300th geocache last week! Woot woot! And hello everyone!

[+Spudyr]

Just got my 300th cache... and i am new to almost the whole website! I'm really happy and did not even once think that I would be able to make it to this milestone. I've had so many fun adventures and made so many fun friends, and I hope that I will be able to geocache for a long time... maybe one day i'll even hit 20,000 geocaches! (I doubt it, but one can only hope!). I guess this is a hello... and a celebration? I have no idea but I would love to say thank you to everyone - people close to me, people far away from me - people on the other side of the continent... thank you so much for making this such an amazing and supportive community, and I hope I have many other fun geocaching experiences to come. Thank you everyone!
Spudyr!    

[+The Jester]

Congratulations and welcome to the obsession!  I can remember back when we started how exciting it was to hit x00 milestones (now it's x000 but I have 20 years on you).  It didn't seem I'd get close to 10K finds back then, but keep plugging away and have fun.

 

ETA: a contraction that reverses the meaning of the sentence.

Edited April 20, 2021 by The Jester

[+Spudyr]

1 minute ago, The Jester said:

Congratulations and welcome to the obsession!  I can remember back when we started how exciting it was to hit x00 milestones (now it's x000 but I have 20 years on you).  It did seem I'd get close to 10K finds back then, but keep plugging away and have fun.

wow, almost 10,000 finds?! Thats amazing... and yes, I'm already obsessed! I'll definitely have fun with this and hopefully one day i'll be able to hit that monumental milestone    

[+The Jester]

And I haven't been really trying.  I have friends who started about the same time with twice (or more) the find count.  It really depends on how obsessed you are and how much you like (and do, once this pandemic eases) road trips.

[+Spudyr]

Just now, The Jester said:

And I haven't been really trying.  I have friends who started about the same time with twice (or more) the find count.  It really depends on how obsessed you are and how much you like (and do, once this pandemic eases) road trips.

Ohh yes, I have definitely seen those giant roads with geocaches on them about every metre... I can see them snaking around the outskirts of the map, and after this pandemic eases, I will definitely look forward to completing them! And wow, you havent been really trying? Thats an understatment... 10,000 caches is quite a big number! You need to give yourself more credit!!    

[+justintim1999]

Now you've done it.   You've passed the point of no return.   300 is a great milestone.   Wait till you see what the next 300 will bring.   

[+Spudyr]

1 hour ago, justintim1999 said:

Now you've done it.   You've passed the point of no return.   300 is a great milestone.   Wait till you see what the next 300 will bring.   

Haha... I hope to make it to the next 300! And yes... I’m starting to wonder if I’ll do this for the rest of my life... that would be a nice life!

[+MNTA]

Congradulations! 300 was the turning point for me no looking back got another 500 the next year. Be careful I got addicted to challenge caches, then you really start doing crazy things like 1000 in a year last year, no plans on doing that again.

 

 

I see you are from BC. Funny story I was camping up in northern Washington and decided I wanted to get my first cache in BC. So I went across the border to grab a cache. Was going to grab lunch but the weather was lousy so headed back after finding a quick two. In all was in Canada for less than thirty minutes. Well the US guys found that a little suspicious and spent an hour while they searched my car. So got a cool memory, a few smileys, oh and duty free Scotch.

[+justintim1999]

16 hours ago, Spudyr said:

Haha... I hope to make it to the next 300! And yes... I’m starting to wonder if I’ll do this for the rest of my life... that would be a nice life!

The beauty of this activity is you can put it down and pick it up any time you'd like.   For the past couple of years I've focused on maintaining my caches.  Just last week I found my first cache in over a year.   My intention was to grab a single cache in an area I frequent often.   Wound up traveling to a location close by and grabbing three more.  If I hadn't had things to do at home I'd probably still be out there.   It was nice to still get that same feeling after all that time.   

[+Spudyr]

49 minutes ago, justintim1999 said:

The beauty of this activity is you can put it down and pick it up any time you'd like.   For the past couple of years I've focused on maintaining my caches.  Just last week I found my first cache in over a year.   My intention was to grab a single cache in an area I frequent often.   Wound up traveling to a location close by and grabbing three more.  If I hadn't had things to do at home I'd probably still be out there.   It was nice to still get that same feeling after all that time.   

Right, it’s not like an urgent and stressful activity... that’s why I really like it! I’m trying to get 365 caches this year though so I can say that I got one cache everyday for a year! So maybe I’ve got a little stress but it’s definitely a type of stress that I like 

[+justintim1999]

Challenges may be a good way to accomplish that.     I remember doing a cache called "The Motherload" which was a mystery cache.    It involved finding around 30 or 40 caches.  Each cache had an off set number in it pertaining to the missing east and west coords to the Motherload.   That was one of my favorite series of caches and although it tool a little time to finish,  I wound up with a bunch of finds and a boatload of memories.  

 

The secret is to cache as long as your having fun.   If it becomes a chore,  put it down for a while and focus on maybe hiding a few of your own.   Cache ownership can be just as rewarding.   Good luck and stay safe.      

[+Spudyr]

Just hit 400!

[+CheekyBrit]

400! ????? 
You're on fire. Keep it up Spudyr! That was a fast jump from 300.

 

Dumb thought: Being a bit of a geek, at first I read that as 400 factorial, which is 6.403 x 10^868
With 22 million or so seconds in your life, that is still over a googol geocaches per second your entire life. Impressive.

[+Spudyr]

On 5/25/2021 at 7:57 AM, CheekyBrit said:

400! ????? 
You're on fire. Keep it up Spudyr! That was a fast jump from 300.

 

Dumb thought: Being a bit of a geek, at first I read that as 400 factorial, which is 6.403 x 10^868
With 22 million or so seconds in your life, that is still over a googol geocaches per second your entire life. Impressive.

Woah! That’s so cool that you thought of that! That is really awesome! 

[+Spudyr]

Haha wow! Just hit my 500th find! WOOTWOOT! Also made my 500th by finding the most devilishly evil cache EVER!! I’m so happy!!

[+niraD]

6 hours ago, Spudyr said:

Haha wow! Just hit my 500th find! WOOTWOOT! Also made my 500th by finding the most devilishly evil cache EVER!! I’m so happy!!

Congratulations. I fondly recall finding a self-proclaimed "evil" cache for my 666th find. It was a difficult "hidden in plain sight" camouflage cache. I loved it, but knowing that it was an "evil" hide allowed me to ignore all the "usual" places and focus my search on more devious possibilities.

[+Jayeffel]

Congratulations; I started geocaching because my brother and his two sons were cachers. I had actual discovered geocaching somehow and found a cache not far from home before I found that my brother caches. I went with my brother one day with a family gathering, this was maybe eight months after getting my first cache, not sure. 

 

Anyway, I found out that via Cacherstats.com you can check your find rating in your state, and saw the number my brother and nephews had, and to me they were high numbers. I think my brother had at the time around 100 something. My one nephew had a few more. I decided I wanted to find enough to get ahead of them. Now I have just one 1300 finds ( indcluding a few ALs) and my brother may be around 300, have not looked lately. Due to increased gas prices I need to say a bit closer to home, but have most of them. I know where one unfound cache is , just am reluctant to crawl through a drain system under a parking lot many feet --my 70 years old legs complain too much.

Edited July 23, 2021 by Jayeffel
spelling

[+Spudyr]

5 hours ago, niraD said:

Congratulations. I fondly recall finding a self-proclaimed "evil" cache for my 666th find. It was a difficult "hidden in plain sight" camouflage cache. I loved it, but knowing that it was an "evil" hide allowed me to ignore all the "usual" places and focus my search on more devious possibilities.

This one was ABSOLUTELY HORRIBLE. It was a log in a piece of duct tape attached to a wire that slid down a suuuper tiny little space in between two pieces of wood at an information sign. I don’t even know how I spotted it 

[+Lostboy1966]

I've been at it since 2005, and am barely over 300. Good on you!

[+Harry Dolphin]

Find # 10,000 after 17 years of geocaching,.

 

[+lee737]

On 7/23/2021 at 2:45 PM, Spudyr said:

Haha wow! Just hit my 500th find! WOOTWOOT! Also made my 500th by finding the most devilishly evil cache EVER!! I’m so happy!!

Well done.... I remember our 500th, our first real planned milestone cache - my son (who wasn't 7 at the time) did a bushwalk out onto a bluff for a challenge cache. Good times....

Have you been planning your milestone caches? We always have x000 ones planned, and try to find special ones on x500 too when we can....

[+SamLowrey]

4 hours ago, Lostboy1966 said:

I've been at it since 2005, and am barely over 300. Good on you!

I'm kinda like that.

[+TeamRabbitRun]

oh, I hit 600 yesterday, and it couldn't have been more inauspicious.

 

Conventional supermarket LPC about three miles from my house, with yellowjackets coming out of the open wiring post on the side.

 

At least it had an on-board pencil.

 

<sigh>

 

[+Spudyr]

On 7/24/2021 at 7:59 PM, lee737 said:

Have you been planning your milestone caches? We always have x000 ones planned, and try to find special ones on x500 too when we can....

I haven’t really, but that sounds like a good idea. A special find for a special milestone!

[+barefootjeff]

36 minutes ago, Spudyr said:

I haven’t really, but that sounds like a good idea. A special find for a special milestone!

 

I've tried to find something memorable for my milestones, especially the major ones. For my 500th find, I went to Lord Howe Island (600km east of mainland Australia) for GC5K9KJ, a 2.5/4 multi that follows the hiking trail across the northern ridge of the island:

 

 

My 1000th find was an all-day group trek through rugged wilderness across cliff-tops and gullies to GC5E7A3, a 2.5/4.5 mystery nestled high above the Hawkesbury River:

 

 

I'm currently sitting on 1342 finds so it will be at least another year before I reach 1500 but even though that's not an official milestone (the next one of those is at 2000) I'll still be looking at doing something special for it.