Page 1 of 3 123 LastLast
Results 1 to 10 of 23

Thread: Why Did You Start Geocaching?

  1. #1
    Geoark1 Guest

    Why Did You Start Geocaching?

    We found out about Geocaching in late 2000, at a time when we knew we should start doing something with retirement time on our hands. Got our GPS by January 01. Went shopping for items to leave in caches and/or to trade, had a truck load of goodies.

    We were a FTF on one and did not even know what a FTF was or what to do with it! It took 2 trips to make it count. We did not realize that No Trespassing Signs really did not mean what they said. Next day got a hub cap hamburger and went to bon voyage. WE WERE HOOKED!

    The next day way up north to get the other 2 and to place our 1st on the return home. We were on a roll, did all 3 in the State in one week end in February, the only time we have been caught up, and placed our first one on the return home.

    We began to plan 2 and 3 day outings...had to go to the Memphis area, then to Eastern OK, Southern MO to get our numbers up, by that time Arkansas began to make a showing, we could almost keep up for the remainder of the year with the State number of hides, but close only counts in horseshoes and handgernades.

    Every road trip for business, vacation, or emergency always includes a geocache find and sometimes more than one.

    Investment in Geocaching All are approximate estimates but close) 2 GPS instruments $300 ; computer mapping for lap top $39 :P ; battery for truck in area where Triple AAA won't come and get you $100 ; broken shoulder and subsequent therapy $3500 ; broken tail pipe on truck $300(don't ask) ; walking sticks from each area $300(we collect them); $$$$$s gas, motels, meals ; tailgate picnics and meeting all the Geocachers we have met.....PRICELESS

  2. #2
    Phantom_491 Guest

    How I got started.

    A couple years ago, I saw a link to Geocaching.com on another web site. I checked it out and thought it looked interesting, since I liked hiking, computers, and being outdoors.

    I then forgot about it until recently. Then one week a few months back I was trying to figure out what to do with my kids for the weekend, and a co-worker & friend of mine suggested that we go to Pinnacle Mt. That reminded me about the site. I quickly logged on and signed up. I didn't have a GPS so I asked my friend if I could borrow his GPS for the weekend. He said no problem and told me a few basics about it. I didn't know how to program it, so I just watched the numbers until they got closer and closer. My son (Squirrel21309) was the one who actually spotted the cache. Of course he had the GPS and was going a lot faster, considering I had to wait for his sister (Lil Angel). We only did one cache that day (Pinnacle of a Hunt), but I was hooked and the kids had fun.

    That was back in Feb. On the evening of April 1st, my friend that suggested the outing, and loaned me his GPS passed on, due to an undiagnosed heart condition. He was only 27 & married with 3 kids (8, 7, 1). That next day after my commander passed the news, my other co-worker and I were in the office, when some of my unit leadership came by and told us to take the rest of the day off. I didn't want to sit around the house, so I figured I go and find a cache, and dedicate that find in his honor. I found Pattern's of Force, that day.

    Since then I've found more caches, learned a lot more about this state, and met a lot of cool, and interesting people. I've enjoyed every minute of it, and look forward to more fun & interesting times.

  3. #3
    LadyEngineer Guest
    In November of 2002, I was picked to be one member of a four member training team for our new Garmin GPS backpack units. I had worked with the Trimble survey grade unites since January of 1997 but had not keep up with the civil technology very much. Other then buying my husband a Magellen 315 for hunting.

    In January of 2003, I was sent to Fort Worth for a 5 day intense train the trainer course. The instructor briefly touched on the fact that a "new" sport had been started since the military had stopped spuffin the signal and I believe he even told us of the website.

    We finished training but had to wait until the 77 units we were to do train on were delivered. They didn't arrive in the state until the first of Novemeber 2003. Our state engineer does a training for all state engineers every December and ask me and one of the other trainers to do a presentation on the new units. I wanted to make it fun, not just a boring training session so, remembering the fact about the "new" sport of treasure hunting I got the idea to do just that. The training was in Atkins, Arkansas at one of our construction sites that we were going to tour. Using the construction headquarters a the epicenter, I went out 2 miles in all directions and hid a note and a candy cane for each player on a two man team at 10 different spots. At 1 mile out I hid a note for each team and one candy bar and a coke for each player of the first team to reach one of 5 locations. Two team were given the coorindates of one of the 5 locations place and they had to race to that point. When a team reach that location they would get the coordinates to the last location. The first team to the last location (the epicenter where they started) received a gift certificate to dinner at Applebee's. The second place team got dinner at McDonald's and the third place team received two dollars a piece to buy a coke and candy bar of their choice. We had 10 teams of two and it was so funny watching these guys. I love treasure hunts!!

    After that I became a member of Geocaching.com. I was hooked. However, the new units had just came in and training had to be provided to 77 people, plus my husband changed jobs and is now working every other weekend. That took until April. My best friend and her family moved in May to Alaska, so now we have the time. Every other weekend we are camping and caching, but on the weekends that he works we try and find ones around Little Rock.

    Hopefully we can get up to Searcy soon. I think Woodwalker9 has some very interesting sounding ones that I'm really interested in finding.

    Our biggest problem is the girls. Do not finds are not very enjoyable to them and Cinderella_00 really doesn't like the tall grass. We are working on that. The more we find the better we will get on figuring out hiding techniques and Cinderella_00 is now required to wear jeans, no matter what.

    But our numbers are still low. It may take us a while to reach a 100 and more but don't rule us out. We'll get there, just not as fast as everyone else.

    Call us the tortoise family.

  4. #4
    Geezer_Veazey Guest
    Quote Originally Posted by LadyEngineer
    In November of 2002, I was picked to be one member of a four member training team for our new Garmin GPS backpack units. I had worked with the Trimble survey grade unites since January of 1997 but had not keep up with the civil technology very much. Other then buying my husband a Magellen 315 for hunting.

    In January of 2003, I was sent to Fort Worth for a 5 day intense train the trainer course. The instructor briefly touched on the fact that a "new" sport had been started since the military had stopped spuffin the signal and I believe he even told us of the website.

    We finished training but had to wait until the 77 units we were to do train on were delivered. They didn't arrive in the state until the first of Novemeber 2003. Our state engineer does a training for all state engineers every December and ask me and one of the other trainers to do a presentation on the new units. I wanted to make it fun, not just a boring training session so, remembering the fact about the "new" sport of treasure hunting I got the idea to do just that. The training was in Atkins, Arkansas at one of our construction sites that we were going to tour. Using the construction headquarters a the epicenter, I went out 2 miles in all directions and hid a note and a candy cane for each player on a two man team at 10 different spots. At 1 mile out I hid a note for each team and one candy bar and a coke for each player of the first team to reach one of 5 locations. Two team were given the coorindates of one of the 5 locations place and they had to race to that point. When a team reach that location they would get the coordinates to the last location. The first team to the last location (the epicenter where they started) received a gift certificate to dinner at Applebee's. The second place team got dinner at McDonald's and the third place team received two dollars a piece to buy a coke and candy bar of their choice. We had 10 teams of two and it was so funny watching these guys. I love treasure hunts!!

    After that I became a member of Geocaching.com. I was hooked. However, the new units had just came in and training had to be provided to 77 people, plus my husband changed jobs and is now working every other weekend. That took until April. My best friend and her family moved in May to Alaska, so now we have the time. Every other weekend we are camping and caching, but on the weekends that he works we try and find ones around Little Rock.

    Hopefully we can get up to Searcy soon. I think Woodwalker9 has some very interesting sounding ones that I'm really interested in finding.

    Our biggest problem is the girls. Do not finds are not very enjoyable to them and Cinderella_00 really doesn't like the tall grass. We are working on that. The more we find the better we will get on figuring out hiding techniques and Cinderella_00 is now required to wear jeans, no matter what.

    But our numbers are still low. It may take us a while to reach a 100 and more but don't rule us out. We'll get there, just not as fast as everyone else.

    Call us the tortoise family.
    Sorry, LadyEngineer. I couldn't read your post so I quoted it and removed the color.

    Geezer Weak Eyes.

  5. #5
    Join Date
    May 2004
    Location
    Conway, AR
    Posts
    1,392
    LadyEngineer, if there's ever been a tortoise family, it's gotta be us. We've been caching since June of 2002 and only have 100 finds! Oh well, it's not a race, right? We don't travel very much, so we are dependant on local cachers to give us caches to boost our numbers.

    I believe that we first found out about geocaching on BookCrossing.com. "Wild & Woolly" was our first cache hide, and on retrospect, it was probably a little premature. We made several mistakes: 1) We didn't even own a GPSr at the time, 2) we hid it in an empty food container, 3) the container wasn't waterproof, etc... Four months later, we recorded our first find.

    Our first find was cachecrazie's "Old Ferry Cache", followed closely that same day by "River View Cache Box". (This one was archived eventually and Rusty_da_dog has since put "Conway Coin Cache-CC.C. at this location.)

    There are aspects of geocaching that continue to draw us:

    1) The whole family can participate. Our 3-year-old gets very excited when we find the cache and wants to help open it. There's almost always something for her inside.
    2) It gets us off of the couch.
    3) It takes us to interesting places. Geocaching has taken us to a lot of Arkansas' waterfalls, mountains, and landscapes that we would never have otherwise known about!

    We love all kinds of caches! Since Arkansas is still relatively "cache-poor" (at least for the moment), our attitude is that ANY CACHE IS A GOOD CACHE! That's one reason we also enjoy benchmarking on occasion.

    The highlight of our geocaching "career" was probably in July of 2003, when we were interviewed for what turned out to be a front page article about geocaching! The article ran in the Sunday edition of the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette on July 20, 2003. We've posted this article in the Downloads section if you want to read it.
    I get my directions from above.
    View my profile

  6. #6
    GEO Guest
    By the Way,The Tortise won the race.

    Well to make a long story short ,
    I heard about Geocaching from a friend,by the way is too busy to do much geocaching lately.

    I lurked for quite a while being I had only had a computer for merely days then and did not want to do something foolish to start off with.
    I had a GPS before I had a computer.

    I read and learned and was since about 1995 working with the GPS with S/A turned on.
    It was crazy and I had been working with my Uncle's(TOP SECRET GOV. WORK)help on the way that it worked(SA that is and how to correct for the random errors).
    Finally figured that all out and then they turn it off..........Oh well good for us.

    I had mentioned this activity(GPSING) to a few of my close friends (won't say where).But I have friends all over Oregon,Washington,California,and many other states.(City kids)
    Well now I am the Country kid and have the country ways and need the City(techy kids help),

    Guess what Geocaching appears,it is the answer to boths needs,get the country kid to the city and the city kid to the counry.

    Well I said I would make a long story short.
    You know the rest of the story.

  7. #7
    chili36 Guest
    Why did I start? Quite frankly, because backpacking in the summer is a real bummer.

    Then I got hooked. Found number 200 today at lunch and have found myself geocaching either at lunch or on the way home almost every day.

  8. #8
    Rusty_da_dog Guest

    Why do I hunt for boxes in the woods?

    Well, I found out about geocaching, after reading an article in the Democrat-Gazette back in I guess it was January 2002. It was kinda funny, my dad used to tell me I needed to do something to get out of the house. Since I was recently divorced, I didn't do much but eat,sleep,play games on the PC and go to work. After I read the article in the paper, I found a cheap GPSr on Ebay, and by the next weekend I was ready to go.

    I took my g/f (now my wife) and my sister and brother-in-law and found several caches around Ft. Smith. Our very first cache was County's First Seat not too far from Greenwood. When we found it, the contents were scattered all over the place, as it seems the mowing crew had found the plastic container with one of the brush-hogs and destroyed most everything. While I was in Ft Smith that day I went to the Army Surplus store, bought a ammo can (which is the current container for that cache) and replaced the contents with some of the trade items I had, and threw in a new logbook.

    The first cache I placed was at Cadron Settlement Park right outside of Conway, That cache RP & KG 1 was placed by me, and my wife, who was my g/f at the time as I mentioned above. She was a lifelong resident of Conway and told me of the perfect spot. That was back in April of '02.

    To date, I have found over 300 caches. Some good, some ok, and some crap (personal opinion of course, but when all thats in the cache is junk with no log, thats crap) anyway......I get to travel some, and I never leave home without a GPSr and at least a few caches loaded in. My wife gives me a hard time and says we can never get to where we are going because I always have to stop and stretch my legs. My dad now says I can't go anywhere without looking for a cache, and he has even been with me a few times and gets a kick out of it himself. He has went from why don't you find something to do to get out of the house, to why do you always have to go geocaching.
    It's great I have seen country both in and out of the state I would have NEVER seen without geocaching, its great exercise and it is some clean fun that can be done with the entire family,me, my wife, and my step son Justin, all really enjoy getting outdoors. My wife, Kellie, gets a kick out of finding the cache before I do, which she usually does.
    As for my name Rusty_da_dog. Rusty is one of my two dachshunds, he can be seen on my geocaching.com profile, and he is named after my favorite nascar driver Rusty Wallace.
    Cya on the trails,
    Rusty

  9. #9
    Join Date
    May 2004
    Location
    Russellville
    Posts
    925
    I just kind of stumbled into geocaching. In October of 2003 I was hiking the trail from Redding campground on the Mulberry to Spy Rock. While I was at Spy Rock I sat down and ate lunch. After eating I did some looking around for a good spot for some photos and found a geocahe by accident. I read the sheet and signed the log. After finishing my hike that day I went home and signed up on the website and logged my find. After looking around the website for a few days I decided that this was something I would like to do. I had to wait until Christmas to get a GPS and because of a family vacation I did not get to use it until January the 8th, which I count as my official starting date for geocaching and I am now addicted.

  10. #10
    demonicangel Guest

    Conned into it

    A very close family friend of ours (Beerhog) got given a gpsr for Christmas back in 2003 and tried to figure out what to do with it. He stumbled across the website geocaching.com and decided to give it a try. He liked it, but didn't like doing it by himself so he brought my husband (Angel) along with him on one of his adventures. After giving it a try, Angel decided to try to get me out of the house some and conned me into going with him. I gave it a try, grumbling the whole way about how I needed to get back home to my computer, and after just one find I was hooked for life. Now every nice day that I don't have something planned I'm dragging him out of the house to go after more.

Posting Permissions

  • You may not post new threads
  • You may not post replies
  • You may not post attachments
  • You may not edit your posts
  •