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Remember The First Time You "did It"?


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My son and I was hiking with the Boy Scouts on Dreher Island,SC when our scout master(none other than "The Commissar")informed me that there was stuff hidden in the woods.What!I've never heard of such!I'm still a newbie but love it.We went to four caches that day.Thanks "Commissar".

Edited by sodiee
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The first cache I hunted was called, ironically enough, My First In Mid GA. It was 02-15-04. We'd just left the museum where I'd taken my son for the day. I'd been jones'en to look for a cache and this one was less than a mile away. It took me about 30 mins to find it. It'd would probably take me 5 mins now. I found my first TB .. a key to unlock another cache. I didn't have any swag so I didn't trade at all. Now I wish I had just to have the memento. :D

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Yep, Sept of 2001. Read about geocaching in the newspaper and thought it was a great idea. Ordered my Legend and the day I received it, I checked for nearby caches. The closest was very near my house, so I headed there with my stepdaughter. I had no idea how to use the unit, so I walked around trying to match the coordinates (not a good way to do it). Somehow we found it, but it took a good while and to this day I think it's why my stepdaughter has no love for the sport.

 

I took a military insignia from the 42nd Infantry "Rainbow Division" and left a pen light. My stepdaughter insisted on including an acorn :D . I still have the patch somewhere I think.

 

And it turned out that the owner of the cache was a friend and former co-worker of my brother and dad. When he saw my name in the log, I received an e-mail from him asking if I was related to X and Y (not their real names). It turned out that they served together on the police force in my home town. Small world!

 

The cache is still there.

Edited by briansnat
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Our first find has been archived as well, which is a real bummer. I've got to look around the house for our first trade item. It was a Noo-noo keychain (from the Teletubbies), and I'm sure we still have it somewhere.

 

On a brighter note, I was able to adopt our second find when the owner moved out of the area, and it is one of the oldest caches in Iowa. I also found my first Travel Bug in that cache.

 

We had our second find the day after I got laid off from my job. Finally, yesterday, 106 caches later, I was called back to work. This will put a crimp in the geocaching time, but will be much better for the wallet!

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The first official cache we did was an event cache, Pueblo Grande Museum. Mike had to work that day, and I was in a sorry state. We had gotten our GPS on Tues, had our home hit by a microburst on Wed, then some teen ran a stop sign and plowed into my truck on Thurs. Her friends tried to blame me for it. That Saturday, I was determined to go to the event cache, but I was depressed, injured, and not in the mood for socializing. I was also a bit scared to drive to the event cache.

 

The cache we consider our first geocache is our second cache, Put Me in Coach. Mike and I did this together, and I will not forget the thrill of finding it in the bush. It was a regular cache with a lot of goodies in it. We took a half dollar.........and sadly spent it later on. I wish I had kept it. The cache was archived later on. A shame really, I liked watching that cache for newbie geocachers.

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My first was a two-part multi, rated 4.5/4.5. In reality, I'd call it a 2/2. My dad and I took nothing, left a Dunkin Donuts coupon. I passed up one of the area's first, and still coolest, sig items -- a Tibetan prayer flag from geocacher Clatmandu.

 

Back then, I could count the number of caches within 20 miles on two hands. It's nice to have so many around now, but still, in a way, I miss those days.

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My first cache was a virtual Red Canyon Cache. I went with my family while my husband and I were home for a visit; that trip was actually the first time they met my husband. Our 2nd cache (first traditional cache) wasVista. I left a deck of cards and took Bumbling Bee TB. I still watch that TB and it's still going strong. I was just thinking that when I'm home in a couple of weeks that maybe I'd stop by that cache, and just post a note. It would be cool if it could be on my 1st anniversary of caching, but I'll miss that by one day. Too bad I'm starting classes on my 1st anniversary.

 

McWeb

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My first cache was Tinker Toy on March 30, 2002. I left a Pewter Triceratops and a Canadian Loonie and took a plastic frankenstein figure (had to look at my log to remember what the trade items were). That cache was archived about 6 weeks after that.

 

My second cache that day was Sam's Surprise, which is still active. I left the toy Frankenstein there and took a Marvin the Martian. The Marvin was later released as a travelbug.

 

Good times.

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Ahhhh yes...her name was

 

What? Oh! Geocached? Sure do, our very first was a virtual, then while doing our 3rd one later on we ran into not 1 or 2 but about 5 other cachers while finding it (an individual and a group of 4)! We had a good time talking to and getting pointers from them.

Most guy's firsts are virtuals. :D

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Ahhhh yes...her name was

 

What? Oh! Geocached? Sure do, our very first was a virtual, then while doing our 3rd one later on we ran into not 1 or 2 but about 5 other cachers while finding it (an individual and a group of 4)! We had a good time talking to and getting pointers from them.

Most guy's firsts are virtuals. :D

hahahaha

lol!!

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My first find was The Big Concrete Hill cache, and I didn't make a trade. (Still don't trade very often). I went back to check on it a month later and it was gone, so it bacame the first cache that I archived also. :D The hider of that cache dropped out of the game, with only left that is very active and seems to be maintained by other cachers.

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Ahhhh yes...her name was

 

What? Oh! Geocached? Sure do, our very first was a virtual, then while doing our 3rd one later on we ran into not 1 or 2 but about 5 other cachers while finding it (an individual and a group of 4)! We had a good time talking to and getting pointers from them.

Most guy's firsts are virtuals. :lol:

hahahaha

lol!!

So do we believe that guy who said his first was a multi?

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Ahhhh yes...her name was

 

What? Oh! Geocached? Sure do, our very first was a virtual, then while doing our 3rd one later on we ran into not 1 or 2 but about 5 other cachers while finding it (an individual and a group of 4)! We had a good time talking to and getting pointers from them.

Most guy's firsts are virtuals. :P

hahahaha

lol!!

So do we believe that guy who said his first was a multi?

Nope, it was probably a Locationless....she wasn't even there.... :lol:

 

Okay, back on track now... (beat Keystone to the punch with my self-moderating) :P

Edited by TEAM 360
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I had to check my home page to make sure what I had taken. It was 6/7/02. This was the first cache using my new GPS. It lead me right to the cache. I thought this hobby was going to be easy. Boy was I wrong. I don't remember my GPS being right on even once since then.

 

I left a computer game and to Elvish Archers signature item. An arrow head, and yes I still have it. In fact when I cache these days signature items are the first thing I look and trade for.

 

:lol:

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Here's my first log at Thicken Orange Juice

 

This was our first ! We had a blast!! My 3 kids and I started out @ 4:10 pm and finally found it at @7:18. We messed up at the first site so had to back track and start again. The clues were great and made us think a bit. I tried to let the kids do most of the work (except for driving, of course). The second site was really neat. We must have spent 45 mins there until it finally hit me...look for the artist that created this wonderful thing! I had never used a GPS . Once we cleared that hurdle it was all down hill from there. The final site was easy to find and with the exception of getting eaten alive by mosquitos it was fun looking at all the stuff. I filled out the log and took a pic of the kids with the camera that is in there. We took the Weezerville.com medallion and left a 1961 Topps baseball card. Great time had by all...we're hooked!!

 

Notice how long it took us to find it....3 hours! LOL!

Edited by Sox Fan
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Boy do I remember it, my wife was out of town when I ran across caching in the wheres george forums. I bought a yellow etrex within hours of first looking at gc.com and was off on the hunt. Took me three seperate trips, each about 2hrs, after work for three days finally found it on 8-17-01 and left a george, took nothing and signed the log. It was a 12 stage multi cache, I decided upon that one because I thought I knew the park fairly well, little did I know how much more there was to that park. Almost three years later and my wife has grudgingly accepted that I may get some use out of that crazyyellow thing and thinks I'm the craziest nerd she ever met.

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MY first cache ever was Mt. Pisgah Cache in VT. It was two days after Christmas and I was on the Garmin website looking around and they had a link to the geocaching.com site. Was on my way that day towards Mt. Pisgah so I decided to grab the cache, it sounded like fun, while with the snow and being a newbie it took considerably longer than I thought it would. :lol: I finally got out of the woods in the dark, and barely made it back home (an hour drive) in time for my then Finance's office Christmas party. I took a C-link for a chain, I think I still have it, I left a winning scratch lottery ticket and a candy cane (I learned later that was bad)

 

Our first cache as the Treasure Trackers was in Green Mt. National Forest, I don't remeber the name and I don't feel like looking it up now, but it is by the little pond about two miles up the trail. My brother and wife accompanied me on this one so as we were writing in the log we needed to come up with a team name, and the Tresaure Trackers were born. Sadly I'm the only one that caches regularly, even after moving to Colorado, so the plurality of our name doesn't work as well anymore, but I'm too attached to it to change again.

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Can you remember the first time you geocached? What was the very first trade item you took? Do you still have it? (Newbies, take note: SAVE your first trade item, after a while you will be glad you did)...

The first time I cached, I thought this was something of a joke. I couldn't beleive that I was out in the woods, looking for a big bucket and that it was really there. I figured once I got there, Candid Camera's crew would be there to surprise us. We went in March 2001, and in the bucket was a March Madness whistle that my 5 year old son had to have. Oy. It finally broke because it became brittle from being outside all of the time in the sun as we made him keep it out there and blow it out there. :lol:

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I still remember my first cache very well like it was last weekand, it was back in July of 2001. It was the "Connetquot River Park Cache" and is still active. The item I took was a VCR tape called "Navy Seals". After I watched it I placed it into another cache.

 

Bayonets4u

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I'll never forget it. June 30th, 2003. I read about geocaching in our local paper and checked the site. I knew the area well enough to grab my first cache without a GPS. It was a micro and I had nothing small to put in it so believe it or not I TNLNSL. The second and third caches were virtuals. The fourth cache I took a set of jacks. Dropped them off in the next cache I found I think.

 

An interesting side note is 18 of the first 50 caches were hidden by the person above me. Thanks Bayonets! :D

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The first cache I 'found' was a micro under a bench near my work. The scarequotes are because it wasn't the first cache I logged. I zeroed in on that spot, knew the cache was there, but there was always someone sitting on the bench. I must have checked on the spot ten times before I actually had the chance to sign the log.

 

By then, I'd already properly logged an LPC, which had at least a little interest: It was on a pole on the top of a parking structure, near the corner. I looked all around on street level for quite a while before I decided to try the 4th floor.

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My first was in October... We were at the St Jacobs Farmers market waiting to meet a few friends, and i was playing around on my iPhone and with the Groundspeak app that I had just downloaded the night before. They called, said they were going to be 15 minutes late and I noticed there was a cache just outside of the market. We went for it having no idea what we were looking for. It was a micro in the woods.

 

IMG_0573.jpg

 

I do have the first piece of swag still as well. It was a glass bead zipper pull that I attached to my GPSr.

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The first time I saw a cache was with my daughter. We were hiking in a regional park in search of labyrinths and she wanted to show me this box that she had found with her class while on a field trip. I still have her picture from that location on my profile. It is worth more to me than whatever swag we might have traded that day.

 

d845b7f4-1fd8-4089-ac7b-f9824b350565.jpg

 

Sixth months later I found my first cache on purpose when we were looking for something to do and I happened to go online and noticed a cache in an area that I frequently hike. I knew right where it would be, so we set out and found it.

 

Three months after that I found my first cache with a gpsr. I had been trying to find caches in areas where I thought I could identify the location from the description. This was in the days before google earth and the maps on this site were rudimentary at best. I met my match, Got a used Magellan. And it took me right to the container, on the other side of the trail from where I had been looking. I thought "so this is what it's like" and knew I would find more.

 

I had so much fun that I set out to see what else was around me. A virtual at the ferry terminal. A "moving cache" that happened to be in the hills behind my house. All of these became firsts as well.

Edited by mulvaney
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My first cache find was August 31, 2005. It was a micro hanging in a tree. The name of the cache was "FOUR FACES". I was FTF on the cache, there was a note in the cache to go into the nearby store for the First to find certificate. I still have that certificate on the wall behind my monitor.

That cache didn't last too long. The same hider put out another cache within 15 feet a couple years later and I was FTF on that one too.

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Ahhhh yes...her name was

 

What? Oh! Geocached? Sure do, our very first was a virtual, then while doing our 3rd one later on we ran into not 1 or 2 but about 5 other cachers while finding it (an individual and a group of 4)! We had a good time talking to and getting pointers from them.

Most guy's firsts are virtuals. :D

 

Pretty funny there, past self. :lol:

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My first time was last spring. I found the application on my phone, noticed there were some nearby and I called my friend up and said we just had to try it. And we didn't get it at all. We didn't get what we were looking for or what would be in it. I think we signed our real names to it. We traded stuff for stuff because we just do that. Then we went on to find a few more. After the second one we created an account here and logged the caches (shortly after we split into 2 accounts).

 

First cache was archived and then revived in a new listing. So we relived our find doing that one again. Second cache I have used a few times to drop bugs at.

 

I don't see us doing an anniversary cache this year with all the snow. We had a very early melt last year... this year not so much.

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Our first cache was "What Lies Beneath" in Cheeseman Park in the middle of Denver, CO. It was a log-only cache. To be honest, I cannot remember what the first piece of swag was that I traded. (I know... bad bad, it wasn't that long ago!) Tomorrow is our 5th geo-versary! I do remember in I think the third or fourth cache we found, we saw a Jeep TB (yes, the coveted jeep TBs) and because we didn't know what to do with a TB yet we were afraid to take it. Heh.

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Ahhhh yes...her name was

 

What? Oh! Geocached? Sure do, our very first was a virtual, then while doing our 3rd one later on we ran into not 1 or 2 but about 5 other cachers while finding it (an individual and a group of 4)! We had a good time talking to and getting pointers from them.

Most guy's firsts are virtuals. :lol:

hahahaha

lol!!

So do we believe that guy who said his first was a multi?

 

I wonder what the record is for the number of times someone "did it" in 24 hours...

 

Or the number of days in a row when someone "did it"...

 

My first was in January 2007. I don't recall what I left as swag but I took a "Geo Chicks" sig item and still have it. About a year later the CO posted a message that she was looking for someone to adopt the cache so I jumped at the chance.

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It took me awhile to clue in this was a bumped thread from 2004. I couldn't figure out why someone found there first "just back in December" had been a member of the site for more than seven years. :laughing:

 

I remember my first cache. Up until the moment I moved one of the rocks and saw the plastic tacklebox stuck in a little alcove I didn't know if the hobby was real or just an Internet hoax designed to see if you could fool people to go out into the woods to look for things.

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Our first cache was owned by a policeman (at the time) in the town we live in. As we were rummaging/trading/signing, one of his counterparts arrived to question why we were lurking in the bushes in the dark. LINK We were all laughing in short order, and we still get a chuckle thinking about it, especially when the owner is around.

 

Later!

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March 28, 2002 by GIDEON-X

 

Had a nice early morning walk to find this one had to do a bit of backtracking ---oh well Found it at 0835 Hours (cold & cloudy day) I took the small knife. Re-placed the container, plus put in a U.S. Flag Pin, a caribener key ring & a plastic shoe horn.xxx (and yes I still have the kinfe--tagged and on then shelf)

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I remember. I was very pregnant, in fact I gave birth to the Bitty One 13 days later. But I was bored. Very very bored. Geocaching had been knocking around in my head for many years, so I joined the site and looked up a cache near me. Right across the street, actually. I didn't have a GPSr at the time, but I've lived in this town the vast majority of my life so I printed up a google map and came back with the smiley. 11 days later I had my Trusty GPS80(MIL) in hand, and two days after that I had a healthy baby boy. Fun times.

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I heard about geocaching from a neighbor (bobolu) on July 30, 2005 and found my first cache (hidden by bobolu) on August 8, 2005. I took a blue carabiner and a sig wooden nickel left by The Badge and the Butterfly (now caching under the name Ed & Julie). I left a US flag pin and a dollar. The carabiner still hangs from my caching bag and the wooden nickel is part of my sig item collection.

 

When I found that first geocache I just sat there in the sunlight looking at the swag and marveling that such things as geocaches had been all around me for years without me ever having any idea they were there. I thought it was awesome.

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I had just gotten home from a trip to Washington state (Spokane area) and took a day off of work to relax and hang out with my boyfriend. He had recently gotten into geocaching through his close friends at work - and had just found his first cache a few weeks prior. We were sitting around watching TV and he says "hey, let's go for a walk." It was a nice day, so why not, right? I didn't know initially what the purpose of the walk was, but it took us along a railroad track (yeah, yeah, I know this is frowned upon) and right up to a bridge with a hidden cache. He starts looking around then proceeds to explain just what he's doing. Me, being a huge fan of being outdoors and scavenger hunts - I'm all over this. I think this is the coolest idea ever. We find the cache after 10 minutes of searching (should have taken less than 2 minutes, but hey, we were newbies), sign the log, and spot a trackable in the cache. Trackable goal - to go to rural Washington state near Spokane!!!! D'oh! :blink: I was just there!!! Crap!

 

We spent the rest of the afternoon driving around looking for caches. And we continue to drive around and look for caches most weeknights, weekends, weekdays off, lunch breaks...uh...night time. It's seriously addictive.

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Back in the old days the closest cache was about 30 miles from my home. I was working out of town and had seen an article about Geocaching in the paper, bought a GPS 12 and Saturday went to find it. Here's my log from that first cache:

 

"My first cache find. Had given up and went back to the parking lot and somebody told me they are closing Burgess Falls after today so I went back and learned a little more about my GPS 12 and found it. A lot easier after I sort of figured out what I was doing with the GPS. I took nothing and left one of my University of Tenneessee GoBigOrange ballpoint pens. Thanks, Mike"

 

(and yes, I believe that those were the good old days of Geocaching)

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