Accidental Find Gets You Hooked

[+Red Clover]

I did a search and didnt come up w/ much. I was wondering, How many people start caching after accidently finding one? I'd be curious to hear the stories.

 

I heard about it from and friend as was instantly hooked btw.

[+Blind Avocado]

I was recently trying to regain my strength after a long illness, so I started hiking in a state park close to my house. One day my wife and I accidentally found this cache. At first I was not sure what it was, but on the way home I remembered something I read about caching. When I got home I searched the internet, and found geocaching.com, and even located the listing. I went back a week later and confirmed it. I had my 60c less then two weeks later.

[+idratherbehiking]

I was hiking a trail in Arkansas and found a cache by accident back in October while eating lunch at a nice overlook at the end of a trail. I wrote down the website name and went home and checked it out. I thought this would be something I could do along with my hiking. I did not get my GPSr until Christmas and have been going non-stop ever since. I have 88 finds as of today and have hidden 2 so far with plans for about 5 more hides in the near future. I am now totally addicted.

[+Mopar]

Not me, but one of the locals here in CT has a rather interesting story on how they got started, but I'd rather let them tell it themselves. Al?

[+hikemeister]

Nope, not me. Read about it on an airplane, came home and looked at the site, ordered a GPS that same day (much to the dismay of my wife), and have used it now to find over 200 caches.

[+CT Trampers]

Not me, but one of the locals here in CT has a rather interesting story on how they got started, but I'd rather let them tell it themselves. Al?

Apologies to those who have read this before.

 

My wife and I were married on the summit of Bear Mt. in CT on 10/12/01. As I was standing with my best man waiting to walk into the clearing where we we were going to be married, he noticed something in one of the scrub trees. He discovered it was a large tupperware container with some "stuff" in it. At first we thought a hiker had hidden some gear, but after finding the welcome note we soon realized it was some sort of game. The cache had a camera in it, so we snapped a few pictures of the ceremony and signed the log.

 

After returning from our honeymoon, we checked out the website and discovered that there were a couple of Geocaches near us. We found them without using a GPS, then used an REI gift certificate someone had given us for a wedding gift to by our first GPS, a Garmin Etrex.

 

Here we are 2 and 1/2 years and 469 caches later. TOTALLY addicted!

 

The Geo-gods gave us quite the wedding gift that day.

 

Unfortunately, the cache we found has since been plundered and archived, but currently there is one on the summit of Bear Mt. that is literally 20 feet from where our ceremony was!

[dutchmaster]

I was working on mtbike trails in a park and discovered 2 geocachers looking for a place to hike they're next cache. I showed them a fantastic tree nearby that was exactly what they were looking for and a couple of weeks later there was a new cache in the park along with a new geocacher.

 

(at first I only cached on weekends and then I would cache a little during the week with friends but now I need a cache fix first thing in the morning, every morning and I don't care if I'm alone. My name is dutchmaster and I'm a cacheaholic)

[+NWscout1]

Some friends accidentially found a cache and told us about it.

The family got on the GC web site and thought it was pretty cool.

Only we didn't have a GPSr.

The next day, I mentioned caching to another friend and he tells me he has a Yellow Etrex GPSr he never uses. So he gave it to me.

So off we went to do our first find, only to discover nothing! It was plundered!

We were not deterred. We went to the next another cache and found it and got hooked.

Edited April 1, 2004 by nwscout1