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Who introduced you to geocaching?


Dawnmaud

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I first heard/read about it years ago on Slashdot.

 

I didn't have a GPS at the time, so mostly forgot about it until about 5 years ago when I lurked every few months.

Until 2009, when I finally got a smartphone, which had GPS built in, and found a Geocaching app, and then finally signed up.

 

I voyeuristically searched here and there but never actually got the urge to go out until a buddy who hosts a yearly 4th party took a bunch of us out to geocache on 7/3/2010.

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I live on a cul-de-sac and we have a block breakfast every year. One of the retired neighbors came down to grab some food and when folks asked what he'd been up to lately he got a big grin and said, "Treasure Hunting!". The neighbors laughed and he told us a little bit about geocaching. The other neighbors laughed some more and poked a bit of fun but I thought it sounded interesting so I made sure to get the web address. I went home and made a geocaching.com account and started reading the forums. I read a LOT of useful stuff and then over the next week or so I started checking out GPS receivers online. I looked at a lot of different models and, the more I looked, the more I wanted it all. Finally one day I saw a GPSMAP 76CSx on eBay that was brand new in the box. The price was low so I sent myself email to check it out the next day. When I got to work the next day I got the email and looked it up and it was STILL low with 11 minutes left on the auction. I made a bid, certain it would jump to some really high price at the last minute. Boy was I surprised when I won! Then I had to go home and tell my wife I had just spent $400. At that time the thing would have cost me $632 locally though (with tax) so it was a good buy.

 

By the time the unit arrived in the mail I had already read a zillion forum posts, tons of other online information, and The Complete Idiot's Guide to Geocaching and had gotten GSAK and downloaded a Pocket Query. I opened the box, checked out the unit for maybe 20 minutes, loaded my Pocket Query, and went out and found my first cache - an ammo can in a stump that had been hidden by the very neighbor who first told me about caching. I first heard the word Geocaching on July 30, 2005 and my first find was August 8, 2005. I love it!

 

I had been an online gamer (Dark Age of Camelot) for 3 years and had wasted from 2 to 16 hours a day - every day - playing that stupid game. When I discovered geocaching I went outside and never gamed again. Geocaching saved my sanity.

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Had heard about it years ago but didn't give it much thought. Then at my daughter's birthday party, the DJ was talking about his most recent geocaching trip. He mentioned there were a couple near my residence. I downloaded the app, found 2 on my first trip, and now I have purchased a GPS. Looking forward to finding more.

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A friend of mine introduced me to Geocaching over ten years ago. He had recently gotten a GPS for backpacking and discovered Geocaching. He showed me some printouts and how he used his GPS to navigate to caches. We didn't actually hunt for any. I filed it away and did nothing.

 

I now have kids (8 and 6 years old) and a new iPad3 with GPS. We had our first away from home camping trip this past weekend and I was looking for stuff for the kids and their cousins to do in the state park we were staying at. I remembered this activity and it seemed like a great thing to try. Boy was I right on that count! It's amazing to see five kids swarming over an area when I announced that we were within ten feet of the cache. They are amazing little hunters. When we got home my six year old spent an hour finding a good plastic box and orgainzing a bunch of trinkets to bring along the next time we go on a hunt.

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I found out about it via letterboxing. I was looking for an excuse to get out and get more exercise, and I discovered one of the letterboxing Web sites. When I did a search on the site, I came up with several letterboxes that were hidden in a park not far from where I live. I put on my walking shoes, took a walk in the park, and found two of them. In the second one I found, there was a note stating that it was a hybrid letterbox/geocache. That was the first time I'd even seen the term geocache.

 

I went back home, checked out the Web site, and discovered that there were a bunch of caches within a few miles of where I live. I already had an old Garmin GPS III+, and I used that to find my first few caches. A few weeks later, I bought a Garmin 60CSx, and the rest is history.

 

--Larry

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Read an article in the Newark Star-Ledger by the techy columnist. Back in 2004. Had a basic Garmin eTrex. Yeah. The yellow one. Hmm... One not far off the trail I was maintaining! Went out. Found it. Loved it. At it for 8 years now! A 2/3.5 cache by BrianSnat was my first find. About an hour hike in, 300' of climb. Great ammo box hide in the purple puddingstone. So, I blame BrianSnat for introducing me to what Geocaching is all about!

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Read an article in the Newark Star-Ledger by the techy columnist. Back in 2004. Had a basic Garmin eTrex. Yeah. The yellow one. Hmm... One not far off the trail I was maintaining! Went out. Found it. Loved it. At it for 8 years now! A 2/3.5 cache by BrianSnat was my first find. About an hour hike in, 300' of climb. Great ammo box hide in the purple puddingstone. So, I blame BrianSnat for introducing me to what Geocaching is all about!

 

And I found out about it in another Star Ledger article, published in Sept of 2001.

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I first heard about it from a friend a few years ago. He had gone out but, for some reason, whatever he was doing involved simply going to a location and not searching for anything. That didn't sound appealing to me because I would want a goal, or to know that I was at least where I was trying to go. I never looked into it.

 

Heard on the news the other day about a man in Arizona (my location) and his tragic incident :(

http://www.azcentral.com/arizonarepublic/local/articles/2012/07/08/20120708cave-creek-man-found-dead-geocaching.html

 

The more I read, the more intrigued I was by this hobby I had never truly heard of, and the community they spoke about. This all started yesterday and I did my first cache last night :)

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usenet newsgroups circa 2001

 

I also first read about geocaching in a usenet newsgroup, but not in the one that Dave Ulmer posted in. There was a thread about the use of a compass vs. a GPS in a group called rec.backcountry and someone mentioned that they used their GPS for geocaching and explained what it was. At the time, probably around 2001 or 2002 buying a GPS seemed kind of extravagant to me so I didn't pursue it. In late 2004, while doing some route planning with a group of kayakers for a trip in Georgian Bay everyone else on the trip had a GPS. Even though I didn't have one at the time I downloaded a copy of ExpertGPS (yes, I got the paid version) and drew some tracks of some possible routes and even created a GPX file. A few months later my wife stumbled across a web site from someone in her field of work (Psychology) that had listed geocaching as one of his hobbies. She mentioned it to me and thought it might be fun. When I told here we'd need to get a GPS to do it she just said, "We'll you do have a birthday coming up." That was all the encouragement I needed so ordered a Garmin 76Cx the next day. I chose that model because it was rated highly for water resistance *and* alledgedally floats (I never actually tested this). My intent was to use it as much for sea kayaking as I did for geocaching but I ended up rarely using it for kayaking.

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I learnt about geocaching through a muggle colleague... who is still a muggle! :D

 

One of his friends was a geocacher and showed him about the game. As my colleague knew I was a nature- and walk-adict, and that I formely did some scouting as well, he thought that could interest me and told me about geocaching.

 

I immediately started from a Belgian local website (www.geocaching.be) and found a cache not too far away from my house, but I did not directly understood everything about geocaching... :blink:

Anyway, I went to GZ with my 2 old boys and after 30 minutes we finally found the container and signed the logbook. We were so excited! :D

 

That was a great experience, but the real addiction started a couple of months later, when we went on holiday with a friend who was a more experienced geocacher. The first cache I hunted for with him was at sunset in the middle of a salt marsh zone, and THAT adventure made me really addict!

 

This was one year ago. Today I am reaching 150 smileys, what is not that much, but for me a decent number seen my very busy agenda (2 small children, a baby, a full time job, and some breeding).

 

oliantoine

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I also first read about geocaching in a usenet newsgroup, but not in the one that Dave Ulmer posted in. There was a thread about the use of a compass vs. a GPS in a group called rec.backcountry and someone mentioned that they used their GPS for geocaching and explained what it was. At the time, probably around 2001 or 2002 buying a GPS seemed kind of extravagant to me so I didn't pursue it.

I subscribed mostly to the alt.* newsgroups. I don't think I saw any of the Dave Ulmer posts but I could be wrong. It was a while ago. I remember talk about geocaching (if I remember correctly it was referred to as stash hunting) and the geocaching.com website. Until then I really couldn't justify getting a GPSr either. After all, what would one use it for? Right. I used Geocaching as an excuse to get a GPSr for Christmas. I signed up at geocaching.com shortly thereafter and I've been Geocaching ever since.

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About 15 years ago, my boss at that time mentioned that his family enjoyed geocaching together. He explained what it was, and I thought it sounded interesting, but didn't think about it again. Last summer, I went to a professional development class that discussed using gps to teach longitude and latitude to students. As part of the class we each received a basic Garmin gps handheld unit. I decided that I had to give it a try, so my girls & I spent some time last summer geocaching and we enjoyed it. I didn't do anymore geocaching during the school year, but resumed again this summer using the iPhone app which is so much better than the simple gps unit I had. Can't believe I waited so long to give it a try!

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One of my ex co-workers... he was really into it back in 2010 and asked me whether I was geocaching too, because "you look like somebody who does that"! I was like, err, okay, but... would you kindly tell me what geocaching is?! So he went and told me, showed me the site and the map, and oh so surprising there was a cache hidden in the woods just around the corner from where I live and where I actually used to play a lot as a kid. So we went there after work and searched (and found) the cache and I thought this was kinda fun. I signed up the very same day and found my first few caches with the help of Google Maps as I didn't have my own GPSr yet. Oddly enough, pretty much as soon as I got my eTrex, I never went out caching again for almost ten months... I'd always been hoping my co-worker would find the time to take me on some caching trips, but he never did, and for some reason I didn't feel comfortable going on my own... I finally kinda kicked my own butt to get up and put that GPSr to good use and started going out on my own by the end of last July. And yeah, I've been fully addicted ever since. :grin:

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