How'd you Find Geocaching?

[+Gizzygo]

Not sure if someone else has posted something like this, or if this is being posted in the right spot, but how did you hear about Geocaching? I saw a video in my suggestions that was called "Geocaching in the Woods" or something like that. I had no idea what it was, and I also have no idea why I clicked the video but I sure am happy that I did. I watched it, then looked up what the heck geocaching was. Once I got my head wrapped around what sounded like such a crazy idea, I looked up and found that there was a cache hidden just across the street from my house! I went out, didn't find it and expected that it was stolen, or the whole thing was a sham. Then I went with my friend and finally found it. It was so cool to find a cache from 2005 right there. I had walked by that exact spot so many times, and went to the area that it was hidden and had no idea it was there. I got hooked and tried to find all the ones in my area. Of course I didn't because they were posted nearly every day and I was moving soon. Anyway, that's how I found out about it. How did you? Also, how much later did you hide your first cache? I hid mine about 5 days after starting.

[+Lexmarks567]

I remember a long time ago hearing about it on some outdoor tv show and a father and his young son were geocaching and he was a paid member son was not and he said they basically have access to the same info. Then years later like this year I remembered about it and decided to see what it was all about. I think when I first saw the cacheing page but I don't think it was laid out like it was today with a map and a detailed description of the caches.

[knowschad]

Chad introduced me to it.

[+WarNinjas]

I was on a house boat of my sisters. I had woken up before anyone else and was looking threw apps on my phone. A geocaching app came up and I read all about it. Then when others woke up I told my daughter about it. She loved the idea but my sister who is a parole officer said it was dangerous and people could lure you to a spot to rob you she had heard of it. We ignored her and decided to do it anyway. Been hooked from then on! Wish I would have had the Geocaching.com app as there were tuns around us but not on the app I had. We also hid our first cache a few days after starting. Now just after a year have over 100 hides out. This game is really fun and we have made many friends as well.

-WarNinjas

[+Heli Leo]

I had heard of it through scouting but had not payed much attention to it until at a wedding a scouting friend showed us the app on a smart phone. The wife and I then decided to give it a try, been hooked since. Now cache with a Garmin 62sc, smart phone, Nuvii 500 and a rhino 530. Only have 180 finds but really enjoy it. I have also introduced a buddy to caching. When the wife can't go I call him. We try to get out once or twice a week.

[+macatac1961]

My first gps was a Magellan and they had a link to it on their website.

[niraD]

At one of our church's retreats, a friend led an introduction to geocaching on Saturday afternoon. Several of us found 4 caches that day. The following week, I created my geocaching account and started finding caches on my own, sans GPSr.

[+sir dumil]

I had known that my cousin living in interior British Columbia was involved with geocaching for years, and that my mother had been geocaching as well. I hadn't visited for about 15 years due mostly to employment and other family commitments. This summer, those commitments unraveled quite a bit, so I took a vacation there and asked him to teach me about geocaching.

 

He showed me by bringing me and my mother on a few geocaching jaunts around the city and into the mountains. These were fantastic caches in very scenic locations. I was hooked!

 

He thoughtfully lent me a Garmin eTrex Legend to try out at home. I did so, figured out what I'd like in a GPS, and bought a Garmen eTrex 30. I've been an avid geocacher ever since, and I've joined up with the local geocaching association. I love geocaching!

[+mdplayers]

I heard about it from a sister Girl Scout leader and then took a class at a retreat weekend. Got home from that weekend, ordered my GPSr and had it shipped overnight! Been caching ever since.

 

Love it!

[+redwoodkestrel]

I used to live in a pretty remote area of the Santa Cruz mountains. I found a geocache randomly while I was out hiking. Read the info about logging my find on this website, so I came here to check it out. After that I looked for a couple other caches that were in my area - I didn't have a GPSr, or even a smart phone, but I knew the area well enough that I was able to find a couple more just by reading the description and knowing where to hike to. After that I kind of just forgot about geocaching for awhile... a long while, in fact. It wasn't really until I got my first smart phone that I thought "hey, I bet I can use this as a GPS!" Downloaded and app, and was out looking for caches! Soon after that I bought a GPSr, and have been going non-stop since.

[+The A-Team]

My brother-in-law heard about it somewhere (I'll have to ask him where), found a few, then mentioned it to the rest of the family one day. We all went out and found 5 that day, 3 the next weekend, and 9 the following weekend. 2700+ finds later...

[hoosier guy]

Saw it advertised as a cheap date in a family magazine

[+Jessykins]

BBC Countryfile programme

[+Need me glasses]

I was reading an article in a magazine and it just said that the family enjoy Geocaching at the weekends, it did not say any more than that, so I googled it! I am really glad that I did

[+Don_J]

Also, how much later did you hide your first cache? I hid mine about 5 days after starting.

 

I waited about six months and after I had found about 300 caches. I wanted to make sure I knew what a good geocache was and that I was following all of the guidelines. The last thing that I wanted to do is place a cache on private property without permission and use a container that can't even last one day.

[+CcRider56]

My lil brother hoosier guy hooked me up with it. Hey HG it says my bug has traveled over 3800 miles!

[hoosier guy]

My lil brother hoosier guy hooked me up with it. Hey HG it says my bug has traveled over 3800 miles!

 

All right! Way to go!

[+jellis]

In a carpool, when someone mentioned they almost were arrested when a neighbor behind a canal trail thought the cacher was going to scale his 10ft fence (I might be exaggrating but it was too high) and rob his home. He said it was because he was Mexican, my friend was Filipino and French. Anyway another neighbor stepped in and told the police the cacher did nothing wrong and her neighbor is a bigot.

I don't know why but it sounded interesting so I went out and bought a gps and that was in 2006.

[+Mr. 0]

Back on an old Jeep forum I was on, they were planning a day to clean up some trails. One person mentioned that if anyone finds a Geocache "game piece" to leave it where it is. They posted a link to GC.com. Because it was described as a "game piece" I was thinking something along the lines of a board game piece like from Monopoly. I didn't understand why something like that would be in the woods, and how someone would easily stumble upon it. Plus the clean up was happening near Flint, MI and I'm in Central Ohio, so I just thought it was a weird local thing that I wouldn't be able to participate in and didn't click the link. A few days later, after curiousity got the best of me, I went back and clicked on the link.

 

I already had a GPSr at home so that same day I found my first cache after work. A few years later I found that cache the guy posted about as my 1000th.

[+Totem Clan]

Advertising with my old GPS.

[+MKAS]

Stuff You Should Know podcast!

[+Beach_hut]

We saw a feature about on a UK outdoors-oriented TV show called Countryfile.

[+Beach_hut]

Oops double post

Edited October 30, 2012 by Beach_hut

[+SQL_Man]

I heard about it several years ago through wheresgeorge.com where people would drop bills in a cache and have them travel to other caches (like TBs & GCs). I was intrigued, but didn't have the time to spend to justify buying the GPS device. Fast forward a few years later, the kids are older and I have more time and I as able to select a gift out of catalog as a reward for 15 years of service at the company I work for. There it was, a wonderful Garmin GPS device. Two months into it and loving it. I'll be interested to see if I'll want to do this when the the temperature drops below freezing

[+AutisticMajor]

Stumbled onto it in 2004, but with coursework and other things I never had the time to follow it up. Also no GPS device. I rediscovered it recently and checked to see many new caches had been added since. A new phone app later and was going.

[+TerraViators]

I somehow web surfed my way to Waymarking...fortunately, I found geocaching from there...dodge a bullet for sure.

[+K13]

Back in '06 I was doing some research in a country cemetery. Nature called and I went outside the cemetery and into the adjacent woods for relief. I stumbled across an ammo can....I remember it just like it was six years ago.

[+McFlyAway]

Hmmm...good question. I remember it like it was yesterday:

 

About a year ago, I was at my local library when I stumbled upon "The Complete Idiot's Guide To Geocaching". Sounded interesting, so I checked it out, read it in about a month, and got hooked. Found my first cache at the local cemetery.

 

Fast forward exactly one year; I attended an event and found four more traditionals for my one year cachi-versery. Never gonna stop!

[+Andromeda321]

I remember first hearing about it in college, like 2004 or so, and checked out what was in the area (Cleveland, Ohio). I was interested but had no GPS, and more importantly at the time had no car so none of the caches would be available to me, so that was the end of that (pity- I did a semester in NZ and a lot of other crazy adventures in the meantime where I would've found lots of fun caches!).

 

Then in December 2009 I was procrastinating by trying to find new apps on my iPhone and remembered geocaching on the very same college campus, and wondered if there was a geocaching app... there was, and holy hell there was a cache like right across the street from me! I didn't find that one but by this point did have a car so spent the weekend going around looking for caches... rest is history.

[+hzoi]

I don't know how I first heard about it, but I do remember hearing about it back sometime around 2000 to 2002, possibly on a Yahoo! group or on a hiking/camping forum. I glossed over it, and my immediate reaction was something like, meh, that sounds like it's for nerds.

 

Fast forward to early 2007, and my wife mentioned it to me after one of her friends told her about it. She convinced me that it would be a fun way to get out of the house, so I dusted off my old GPS 12 and created an account. The next day, we went for the nearest one, an urban micro in downtown Wiesbaden. We didn't find it, probably because the coordinates were 100' off and took you to a building on the north side of a street, instead of the south side, where the cache was located (when we returned a couple months later, we found it on a drainpipe between a convenience store and a sex shop). Thankfully we went back out the next weekend and found our first cache and first TB, then successfully hunted three more. 4696 finds later and we're still hooked.

 

Had I followed up on geocaching when I first heard about it...sigh. Burns me up every time I think about it. Among other things, I would have been able to log (and hide!) caches in Kuwait, Afghanistan, and Iraq when I deployed in 2005. I posed for a picture less than 15 feet from the hide for the first cache in Iraq, on the back side of the Ziggurat of UR, and then stood right next to it as I took my buddy's picture. If it'd've been a snake...

[+NeverSummer]

I had professor in college who used "geocaching" in 2001 as a lesson for our GIS class. He sent us out around campus with the backpack GPS, and we had to find the waypoints he gave us. At each point, there was a container.

 

I dabbled in "geocaching" without an account here for a long time, and then my aunt mentioned it again to me when I visited her in Washington. I liked being outdoors and exploring places, so I went along on a caching trip near her neighborhood. Finally, in 2005, I got my own geocaching.com account and started to geocache.

[+W7WT]

Back in August of 2001, I was into photography and the web master on a Sony Digital Camera forum mentioned taking pictures during his

geocaching. I already had a Garmin 45 and looked up geocaching. Found a cache just about a mile north of my home. Hopped on my scooter and went to look for it. The Garmin 45 lost satellite contact as soon as i entered the forest. So went to Fred Meyers and they had this new Magellan Map 330. I bought it and found the cache deep in the woods. It is still active. I used W7WT for my handle as I was very active in Ham Radio and more people knew me by my ham call than my given name.I am now 87 and the XYL is 86 and we hope to get to the 7,000 finds this year. Only need about 220 more to do it. Dick & Arlene Bremerton, WA

Edited October 31, 2012 by W7WT

[mac367]

I had read about Geocaching in the paper and a couple of times mentioned in the local park system’s monthly activities booklet. It sounded kind of interesting, but I didn’t own a GPS so even though I knew about it for years and liked being outdoors, I never checked out the website. Fast forward a few years…I was camping with the scout troop in a state park. We were hiking and about to cross a road when a car pulls over and two guys hop out with a GPS in hand. I instantly thought of caching and asked “Are you geocaching?” The older guy’s eyes lit up, he says “yes, are you a cacher?”. I told him no, so he proceeded to show the troop his GPS and explain about the cache hidden down the trail about a quarter mile. He invited us to join him, so after checking out the structure we came to see we headed down the trail and helped with the search. He eventually made the find and showed the boys the cache and the log. He gave me a slip of paper with the GC code and told me to check out the website. When we returned home I logged onto the net to check out the site. He made a real nice log entry about his adventure and meeting the scout troop from the Cleveland area. So I started poking around on the maps and to my surprise there is cache hidden in the city park right around the corner. I never realized there were caches everywhere. Up to that time I assumed they were only placed in parks on trails. So thanks to the enthusiasm and kindness of that cacher (Thanks Scubie!) a couple of new cachers from the troop were born. I found my first 50 caches using Google maps before I realized my car GPS could load coordinates. Eventually bought a handheld from e-bay.

[+ktmadventurer]

Trawling through Google looking for something quite un-related....

 

What got my interest is the whole honesty thing that the game relies on. In this world where there is so much negativity, bad things happening and often mean people, I find the rules and ethos of this game restores my faith in humanity.

Also found that on this forum there is far less aggro than on other forums on the Net, and the amount of assistance offered to anyone who asks is wonderful.

I think I am hooked for life!

[+Andromeda321]

Trawling through Google looking for something quite un-related....

 

What got my interest is the whole honesty thing that the game relies on. In this world where there is so much negativity, bad things happening and often mean people, I find the rules and ethos of this game restores my faith in humanity.

Also found that on this forum there is far less aggro than on other forums on the Net, and the amount of assistance offered to anyone who asks is wonderful.

I think I am hooked for life!

 

I think this is a very interesting and good point. The most common thing I hear when taking out friends or whatever geocaching is their amazement that the cache is still there and hasn't been stolen- despite sometimes hundreds of entries in the logbook! Sure we have issues with swag, but it is quite heartening.

[tomowens]

My son had happened upon GC174D one day while he was out hiking. Several months later he mentioned it to me when we were in the same area. We tried to find it again ( without coords or GPS ) and were unsuccessful.

 

It was not until after I returned home from that trip that I looked into geocaching and set up my account here. My first ever log was a DNF on this cache.

 

As a bittersweet side note, we returned to the location several years later to spread my son's ashes - the location was very special to him. We did not think to look for the cache on that trip. Some day I hope to find that one and to re-visit that very special place.

 

--

Raiders of the Lost Park

[+ayrbrain]

Our friends whom we meet up with once a year, are cachers. So about 2 years ago in York they showed us how to do a virtual, then how to find the caches, i didn't have a gps at that time. But came home, bought a secondhand gps from Ebay, to see if i would really like the game. Used it for about a year, got a new better one last christmas and as they say " the rest is history" love the game.

[+unabowler]

I was on a trip with my boss and a coworker and in the evenings when we got back from our meeting and before we went out for dinner they went out geocaching. I had other things to do and didn't go with them, but the next weekend I took my kids out and found a cache near our house. My boss and coworker, as well as my kids, are very occasional cachers now, but I've been out quite a bit.

[+God of Caching]

I was deployed to Bagram, Afghanistan. One day 2 of the guys I worked with and I were walking around the base and one of the guys kept pulling something out of his pocket, looking at it, then shoved it back into his pocket. He did this several times and finally I asked him what he was doing? He stated that he was geocaching. I asked what the heck that was. He proceeded to explain the game and how the GPSr unit he had been using worked. I thought it sounded pretty cool, plus there wasn't a whole lot to do at Bagram anyway. So, he guided us to a regular (lock-n-lock) sized cache, where we found the log and some swag and a cool geocoin. After that, I was hooked! We spent several days during our deployment looking for other geocaches on base. Had to spread them out so we didn't cacheout the whole base in a few days!! He subsequently quit caching not long after we returned to the US. But I'm still going!!

[gerbiee]

I'm a mod on a hamster forum and one of the members happened to mention it in their profile information. I had clicked their profile by accident and while procrastinating from studying I decided to look up what it was. I'm sure glad I did it looks to be the start of some good times.

[+Shakusky&Bishop]

I am on a listserv for catalogers (librarians) and someone asked about how to catalog a geocache cut out of a book. I read the conversations and then Googled geocaching and was immediately intrigued. We've gone from intrigued to obsessed in about 2 weeks.

[+Don_J]

Anybody remember The Langa List? I think that may have been where I first heard of Geocaching.

[DarthJustice]

I believe I might have heard about it somewhere before in passing but didn't give it much thought. I think I had just heard the name but nothing else.

 

Then, coincidentally, not long after in June 2008 an old friend of mine (one where we are no longer friends--long story) came over. While we were hanging out in my bedroom, he brought geocaching up and told me he and a group of his friends had recently started, though he was only into gcing for a few days and only found two caches. We checked out the site. It was later that month that I found my first cache in a local park. It was called Bear Pen Tennis Court but has now long since been archived (actually almost three months to the day after I found it).

 

As for when I hid my first, it was around the time I had found my 15th cache last year or the year before (yes, I'm aware I have a pretty low find count for how long since I found my first cache lol). I actually had placed it in the same parking lot my first find was in. I had to archive it though.

Edited November 25, 2012 by DarthJustice

[+DragonsWest]

I'd read about it in 2000 on slashdot.org, but that year and around those months were filled with turmoil so I didn't get started in it when I could have been in during the first months. Took a few years later for some friends to ask if I had heard of it and wanted to give it a try in a park with 3 caches hidden in (park now has about 100) Found it a lot of fun and bought a GPSr within days. Bought some ammo boxes and hid one way the heck out of the way on a mountain top next to an outhouse, because I thought it would be amusing. It's still there, over 9 years later. Several more hides, many of them ammo boxes, a couple larges, several small, some micros and one concessionary nano which will likely be bulldozed when the economy improves.

 

Found 20 in the first year, which cleared the immediate area for the most part. Then went on hiatus for a few years while I rode a road bike with a regular group. When someone dropped their chain, hit their brakes in the middle of a large group ride and knocked me to the pave, with a broken collar bone, I decided hiking was probably something I should revisit and geocaching would fit right back in. So I returned to the fold and am having a lot of fun with it. I hope it sticks around and they don't meddle with it much more.

[+Maconb]

A guy at work was talking about it and he had found a couple and showed me. I thought it was kinda cool. That weekend I went to my buddy's restaurant and told him about it. There was a couple of people playing music. My buddy told me that they were big into it. I talked to them about caching for an hour and they took me to a cache in the middle of the night. I was a Premium member the next day. I haven't seen them since them but I am in constant contact with them at least once a week.

[ving]

crap... i have no idea! maybe googled gps game or something. *shrugs*

[RedShoesGirl]

it's been long enough i don't remember clearly. might have been a newspaper story - i was working for a paper so read everything. i joined in feb, was even a charter member, then a major car accident put geocaching out of reach for MONTHS. i come and go in the forums and my interest in caching itself waxes and wanes. but i am very glad i discovered it when i did, no matter how i did it.

[knowschad]

I found it pretty tasty.

[+Bowlr]

In my car club, we were in the backroads driving thru some twisties. The guy in the back suddenly disappeared. Well, we worried about him, no we didn't go back to see if he drove off the cliff, Well, when we saw him at the pit stop, we asked what happened. He explained a bit about geocaching to us. Seems that he stopped and went down an embankment to get a cache. We then proceeded to a cache not 100ft from where we were standing and found it. This got us started.

[+alien55]

A couple of years ago a documentary on PBS TV had a feature on geocaching. The documentary was about slowing the aging process and geocaching was presented as a pastime that exercises the mind and body. That's for me, I thought. I ordered an Etrex Vista Hcx online and my first find was a swag-filled ammo can in the woods on a snowy winter's day. I felt like a kid again (in mind if not in body!) and I'm really glad that I saw that TV program.