killers and I don't know if I could get up there again! http://forums.Groundspeak.com/GC/public/style_emoticons/default/tongue_animated.gif

Edited by arprodeo
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I used to work at a retail store that engraved items people brought in from home. This twenty something kid came in with a coin he wanted engraved with his name. I didn't realize what it was at the time but looking back it was a geocoin. He had his handle engraved on it and when he picked it up I couldn't resist asking what it was for. He told me about this game he played with a gps where people hid things all over the place most of the time right out in the open just camoed really well. I thought it sounded really cool...something that my brother in law would love to do as he majored in mapping he also was the only one I knew at the time with a gps(this was easily 5 years ago) I told him about it and he had heard of it before but had never gone.

4 years later I had never really forgotten about it but I still didn't have a gps and as a new parent I had little extra time. I got a job in sales and wouldn't you know it they used geocaching as a way to get to know your territory. We traveled all over the state and got new areas about every 6 weeks. Needless to say I didn't stay with that job long because I couldn't be away from my family all week but I got hooked on geocaching and learned I could use my EVO and an app. I was a phoner for a year and got over 600 with it. I just recently purchased a real Gpsr and I love it. I'm starting to get the family out caching now to.

And my brother in law still hasn't gone out caching...yet.

Edited by HighHeeled Dutchess
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A few years ago, a then-muggle went to lay down for a nap. The radio was on and two men were talking about geocaching. It was looked up on the internet, seemed like fun, and my late Mum's last Christmas gift to Popoki Nui was a GPS. We found "Bottom's Up" soon after. It has been a few years (and GPSs) on, and we are still having fun.

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I read a thread over at Zombie Squad forums a few weeks ago about geocaching being a great family hobby. I come home checked out the websight, downloaded the 9.99 app and here we are. Kids loved the idea of a "treasure hunt" and the wife and I liked the idea of a winter hobby/something new to do. We now have plans to buy a real GPS. Last GPS I bought was 550 or 650 bucks in 1994...

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I was actually watching a movie called Splinterheads and they geocached in the movie, and from there I was interested. I texted the guy I'm dating that we should do it for our next date but couldn't resist the the temptation to go and do one that was only 4 blocks from my house.

 

I'm so glad I did! I walked around like a idiot for a little while, people probably thought I was insane walking around a tiny park aimlessly looking at trees, but I found it! In my excitement I ran into a torn bush, and brought a leech home on the magnet that I liked, but it was well worth it. Defintely still sounds like a great date idea, but I'll do some more in the week until I see him. I tend to enjoy the hunt and find aspect of the game!

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I think I heard about geocaching when I was in 8th grade. We had these little magazines we had to read. I think it was something to keep us quiet, but not busy work because then the teacher would have to grade it. So anyways, one of these magazines had a short article on geocaching. I thought it was neat, and then didn't much with the information except store it in my head.

 

Then I went to college in a different state. The campus was out of town and 3 miles up a hill. There was almost nothing there. There were some apartments close by, an animal shelter (which was also kind of connected to the veterinary technology program I was attending), the vet tech farm, and a little gated community on the other side of road before you got campus. The rest was a scrubby sort of wood, which the school owned a large tract of for the outdoor education program.

 

I started walking a lot in the woods and found many things: an old worn out car, a forgotten tree house, some of the "obstacles" for the outdoor ed program, firepits from parties, a bizarre crater, frisbee golf goals, and even something that had been torn apart by what appeared to be a mountain lion (it was a neat little area, but the prospect of running into a large, powerful cat, while breathtaking, was also terrifying, so I left rather quickly).

 

With all my exploring, I wanted a GPS so I could find my way back (which wasn't hard anyways, if you wander around long enough you'll eventually see the main academic building through the trees and the dorms are next to that). My mom thought a GPS would be a good thing, so I recieved one as present. Through college, I just used it to mark interesting things I found (like the car). I also used it a lot to mark out where the deer seemed to bed and where the game trails were. I was hellbent to find an antler, but it never happened, despite my research and mapping.

 

After college, I didn't use the GPS as much, and then I recalled geocaching. Surely if I could lead friends to all the weird things I found, I could find a geocache? My dad also had a GPS unit, so I brought the idea of geocaching to him. He thought it sounded fun, so off we went. We (he) found the first cache, a small film canister by a corner store that was closed and empty back then.

 

We found 8 caches together, then when I was teaching a friend how to use a GPS I found a 9th. I'm hoping to do more caching now! Why did I ever stop?

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A friend of mine is into it, so i was aware of it, but i wasnt too keen. Im very much of the 'leave only footprints, take only memories' mindset when it comes to the wilderness.

 

However, i had decided to get a new GPS unit to help me on some big 'challenge' walks (far easier with GPS when starting a 40mile walk at midnight than trying to read a map!), and it came back to me about this geocaching thing. So, i looked it up, found this site, read the geocaching 101, registered, and decided to have a go. Realised there were several within minutes of my workplace, so today ventured out at lunch for a walk, and had found two within ten minutes.

 

I did the looking up bit above, er, yesterday! :laughing:

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2 or 3 years ago,the son of a friend of mine showed us a cache hidden in a place we like to picnic frequently. Didn't think much about it at the time ( the old " must be a silly kids game " thing. )

Life went on...

Then my DH ( dear husband ) bought me an iphone this past spring, after a bad health scare I had. Goofing with it, I found an app on it which I ended up buying. Curiosity led me here to Geocaching.com. I found out we live live in a "cache haven " Became a premimum member, and the rest is history.

Due to work and family constraints, I'll never be a power cacher, but just to get out it in the woods again ( used to backpack a lot BC before children ) has been incredible. Have even revisited old haunts I hung out as a teenager ( for very different reasons ;) )

Oh and the hubby bought me a Garmin Dakota 20 for my birthday last month. Best.gift.ever! I've done more caching in the months where I normally hibernate indoors.

My body thanks me now and my mind as well.......

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Facebook for me! A friend and his girlfriend had done a bit of casual caching, and they posted a photo on facebook of them with the cache. I rang him up to ask about it, downloaded the App for my iPhone, and went and found one only a few hundred yards from the house. Found the first 50 or so with the phone, but after a nightmare in some woods, went out and got an Etrex H. Soon upgraded to a GPSMAP62, and thoroughly enjoying that!

Still use the iPhone if I am somewhere urban, and have some free time suddenly, but mostly I go out on planned trips on my days off with the GPS.

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I went on a business trip with my boss and my boss' boss, and after our meeting and before dinner they went out geocaching. I didn't go with them (because I was goofing with an RC helicopter). But the weekend after I got back I checked it out on this site a little, and found out there was a cache in my neighborhood. I hiked up to it with my kids and we've been hooked since. We found the first one with our car GPS but got a Magellan eXplorist pretty soon after. We've been out whenever the weather has been nice and are really enjoying it.

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I ran into an old friend that I used to play Ultima Online with and after talking to him I thought I would see how the game was doing. Well Google decided to take me to Wikipedia and I tend to click too much. Next thing I know I'm on the Wikipedia entry for Richard Garriott, the producer/developer of the Ultima series of games, and reading about his cache on the International Space Station. Geocaching? What's that? After some research and downloading an app on my EVO, I went out and found my first one a couple days later.

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I was working in a store that sold GPS'rs before geocaching started. I would run seminars for the public about the GPS system. I haered about geocaching maybe two years after it started. I took one of display units out to give geocaching a try. Then we startede giving geocaching seminars that lasted about 5 hours in the field finding caches with out customers. Back then a good day would be finding 10 caches, and that would take all day. I had to nike into the hills for most finds, not like it is now.

 

 

edit to add: looking at when other posters started caching I feel really old now.

Edited by JohnnyVegas
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If I search through my email history, I see the original Groundspeak account validation email dated 6/16/06 – but I cannot for the life of me remember the context in which I joined the site…

 

In the beginning of December 2011, I had been working at a new job for just over a month and found the history of the building that I worked in fascinating. I was using the Internet to do some research on the building and the architect that had designed it nearly a hundred years ago when I stumbled on a site dedicated to exploring all sorts of obscure things to do in CT. On that site, I discovered a National Historic Registry site called “Hospital Rock” that had been built some 200 years ago as a small-pox hospital. The story of the rock intrigued me and I set out on a mission to find it. Unfortunately, the exact location of Hospital Rock is a closely guarded secret as the powers that be do not want it defaced or damaged in any way – which is completely understandable.

 

A few more minutes of research trying to find the location of Hospital Rock led me to the fact that someone had setup a Premium Only cache on the site. I vaguely remembered having had a Geocaching.com account and set about restoring it. I then paid my fees for the Premium Membership and voila! I now had the coordinates for Hospital Rock…

 

Interestingly enough, I still have not found it! In fact, my first cache was found completely off-handedly. I was waiting in line at our local cable company and wondered if there were any caches around. I loaded up the app on my iphone and found one of the TTMTD series caches was a mile away. My step daughter and I stopped for some coffee and subsequently found our first cache! A camouflaged film can hanging from a tree in a Dunkin Donuts parking lot… As boring as it sounds it really started a fire!

 

Fast forward a month and I have now purchased a dedicated GPSr – a Magellan Explorist GC – and have been given a Garmin Etrex Legend CX. I’ve got all of my kids hooked on it and now find myself jealous of some of their finds… I’m stuck at work all day and often only have time for quick park and grabs. Yesterday a bunch of my kids went on a four hour hike through the state forest and found three caches!

 

I am so happy about this new hobby/sport/game!

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I was just telling hubby today that I don't remember where I heard about Geocaching even though it was just a few weeks ago LOL

Was going to wait until we can get a gps but decided to start without one while he was off work for a week. Still don't have a gps but we don't think we've done too bad. Have gone out 4 different days totaling 32 cache.

 

Have to make a short (1 hr each way) road trip Friday & already have a list of places to stop :D

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In September, 2009, I was listening to a "Stuff You Should Know" podcast from howstuffworks.com on "GPS Games People Play". I think I heard about geocaching from some other source in the past but never really understood the concept or looked much further into it. However, after listening to the podcast, I created an account, looked up the coordinates for the 2 closest caches, grabbed my Garmin Forerunner 205 that I normally just used to track my running miles and headed out. I didn't really know how to input waypoints on the GPS watch since I used it for tracking purposes, not as a guidance device so I used the "mark coordinate" function every so often as I wandered around to see if the numbers were getting closer to the coordinates I'd gotten from geocaching.com. After about a half hour of this, I ended up at a bench where I was oddly surprised to find a cache actually there. It was a somewhat magical moment where it was as if I had discovered a secret level that everyone else around me wasn't aware of. I signed the log and moved on to the next cache and found that one a bit easier. After that, I did a bit of research and discovered how to use waypoints with my Forerunner GPSr. That made my cache hunts more efficient. Getting a smart phone with GPS capabilities made spontaneous caching a bit more convenient. I still have yet to purchase a dedicated GPSr for geocaching but I have a feeling that it's not too far off in my future.

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I started back in 2001, when a professor used "GPS stash hunts" as a way to demonstrate GPS technology in our GIS class. I dabbled with it while in the class, and continued to play a bit with "stash hides" until 2005. I then was living out west in Oregon, and visited my aunt "ohjoy!" in Washington. She asked if I had heard of Geocaching, as I had just purchased a new handheld GPS. I said, "Yeah...kinda..." and the rest is history. We went out that day and she showed me 3 caches--2 traditionals and 1 multi that required some field solutions. I was hooked. We created an official account that night, and here I am today.

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My husband (Papa) read about this some place or another and it got his intrest and he thought the devise would be a neat to get as a group gifts for his sisters children and another for our grand kids for when we get together for our summer visits. Right about the same time I was asking my grand-daughter, who is new to brownies, what she wanted for Christmas and out of the blue she came up with she wanted a girl scout GPS. I had never heard of such a thing. I was telling him about her request and he laughed and showed me what he had been looking at. Needless to say that was two of the gifts we purchased and gave out this year. Today My grand=daughter and a friend of hers did out first cache. It was a nice simple one and the girls get very excited ( all 4 of us ). We were not so lucky on our other attempts but look forward to trying again. We have the Geomate.jr and when we left the house were so green we even had to figure out how to turn it on. I foresee a lot of fun "adventures" next attempt will be the boys and a cemetery near by........

 

signed -papaspals best girl 'Nana'

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The local newspaper ran an article about it. I thought it sounded like the coolest thing ever, so within a few weeks I purchased a GPS.

 

The day it arrived I printed out the page of the nearest cache to my house and set out to find it with my step-daughter. Of course I didn't read the GPS instructions, so I wandered around trying to match coordinates, which is quite tedious. Step-daughter started getting bored watching me walk 20 feet one way, then 10 another, then back 15, then forward 30.

 

Eventually I did find it.

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I watched the UK quiz 'Only Connect' and one of the teams were geocachers, they explained a bit about what it meant and thought it sounded interesting.

 

Months later a friend told me that my phone has GPS built in (which I'd never used) and I remembered this 'treasure hunt thing'.

 

Looked it up, found the site, found a map showing local ones and signed up.

 

This was a week ago and I have 6 finds so far... totally hooked!

 

It comes at a time when I'm really in need of a healthier lifestyle. The cache hunts have taken me to some amazing places right on my doorstep, involving a bit of a hike so me and my other half have been getting plenty exercise and although she maintains that she is a muggle, she's fooling no one!

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When my Father-in-law died about 7 years ago his wife gave me a pile of his old walking magazines because I'm interested in walking; one of them had an article about "other things you can do while walking", which included such things as landscape photography, bird watching, etc, and one very small section about geocaching, I had a vague recollection of hearing about it before and was intrigued so I signed onto geocaching.com and found that there were plenty of caches in my area, that Christmas I bought myself an Etrex as a present, and had my first DNF on Boxing day :rolleyes: but that didn't put us off and we had found a few caches before the end of that year (2004) .

 

It's a pity my Father-in-law missed that article because I think he would have really enjoyed Geocaching :(

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We are part of a Homeschool group that meets once a month for group activities at a park during the summer. My son, unknown to me, had found a cache with another friend. They took it home and divided the swag. My son kept the container, which was a camoed pill container. I was telling my daughter about this new sport I was reading about called Geocaching. When I explained the containers to her she said it sounded like what her brother had found. When we got home I asked my son about it. He showed me the container and I knew it was a cache. I told him we needed to put it back where he had found it. I asked him if there was anything else in the container and he said yes. A paper with names on it. They had thrown that away, but the other boy had kept the little tag that was in there. I showed him a picture of a TB and he said that was what was in there. I called the friend and we were able to get the TB tag back minus whatever was attached to it. We put the TB tag back in the container and then I found the cache on GC.com and downloaded it to my GPS. We went out right away and I found the place it was supposed to be. My son said I was right on target. We placed the cache back and then I logged it as my first find. I then contacted the TB owner and told him what happened. He was able to go out and get it and resend it once again. And that is what got us into Geocaching. Since then my whole family has gotten into caching. It truly is a fun sport.

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I was on MSN on my lunch at work and was reading one of their "10 things that make you fat" type articles. This one was "10 things that will soon be massive". Can't remember what number it was or for what reason but geocaching caught my eye. I read about it and thought it sounded cool. About a week earlier i'd just got my first smart phone, so downloaded the free C:Geo app. I saw there was one close to where i worked and went out and picked it up. From that day on my life changed haha!!!

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Back in 2006 I was out for a hike in a remote area of Alaska when I dropped my old GPS unit. It fell about 100 feet 'bounced' off a rock and the pieces scattered across a glacier fed stream. I went to the store and bought a new one. The materials with it mentioned geocaching. I've been caching ever since.

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