How did you find out about geocaching?

March 17, 2002

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.]

2.8k · March 17, 2002

It's probably a good thing the Oregonian story ran when I was on vacation at home so that I (we) had plenty of time to get hooked.

2.8k · March 17, 2002

It's probably a good thing the Oregonian story ran when I was on vacation at home so that I (we) had plenty of time to get hooked.

March 17, 2002

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.

March 17, 2002

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.

March 18, 2002

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.

March 18, 2002

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

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TeamWSMF@wsmf.org

March 18, 2002

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)!

March 18, 2002

I was watching Northwest Cable News, and they had a feature on it.

ummmm....not sure what to say here....so ummm, well errrr, uhhhh, well I guess that's it.

March 18, 2002

Read about David Ulmer in the March 7th Outdoors section Of the Lewiston Morning Tribune, Idaho. Looking forward to the Spring and some harder to find sites.

March 18, 2002

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.

March 18, 2002

I seem to remember a small article in a Backpacker Mag. But then my memory doesn't work as good as it used to.

March 18, 2002

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.

March 22, 2002

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?

March 23, 2002

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.

April 4, 2002

I found out about it in this months playboy...

2.8k · April 4, 2002

quote:
I found out about it in this months playboy..

Actually it's in next month's Playboy

I hope you get hooked!

I read the articles too, but I actually heard about the article from this forum I guess it's just a big circle.

2.8k · April 4, 2002

quote:
I found out about it in this months playboy..

Actually it's in next month's Playboy

I hope you get hooked!

I read the articles too, but I actually heard about the article from this forum I guess it's just a big circle.

April 4, 2002

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.

April 4, 2002

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.

April 4, 2002

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.

April 4, 2002

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!!! 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

-fractal

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N 45° 30.ish

W 122° 58.ish

April 4, 2002

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!!! 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

-fractal

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$frac-tri.gif$

N 45° 30.ish

W 122° 58.ish

April 13, 2002

For turning us on to geo-caching. They had a GPS and took us out on our first cache. They lent us their old GPS (for a whole year, I might add) so we could get started. If not for them, we might be just another empty sould looking for some meaning in this world. LOL

April 13, 2002

I read about Geocaching a few months back in the editors section of the comic book "Knights of the Dinner Table"

It's a great comic if you are a gamer and like role-playing games.

The Best Family

G.A.S.A.

April 13, 2002

I read about Geocaching a few months back in the editors section of the comic book "Knights of the Dinner Table"

It's a great comic if you are a gamer and like role-playing games.

The Best Family

G.A.S.A.

April 14, 2002

I was surffing the web looking for a GPSR for a friend and happened onto some web site that linked to geocaching.com. The rest (as they say) is history.

Sluggo

April 14, 2002

A friend said, hey there's this game with GPS, have you heard about it? 10 minutes later, I was at Geocaching.com

Stretch_8

24.7k · April 15, 2002

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.

April 23, 2002

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!

3.1k · April 25, 2002

Local newspaper did an article on geocaching a little over a year ago. I was online in a few minutes and owned a gps 1/2 later.

Never Squat With Yer Spurs On

April 25, 2002

Fractal and Shinwa were talking about GPS when I butted in. GeezzzzzzzZ! I never do that again. Now I got this habit; YO! DOC! Ya' listenin'?

Theta_Null

April 25, 2002

Fractal and Shinwa were talking about GPS when I butted in. GeezzzzzzzZ! I never do that again. Now I got this habit; YO! DOC! Ya' listenin'?

Theta_Null

April 25, 2002

I bought my etrex in Jan. of '01 for hunting trips. And there it sat in my closet until I found a link to project ape from the Planet of the Apes movie web site. I have used my etrex hunting once. And for geocaching, alot!

April 25, 2002

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.

April 25, 2002

Or as fractal would say " That's where I left it!"

We all wish we could find a GPS unit! Hope you get your first find soon and we know you will be hooked!

April 26, 2002

quote:
Originally posted by Maps-R-Us:
Or as fractal would say " That's where I left it!"

Oh yeah.. I did say that, didn't I?? heheh

-fractal

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$frac-tri.gif$

N 45° 30.ish

W 122° 58.ish

April 30, 2002

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...

May 7, 2002

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.

May 21, 2002

I followed the link from the Garmin GPS site while shopping for a new GPS. I had never heard of GeoCaching until then.

3.5k · May 21, 2002

The wife told me about it. She thought I might like it. I thought it sounded silly. Silly me! ...poor wife.

May 24, 2002

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)

How did you find out about geocaching?

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