+TrackerGirl Posted October 11, 2003 Share Posted October 11, 2003 Last year about this time my husband took me to the Lost Children of the Alleghenies Monument. He found it out wandering around a few years ago. We went driving around one day and he showed it to me. When we came home I started searching for more information on the internet about it. I came across a few things, one of which was the cache page for it Lost Children of the Alleghenies We haven't made it back there yet, but plan to go soon. So how did everyone else get started? Quote Link to comment
+Mickey225 Posted October 11, 2003 Share Posted October 11, 2003 Well I got started a little over a year ago. It was actually while on a date. Not with the guy anymore, but I managed to get 2 of my best friends to start caching with me! Mickey225...converting people to geocaching one GPS at a time! Quote Link to comment
+JMBella Posted October 11, 2003 Share Posted October 11, 2003 I read an Article in local newspaper back on May 29th. I found my 1st cache the next day and had the best summer I've had in years. Two roads diverged in a wood, and I- I took the one less traveled by, And that has made all the difference. Because now I am Lost. Quote Link to comment
+briansnat Posted October 12, 2003 Share Posted October 12, 2003 Read newspaper article, bought a GPS a few days later, found my first cache and I was hooked. "You can't make a man by standing a sheep on his hind legs. But by standing a flock of sheep in that position, you can make a crowd of men" - Max Beerbohm Quote Link to comment
+Metaphor Posted October 12, 2003 Share Posted October 12, 2003 I went to a session on GPS use at a MD Outdoor and Env. Educators' conference, and also had a credit at REI that just about paid for a GPS unit. So I bought one, figuring I'd use it for sailing and fishing. There wasn't very much sailing or fishing going on in February, so I hit the web and searched for something to do with it. Geocaching sounded pretty cool. It still is. "All of us are standing in the mud, but some of us are looking at the stars." Oscar Wilde Quote Link to comment
+ZeeWire Posted October 12, 2003 Share Posted October 12, 2003 I was setting up an emergency kit when I remembered about GPS and I thought it would be a great addition. While researching about the different kinds of GPS systems I came across a link to Geocaching.com & the rest is history. Quote Link to comment
+PeachyPA Posted October 12, 2003 Share Posted October 12, 2003 My daughter became interested in it as a student at Penn State University. Last spring she came home and told us there was a cache nearby. It took many hours over two days to finally come across it, as we did not have a GPSr at the time. Since then, I have found six more without a GPS unit until I received one for my birthday. My finds now total 20 and counting. Daughter is now in Ireland working on her master's degree; I hope she finds time to do some caching there. PeachyPA Quote Link to comment
+Strider_Greybeard Posted October 12, 2003 Share Posted October 12, 2003 I read about Geocaching in the magazine on an airplane flight. I figured it was just for a few big cities, but wrote the geocaching.com address down. Some time later I found the address, did a search, and discovered a cache located a half mile from my house. I had the GPS but I hadn't discovered the hobby until then. Quote Link to comment
+The Frantic Cachers Posted October 12, 2003 Share Posted October 12, 2003 I don't remember where I read the article, but it took me months to convince the wife to let me buy one. When it came she made fun of me. Now she gets mad when I go without her. Go figure..... Quote Link to comment
+haggaeus Posted October 12, 2003 Share Posted October 12, 2003 I knew about the site for some time (from WheresGeorge glossary, Google searches for local parks etc.) and thought it was a nice idea, but the final impulse to register and buy a GPS was when I stumbled on a broken cache and its contents scattered around - took it home to dry and replace, bought Magellan 315 2 weeks later. The cache didn't survive much longer and the owner is no more active, but thanks anyway! Czech caching in US. Quote Link to comment
+Team Og Rof A Klaw Posted October 13, 2003 Share Posted October 13, 2003 We heard about it from Curt and Jenny Borchardt of the Trail's End Inn of Keene Valley, NY. The following week, I'd bought a new GPSMAP 76S and Mrs. Og had taken over my plain yellow Etrex. We went out on "Turkey on Rye," DNFed it, then hit "In A Trunk On The River" the following day and got it. From there on, things have just continued. High recos for the Trail's End, BTW. The B&B is great and Curt is a very interesting guy -- ex P3 Orion pilot and former XO of an aircraft carrier (forget which one.) Gave us some hair-curling stories about his duties during the fall of Vietnam. ____________________________ - Team Og Rof A Klaw All who wander are not lost. Quote Link to comment
+Akhenaten Posted October 17, 2003 Share Posted October 17, 2003 My brother loves to buy gadgets. One day he was showing me his GPS and he started telling me about Geocaching. I told him that he had to take me along one time. We hiked into a gorge near his college to find a cache. It was rough going, but I loved every minute of it. I did a few more caches with him that summer and at Christmas my wife bought me my own GPS. It has turned out to be one of the most used gifts I have ever received. Quote Link to comment
+Polgara Posted October 17, 2003 Share Posted October 17, 2003 My caching career is all Salvelinus' fault. LOL! "The more I study nature, the more I am amazed at the Creator." - Louis Pasteur Quote Link to comment
+ChinCache Posted October 18, 2003 Share Posted October 18, 2003 Saw something on the travel channel. Ihad found two caches before my wife would let me buy a gpsr. thank god for ebay(see honey it's cheaper here than anywherelse. Since i've back to PA. my dads taken a liking to it. Quote Link to comment
+FDNY260 Posted October 23, 2003 Share Posted October 23, 2003 i think j&m beela and i read the same article in newday. i had a gift cert for best buy i got for my b-day, went out the same day and bought a sporttrax map and hit the trails. 3 caches later i hadnt found a thing and was ready to give up. i called magellan and after some tests it was discovered that the gpsr was broke. so i went back to best buy to exchange it and give caching one more chance. the woman at best buy said no problem on the exchange and took my bag with the defective gps and went to the back to get me a new one. she returned with my bag and said have a nice day. i went to my car and opened the bag and to my surprise inside the bag was a sport track color (cost about $300 more) since then i havent had to many problems finding any caches except the second part of j&m Bella haunted series part III. but with a little help i am totally hooked. FDNY260 Never Forget 9-11-01 Quote Link to comment
+MissJenn Posted October 23, 2003 Share Posted October 23, 2003 quote:Originally posted by Ce'Nedra:My caching career is all Salvelinus' fault. LOL! Now I know who to blame! As for me: I won a yellow eTrex at a Jeep event and that was that. -- Do you think lobsters look good on telephones? Quote Link to comment
+The Leprechauns Posted October 23, 2003 Share Posted October 23, 2003 My story is well-known. Little Leprechaun gets the credit for making me discover geocaching. Read the details in this newspaper article. x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x Next time, instead of getting married, I think I'll just find a woman I don't like and buy her a house. Quote Link to comment
+JandM Posted October 23, 2003 Share Posted October 23, 2003 Joe and I had been dating for about a month or so when he mentioned some "treasure hunting thing" one of his friends had showed him about while they were at the NJ Firemen's Convention in Wildwood. He knew the concept but didn't know the name. I mentioned it to some of my techno-geek friends who directed me to the site. Joe and I have been caching since then. It's only been 6 months or so, but we love it and plan on doing it as much as we can! ~JandM(and sometimes Molly, too) Quote Link to comment
+Cacheola Crew Posted October 23, 2003 Share Posted October 23, 2003 One year ago today, we found our first cache. We found about caching through two different sources. One was a mention of it on a Cub Scouting e-group I am on. I thought it sounded interesting, but at the time put it on the back burner. Then, one day shortly afterwards friends of ours who live in Indiana called us and said, "We did something cool today". They told us all about their afternoon of geocaching. I am a fan of the Amazing Race and this really sounded like it had some elements of that. So I signed onto the site, registered, and the next day my two boys and I went to find our first cache without a GPS. Luckily, the map was pretty accurate. A few weeks later we had our GPS. Cacheola Crew Mom http://groups.yahoo.com/group/Geocaching-HamptonRoadsVA/join "You have brains in your head; You have feet in your shoes. You can steer yourself any direction you choose. You're on your own. And you know what you know. And YOU are the one who'll decide where to go...." Dr. Seuss Quote Link to comment
+moose_is_loose Posted October 24, 2003 Share Posted October 24, 2003 Well I started using the GPS to find the campsite and or home!!! I still have the unit(MAGELLAN 2000 brand spankin'new out of the box)and break it out for 'old times sake'. Do actually find caches with the darned thing. 1st gen were real battery hogs and no computer interface.........back in the olden daze ...when we walked uphill...both ways....because it was there!!! Then they invented a sport of finding tupperware in the middle of the woods. Hard core of friends still don't quite get it. M.I.L. Quote Link to comment
+scoobydooers Posted October 24, 2003 Share Posted October 24, 2003 I have a palm III xe and I purchased a GPS module that snaps on the back (no wires) and I puchased delorme steetmaps in order to use the palm to find my way to job sites without paper maps, it worked pretty good and gave turn by turn diections. while looking for additional software for it I stumbled across Groundspeak and located my first cache (washington's stairmaster) the way it worked was to watch the cord numbers go up or down till you were matching the cord number of the cache, then walk east or west till those numbers matched, not very easy to do. we had an unsecessfull attempt at Fast cache and went out and purchased a Megellin Platium for my birthday, (went back and found the fast cache.) Now I use the magellen for everything, I got rid of the paper maps I used to use in the truck and now I use the gps to located customers homes. and when Im done working on the way to the next stop I will zoom out and look for a nearby cache. Quote Link to comment
marty621 Posted October 24, 2003 Share Posted October 24, 2003 Always been interested in Celestial and Land navigation, Orienteering and map work. When I heard they turned off Selective Availibility I figured the GPS units were accurate enough for my use. After I got one and started researching their use on the 'net. Ran across a post on Sci.geo.nav newsgroup, went to the website and here I am. Quote Link to comment
+djs_111 Posted October 25, 2003 Share Posted October 25, 2003 Gave in and bought a little yellow e-trex when I saw it at K-mart for $120...didn't know about Geocaching at the time, I bought it for Ham radio geek stuff...found my first cache later that month and have been going strong since...what's ham radio anyway? ________________________________________________ Did you remember to mark a waypoint for the car? Quote Link to comment
+HartClimbs Posted October 26, 2003 Share Posted October 26, 2003 I'd gotten my GPS december of last year orginally for backpacking/climbing but I came across this website and we headed out as a family on a rainy and cold new years day to find our first cache. It's a fun game - and yet another good excuse to get outside. We've found great spots that we never knew existed and our friends are always laughing when we introduce them to some new park or bike path ("Lemme guess, did you find this place *geocaching*?") Credit goes to all the folks who spend time planning, hiding, and maintaining caches for keeping this game fun! Quote Link to comment
+Mopar Posted October 27, 2003 Share Posted October 27, 2003 I've mentioned it before, but what the heck.... I first found out about geocaching back in September, 2000 from an article on it over at SlashDot. I already owned both a GPS and a LORAN unit (neither portable) for my boat, so it caught my attention and I checked out the website. At that time, I think the nearest cache to me was something like an 8-10hr drive away, so I bookmarked the website and forgot about it. Fast forward a year. It's August, 2001, and I'm clearing out some old dead bookmarks from my browser. I get to geocaching.com, and think "gee that sounded cool, I wonder what ever happened to it?". Decided to check out the website 1 more time before deleting it. This time there are some caches within 10 miles of my house! Not one to rush into things, I spent a month reading EVERY forum post here (there were not so many posts a day as there is now) and every website I could find about GPS and geocaching. I didn't even register on the site until after I had read everything I could find, and still had an unanswered question. Decided on a handheld GPS, bought it, and I've been hooked ever since. "This is gc.com, love it or leave it " Quote Link to comment
+orange Posted October 27, 2003 Share Posted October 27, 2003 Mopar's story is much like mine. I heard about geocaching a long time ago, check the site and the only nearby caches were in NYC and the one I read seemed to be under a pier. Longer period of time than Mopar and I checked site in January 2002. Wow there is one about 4 miles from house. So I went out with jungle green and we found our first cache in a light snow storm. Have enjoyed finding many more since. Quote Link to comment
+Geo Ho Posted October 29, 2003 Share Posted October 29, 2003 quote:Mickey225 wrote: Well I got started a little over a year ago. It was actually while on a date. Not with the guy anymore . . . Mine was kinda the same thing . . . ok, not really . . . . . . it was about a year and a half ago and not really a date . . . but I'm not with the guy anymore. A guy I was dating introduced me to Geocaching . . . I was a bit resistant at first . . . primarily because I didn't own a GPS. I got one for my birthday and the rest is history. Now I'm a caching fool! And the coolest thing of all is that I met the most incredible man while at a Geocaching event and I am so, so happy . . . he's the bomb! Keep on stashin' and I'll keep on cachin'! [This message was edited by Geo Ho (aka - Cache Wench) on October 29, 2003 at 03:37 PM.] Quote Link to comment
+Golfhaus Posted October 30, 2003 Share Posted October 30, 2003 quote:Originally posted by Strider_Greybeard:I read about Geocaching in the magazine on an airplane flight. I bet I know which airline he flew, because the one I work for had an article last summer on geocaching... pretty picture of a Vista on the cover. I read the article myself flying out to see a friend of mine in California. I decided it would give me something to look up on the computer while my friend was at work. On the drive back from the airport, he said, "So, I've gotten into this thing lately called geocaching, have you ever heard of it?" That afternoon, I found my first caches with the help of his GPS. Three days after arriving back home, I had my own. He's kinda drifted away from geocaching, I seem to get more into it every day. -- "No, that's just a couple of shoes tied in a grocery bag." Quote Link to comment
+TrackerGirl Posted November 3, 2003 Author Share Posted November 3, 2003 Here it is a year later... we finally made it back to the Lost Children's cache last weekend. It was nice to go back to the one that started it all. Thanks to all the local cachers for making this so fun. I hope to place a cache or two this week. Happy Caching! Thanks to all of you who shared your cache stories! Almost 500 visits to my question and only 28 replys..... how did the rest of you get involved?? (I use to be a lurker too - LOL) Quote Link to comment
+TrackerGirl Posted November 3, 2003 Author Share Posted November 3, 2003 Wailing Banshee... does your post mean your cat beat you into caching? Or you were in fear for you life at home? Quote Link to comment
+EMTJeepers Posted November 4, 2003 Share Posted November 4, 2003 TrackerGirl, I think Banshee was depicting Mopar's two girlfriends meeting at a cache site. Quote Link to comment
+Geo Ho Posted November 4, 2003 Share Posted November 4, 2003 quote:Originally posted by EMTJeepers:TrackerGirl, I think Banshee was depicting Mopar's two girlfriends meeting at a cache site. Uh huh . . . LOL Keep on stashin' and I'll keep on cachin'! Quote Link to comment
+TeacherMatt Posted November 4, 2003 Share Posted November 4, 2003 Well, I have to put my two cents in... I "discovered" geocaching when I saw the cool little treasure chest icons (one open, one closed) in my eTrex Venture. I thought they looked interesting and figured there was a story behind them. A few clicks of the mouse later...I was off and running! Quote Link to comment
+BeachBuddies Posted November 4, 2003 Share Posted November 4, 2003 I first read about geocaching in Jolly's Knights of the Dinner Table and have been active ever since. I've always loved hiking and such, but caching gives me a reason to go out almost every weekend. Quote Link to comment
+Mickey225 Posted November 6, 2003 Share Posted November 6, 2003 quote:Originally posted by Geo Ho (aka - Cache Wench): quote:Originally posted by EMTJeepers:TrackerGirl, I think Banshee was depicting Mopar's two girlfriends meeting at a cache site. Uh huh . . . LOL Keep on stashin' and I'll keep on cachin'! LMAO!!! Mickey225...converting people to geocaching one GPS at a time! Quote Link to comment
+TrackerGirl Posted November 7, 2003 Author Share Posted November 7, 2003 ahh... I see... a cat fight. Who wants Wailing Banshee to give us the coords so we can go watch next time? Quote Link to comment
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