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How did you find out about geocaching?


Maps-R-Us

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Reading through some recent posts I noticed some of you have given credit to either OPB's story or the Oregonian article for turning you on to geocaching. So we thought it would be interesting to find out how much impact the media coverage has had in turning out new geocachers in our area. If you heard from some other newspaper besides the Oregonian, be sure and post it.

 

As for us, we heard from a co-worker while in Phoenix on a business trip.

 

[This message was edited by Maps-R-Us on March 22, 2002 at 06:26 AM.]

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Made a rare trip into the wheres george forums one day last August, ran accros a thread discussing the placement of bills in these things called geocaches. By the time I got through the thread I knew that it involed GPS and the outdoors. A quick search on the web and I found geocaching.com, a few days later I found the yellow etrex on sale for $100. Within a week I found the Silicon Forest geocache and was hooked. It's a good thing the wife and kids were out of town that week, otherwise the would have had me put away for sure. icon_biggrin.gif

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Made a rare trip into the wheres george forums one day last August, ran accros a thread discussing the placement of bills in these things called geocaches. By the time I got through the thread I knew that it involed GPS and the outdoors. A quick search on the web and I found geocaching.com, a few days later I found the yellow etrex on sale for $100. Within a week I found the Silicon Forest geocache and was hooked. It's a good thing the wife and kids were out of town that week, otherwise the would have had me put away for sure. icon_biggrin.gif

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It was day 4 of my trip to Livingston, Montana.

I was desperately searching for someplace to camp in southern idaho. Little did i know, the whole region was barren desert. we searched everywhere. there was a lake not too far from twin falls, but the campground was full of RV-types so we moved on. just before sunset, we came upon a state park called bruneau dunes. although it was twelve bucks out of our pockets, we decided it was the best bet as it would be our first shower in almost a week.

getting bored of playing "steal the california license plates," we retreated to the campfire for PBRs and a wicked version of my famous hobo stew. the carrots didn't cook all the way through, so i brought out the gps and came up with a fun way to pass the time.

i walked just under a mile out into the desert and placed a cigarette on a tree stump, marked the position on my etrex, and headed back to camp. i hit the "goto" function and told my friend to go find my last cigarette. Two snakes and a harried park ranger later, we found it.

when i got to a computer a month later, i realized that someone would have thought of this before i did, so i went to google and searched for "gps" and "treasure."

sure enough, there was geocaching.com.

 

all rights reserved, all wrongs reversed

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Back last March or April I was doing my normal morning scan of informational web sites when I saw mention of geocaching. I dont remember where but it pointed me here. When I read the site I thought "Very cool idea, I need me one of them gps things". I posted it to a few mailing lists, talked about it with a friend or two and then got caught up in a few other projects.

 

Fast forward to Novemeber. Several folks I know are talking about the cool places they have been too using thier GPS and a web site called geocaching.com The light goes on over my head "Oh yeah, I forgot about that"

 

It wasnt until late January of this year that I finaly, finaly, got a little yellow eTrex.

 

-tom

 

----------------------------

TeamWSMF@wsmf.org

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Back in September 2000, someone posted a mention of it on an off-road mailing list I belong to. A quick visit to the website (which was MUCH smaller then) and I was hooked. I recall reading the logs others posted when there were but 5-10 per day (worldwide)!

 

5505_600.gif

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Newsweek used to have a page towards the front where they made updates on tech news. They listed geocaching.com as one of many cool web sites. Sounded interesting, checked out the page, and immediately called a friend who had a GPS. We went looking for the Great Scott cache, and I was hooked. That was back in July 2001.

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In the Willamette Week reading an interview of Dave Ulmer. I remember thinking he seemed reticent in his responses, like he was sorry he agreed to do the interview. I got my Etrex at West Marine and found the first Lacamas Park cache and then Great Scott all in the same evening.

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Changed the poll slightly to accomodate the high number of magazines as "print media" - didn't know there had been so many articles! The poll results indicate on-line is the most common source but the posts make it sound like magazines are number one? Or are you reading the newspaper/magazine articles on-line?

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I had a GPS that I used for hiking and fishing, for something else to use it for I would look up avaition navigation arrays(VOR's) on sectional charts and go look for them. A on-line friend and avation buff Mike Teague told me he also did that and had found something else to use them for ,he pointed me to Geocaching.com. I think there were five or six caches around the PDX/VAN area then and his(Lacamas park #1 ) was one of them. Bob G.

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I was walking along a trail one day, when Dave Ulmer jumped out from behind a stump and beat me over the head with a club. He muttered something about "dirty apes" and "geocaching" and ran off.

 

Either that, or I found it while surfing the Planet of the Apes web site last summer.

 

It's all a bit of a blur.

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icon_cool.gif My husband works a part time job where he cleans up the parking lot of a strip mall. He found a Garmin GPS 12 on the ground of this parking lot one night. I was going to try and sell it on ebay to make some money. However, first I got curious and looked up the manufacturer on the internet. They had a link to geocaching.com. I followed the link and was hooked before I even found my first cache.
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icon_cool.gif My husband works a part time job where he cleans up the parking lot of a strip mall. He found a Garmin GPS 12 on the ground of this parking lot one night. I was going to try and sell it on ebay to make some money. However, first I got curious and looked up the manufacturer on the internet. They had a link to geocaching.com. I followed the link and was hooked before I even found my first cache.
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quote:
Originally posted by Seattle Seekers: ...He found a Garmin GPS 12 on the ground of this parking lot one night...


 

That's where I left it!!! icon_wink.gif j/k

 

I found out about the whole Geocaching thing (as many others have) while checking out the Planet of the Apes website last summer... Never did go see the movie.. I was too busy caching icon_cool.gif

 

-fractal

 

-=-=-=-=-=-=-

frac-tri.gif

N 45° 30.ish

W 122° 58.ish

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quote:
Originally posted by Seattle Seekers: ...He found a Garmin GPS 12 on the ground of this parking lot one night...


 

That's where I left it!!! icon_wink.gif j/k

 

I found out about the whole Geocaching thing (as many others have) while checking out the Planet of the Apes website last summer... Never did go see the movie.. I was too busy caching icon_cool.gif

 

-fractal

 

-=-=-=-=-=-=-

frac-tri.gif

N 45° 30.ish

W 122° 58.ish

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quote:
Originally posted by oregone:

I was desperately searching for someplace to camp in southern idaho. Little did i know, the whole region was barren desert.


 

You just have to know where to go.

 

When I discovered Geocaching I had one of those moments where something you didn't even pay attention to pops into your head and I typed out "www.geocaching.com" found Initial Point, knew the spot, went out and got skunked. Told a friend I work with to have her husband go out and find it and send me a picture of the general location. Two hours later, the pictures start pouring in. He becomes one of the top cachers in the state, I fidn the one that skunked us, and get a GPS instead of a back seat for my Blazer, and the rest is history.

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It looks like friends is the most popular way to hear about this great sport of ours and that is kinda what we figured. But with all the recent publicity it has been interesting to see just what people were reading and hearing. Thanks for all the replys! If you want a chance to share yor story in person with fellow geocachers, be sure to come to the Champoeg Rendezvous in June!

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Last week, someone bought a junk car at our auction and found a GPS unit in the trunk. He thought it was an old cell phone and threw it in the trash. I dug it out because I wanted the case for a camera and discovered that it wasn't a phone, but a Garmin GPS38. A new set of batteries and it seemed to work fine. I began surfing the net to learn how to work the thing. Found a mention of geocaching at joe.mehaffey.com (what a great GPS site!) followed the link and read about a cache near me (up,up & away by kitelady). I knew I was going to be hooked when I found it the next morning. Since then, I've registered and have been reading the website and forums to learn more. This weekend I'll take the family there to find it and look for some others in the neighborhood.

Looking forward to officially logging our first find and looking for more as well as making and meeting new friends. I'm already gathering trinkets for our first cache to hide. I know a great place to put one.

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I heard about geocaching over a year ago, but I don't remember where or from who. My parents gave me an eTrex because they thought it would be fun to play around with when I go on camping trips with them. I was excited. I typed in gps+treasure hunting and google pulled up geocaching.com. Now my parents never see me because I'm gone geocaching.

 

If You Obey All The Rules You Miss All The Fun...

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Sometime in the last 6 months to a year, there was an article in one of the Seattle newspapers. My partner said, "This looks like fun" and has been bugging me to get a GPS ever since.

 

I finally broke down and got one last week. After one defective unit (wouldn't sync with the computer), and one night spent solving a software problem (again couldn't sync with the computer, but this time it was a user headspace error), We've been caching like mad women.

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A friend of mine got a GPS a while back, and even though we're both into camping and such, I didn't see all that much use in it. I mean, I don't get really wild tromping around in the wilds, and I can always find my way back to where I started (a talent I discovered while living in the Colorado Rockies), so I chalked the whole thing up to his gadget addiction.

 

Then he told me about geocaching. He'd learned about it while surfing for information on using a GPS. (He doesn't recall the specifics beyond that.) One night while he was at my house we went on line and found this site, and all of a sudden, having a GPS didn't seem like such a silly idea....

 

We went after the nearest cache that weekend, and we're both hooked now. He's agreed that as soon as he's ready to upgrade his yellow eTrex, I get to buy it, and then I'll have my own! (I recently provided him with a multi-page Garmin brochure describing all their upscale models and he's already figuring out which he wants...hehehehe)

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