How Did You Feel???

[+Snoogans]

Share. I'm not ready to tell my story yet....sniff

 

Sn gans

[+JMBella]

My first found cache is thankfully still active and being found. However, my first hidden cache was recently washed away to sea and I had to archive that one. It was truly a sad day.

[+mtn-man]

Not only is mine still active, but I assist the person who placed it and have changed it from tupperware to an ammo box. He lives out of state (placed long before vacation caches were against the guidelines), so I am happy to assist. It is a special cache and I hope I can help it live on.

[+New England n00b]

I haven't hid yet, but I was miffed to be the last-to-find at a cache. I really liked that cache. *cries*

[+crzycrzy]

Ummmm...

I found a dead man at a cache and had it archived.

I would say I feel bad, but I felt worse for the dead fellow...

Log...

[+Jamie Z]

My two first hunts (which I didn't find) have been archived. I later found the container for one of them near the location on a subsequent hunt a while later. I didn't care much when either was archived...

 

My first find is still active. I was first finder!

 

Jamie

[+Laserman]

My first find is still active. It was archived a while back but the good folks in the area gave such an outcry that the approver who archived it allowed it to come back. I take back all the nasty things I thought about that approver when it was first archived and am glad I kept them to myself.

 

I found it in August of 2001, its a 12 stage cache and took three trips to the park, and a minumum of 6hrs, to find it. It also taught me a lot about the etrex that I had just bought, still havn't seen the need to upgrade ol' yeller.

[+CYBret]

I found a dead man at a cache and had it archived.

I would say I feel bad, but I felt worse for the dead fellow...

Similar to my own, though I wasn't the one who found him.

 

This was my first find, and is still, to me, a great example of a good cache for a first find. It was hidden under a covered bridge in a roadside park (the bridge was not used for anything but foot traffic). As the news story read, a trucker stopped here to stretch his legs and apparently had a heart attack while on the bridge. My guess is that the police made a sweep of the whole area and found the box.

 

Great box too, and hidden well. The bridge really screwed with reception, so it was a matter of triangulating between points until you narrowed the search.

 

When I saw that it was listed as missing I had to head out and see for myself. Darn the luck, it was gone. I contacted the owners about replacing it for them, but they wanted to do it themselves. Later another cache was hidden 160 feet away, so the original placers simply let it go permanently disabled.

 

It was sad, really. My first 5 finds are all disabled now. Quite a shame.

 

Bret

[+TotemLake]

Ummmm.... still mulling it over considering there's another in the same general area giving me fits.

[+eddthejailer]

my first find was caching on the square in paoli indiana and it was a micro but i will never forget it.and yes it was archived soon there after when the christmas lights went up on the square.the owner didnt want to replace it and archived it so i hurried to place chaching on the square with edd at its exact location.so in a way i revived the cache but i did hide it differently and care for it alot better.lol

 

edited to add this made my first hide also.

Edited April 13, 2004 by eddthejailer

[+Webfoot]

Share. I'm not ready to tell my story yet....sniff

 

Sn gans

Interesting question. I really wasn't thinking about it at the time as it was destroyed in the devastating fires that swept through SoCal last October. I'm actually thinking about creating a new cache in the same general area now that the vegetation has started to grow back.

[+briansnat]

My first find is still there 2 years and 8 months later.

[+mtn-man]

My first 5 finds are all disabled now. Quite a shame.

 

Bret

That was interesting to look at -- my first five finds.

 

1st -- still active.

2nd -- disabled about 8 months, gone.

3rd -- still active, but owner has moved.

4th -- lost, but adopted and revived.

5th -- may be confused with a letterbox, owners long gone.

 

The 2nd find was the first one I went on with my wife and the puppymonster. It is sad to see that one go. My log on the 5th one is pretty funny.

 

Wedged in Stone Mountain Log

[+Allen_L]

The cache was a "vacation" cache hidden (8/16/2000) before there was a geocaching.com. When it went missing and a "should be archived" log entry was made. I requested and got permission from the owner to adopt it.

Edited April 13, 2004 by AllenLacy

[+Enspyer]

This thread is very pertainent! My first find went was doing okay until 3 different groups tried to log it yesterday and couldn't find it. I was concerned, because it shouldn't have been THAT hard, so I hopped on my bike and went to see if I could find it. It was definately gone... ...I looked around for traces of the cache but you couldn't tell that anything had ever been there.

[colonelby]

Hye,

 

(It was the first cache I placed)

 

My first cache lasted about a week. I went to check it on one evening and found someone had taken the cache and replaced it with a nice warm bag of their dog's stool. I got quite hyper and angry but no one was hurt.

 

colonelby

Edited April 13, 2004 by colonelby

[+The Cheeseheads]

My first find had to be archived because it turned out to have been unknowingly placed in a Wisconsin state natural area.

 

My second find found is still going strong, over two years later.

[+FFC]

Due to the 1 year time limit on caches in our local metropark system most of them have been archived for a while. I had to go to our 12th cache to find one that was still active. Actually 13 was a much better cache and is still going strong.

[+GatoRx]

My first find was a micro, and took a good 45-60 minutes to find. I was the person to find it though, despite being with a seasoned cacher and a few other newbies (they already had a few under their belts though.) That one was replaced in a different part of the same cemetary a few months later, but the owner used the same cache page for the second cache for some reason. No problem, I just logged a find on the second one as well. Then the owner decided to redo the cache a third time, and deleted all the previous finds. 'Public outcry' eventually led to him archiving it.

 

I was a little sad when the first one was replaced, but enjoyed its replacement. When the second version was replaced and logs were deleted, I was just too p.o.'ed to even bother hunting for the new one.

[+JMBella]

5.) 7/3/2003 WRR-1 Kalers Pond

4.) 7/2/2003 Down by the Bay

3.) 7/2/2003 W2-3 The Forgotten War...

2.) 7/1/2003 Sticky Situation

1.) 6/30/2003 Gazebo - H4

 

They're all still active!

[Find Now, Log Later?]

Of the first 10 caches I found, dating back to August of 2001, 5 remain active, including my first find.

 

Unfortunately, only 4 of those cache owners remain active, and the maintenance of their caches has fallen into the "public domain." I don't feel too good about that.

 

But it did cause me to check through a good number of my old finds, and it was pretty depressing discovering how many people placed a cache or two and after a few days, weeks, or months never logged into the site again.

[GeoMadness]

OK Snoogans, now let's hear your story.

[+hikemeister]

Indeed, let's have the full-length sob story.

[+Renegade Knight]

Last time I checked it was still going strong. It's called Initial Point and a lot of geocachers seem to pick that one as their first in my area. My only regret is that it seems to get easier over time for people to find...

[+The Leprechauns]

My first find has tremendous sentimental value. This little 1/1 driveby cache was placed in the nature center that's across the street from my townhouse complex. When I discovered Geocaching.com, my daughter and I dashed out of the house to find this cache before buying a GPS. We missed the cache on the first search, then spent an hour hiking in the nature center for the very first time before returning to find the cache. It took geocaching to get us to visit a beautiful area just a quarter mile from our doorstep. That experience is symbolic of everything that followed. Who knows, if that cache had not been planted, maybe we wouldn't have gotten hooked and found the next 600 and hidden 24 of our own. Think about that the next time you criticize lame driveby caches. This one took us two hours to find!

 

Anyways, in January the cache was reported missing by none other than CCCooperAgency, who wanted to drop off a travel bug for me. They left it on my front porch instead! I could NOT let this sentimental cache die. I use it for giving people directions to my house. ("Take the turn onto the street across the road from Bonnie Blink cache.") The owners, who I consider to be good GeoFriends, are not the world's most diligent cache maintainers. So, we replaced the cache for them to keep it alive. On the way back, Little Lep fell off her Razor Scooter while going down the hill and banged her knee up pretty badly. We've shed blood for our first cache!

 

Our finds #1 through #6, all from June 2002, are still active. The streak breaks at our find #7.

[Radman Forever]

#5 (1.5/1.5) 6 Jul '02 Keystone by Keystone Two (GC6D20)

Michigan (United States) 29 Nov 03

15 Sep 02

 

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#4 (1.5/1.5) 9 Jul '02 Eye of the Triangle by DaleH (GC6EEA)

Michigan (United States) 01 Sep 03

08 Sep 02

 

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#3 (2/1.5) 22 Jun '01 Geels Shrine of the Unwanted Carpet by Jason Sales (GCD46)

Michigan (United States) 03 Jan 04

08 Sep 02

 

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#2 (1.5/1.5) 8 Jul '02 Big Ron's Sandbox by Big Ron (GC6EC6)

Michigan (United States) 26 Oct 02

07 Sep 02

 

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#1 (1.5/2) 29 Jun '02 Marl Lake Cache by Superdad, Supermom and Supergirl (GC6A2C)

Michigan (United States) 31 Mar 04

07 Sep 02

 

The ones in bold are archived.

[Nudecacher]

My first cache find, Fossil Rocks, was archived shortly after I posted the log. The careful scrutiny of the picture with it caused TPTB to notice that it was right beside an active railroad track. I helped retrieve the archived cache, but all the early pictures that I logged were removed. The cache being on the trail to a traditional nude beach was what got me looking into geocaching and creating my nudecacher account. I still stop at the location when I go by it.

[+Team Flying Dachshund]

My first find is still there. My cache experiances seem boreing compared to yours. Is it just me or do people die around geocaches more often than natural?

ps does my avitar work?

[+Snoogans]

Indeed, let's have the full-length sob story.

The end happened for me on the same date that I started this thread, except that it was a year ago. I had been caching for just six weeks so it was a traumatic experience. MY FIRST CACHE FIND.....GONE!!!! OH THE HUMANITY!!! The history of my introduction to the sport WIPED OUT! Actually the log book survived. (There's a park road at those coords now.) Three of my first five finds have been archived.

 

This is how it all started:

 

DISCOVERY: Late, on 2/28/03, I discovered a link to GC.COM from the Vermilion Valley Resort Website. I clicked on it thinking it was some sort of photo contest. BOY was I wrong.

 

FIRST HUNT / FIRST DNF: I took the first opportunity on 3/1/2003, at about 8:OOAM, I was on the hunt for the nearest cache to my house. (Less than a mile as the crow flies. About a 2 mile drive.) Land-O-Lakes by TxsYank. SKUNKED after about 3 hours in the cold and wet. I was just watching the numbers change and trying to match them to the cache page. (I hadn't discovered GOTO, on a GPS that I'd had since 1996.) I even tried UTM.

 

MY CHERRY FIND: On 3/2/2003, I went looking again a bit earlier. It was colder, wetter, and now it was windy. I was thinking about punting on first down and going home. There were geese in the park and I had a bunch of old bread to feed them, so I decided to do that before leaving. While feeding the honkers a red truck pulled up and a guy got out leaving a rather P.O.'d looking woman inside. He produced a yellow device and took off in a direction where I thought the cache should be. OK! Now I had to stay, but I didn't want that guy (Lvispelvis) to show me where it was. I kept feeding the honkers and waited for him to get outta sight. I never saw him again that day and three hours later I had some cool ideas for places to hide a cache, but still no cherry find. Skunked again! I said EFF! this EFFIN! GEOCRAP! I went home to watch Jeff Gordon open a big can of NASCAR whoopa**. I vowed NEVER to geocache again.

 

SOOOOO, about three hours go bye and I call a friend, at work, to read the latest log from Lvispelvis. About ten minutes later I'm back on the hunt. I discovered the goto feature while waiting for a sat lock. DOH! There's a friggin arrow and everything. About ten minutes later, armed with Lvis' log, I found Land-O-Lakes. The rest is geocaching history......

 

(I got revenge on TxsYank with 2 of my 4 caches that I later placed in the same area.)

 

I became really fond of that park and I have 4 hides there now and a C.I.T.O. event scheduled for this Sunday. I talked with the Parks Director about it. He loves the whole concept and he wants me to showcase gecaching for a meeting of Park Directors from all over the state of Texas! He will hunt his first cache on Sunday as well.

 

There is a hint that there is more to this story on one of my links, but that can wait until later.

 

Sn gans

[+Corp Of Discovery]

Hmmm.... it appears that the first 25 caches we found have been archived.