My first geocaching experience
This article was originally published on February 5th, 2010. As part of a new series of articles, we will be floating older stories back to the front to get some new insight from new readers on some of these old topics.
I thought I would throw up my own personal account of how I got into geocaching. Everyone has a story of how they got started and some are more interesting than others. Here’s how my caching days started.
I had heard about geocaching actually indirectly through my ex-wife. I had heard that she and her boyfriend had taken up the hobby and so out of curiosity, I looked into what it was all about. It seemed like a pretty interesting game and definitely something I would be interested in. But, since at the time my ex seemed really into it, I didn’t want to jump on the bandwagon and seem like I was trying to be like her. So, I decided not to bother.
A few years passed and it was still something that I thought was interesting so I contacted another local cacher, FunkyNassau, who I had known since high school. I knew that he had been into caching for a long time and I asked him if when he had some time, if he could show me how it all works.
December 26th, 2007, he came by the house and we went off to find some caches. He actually was heading out to Saint John to pick up his son so he figured he’d show me how to cache on the way there.
We got in his car and he started giving me the rundown on what it’s all about. He showed me the caches on his GPS and how you pick one and follow the arrow. We started with one in Riverview by Sobey’s. We didn’t have any luck finding that one and I tried several times after that to find it with no luck. Damn nanos.
Regardless, we hit up a few caches going through upper Coverdale Rd including one which was a log sheet stuffed in a lipstick container, a couple of guardrail key holder caches, and then one in the woods where I retrieved my first travel bug (a T-Rex head with tags). As we got closer to Hampton (where we were actually going), we would stop every once in awhile and snag a cache. In Hampton I helped find one under a large bell of some kind.
Upon returning to Moncton, we grabbed a couple more and then the day was done. After having spent a good few hours doing caches here and there, I knew this was something I was going to enjoy. In less than a week, I went out and bought my own GPS and started learning the ropes on my own.
At 1,478 cache finds and counting, I’ve come a long way since then.
The first cache I actually went out and found by myself was a cache at the ball field behind the Bridgedale community center. I think it was a pill bottle stuffed into the edge of the fencing. Me and the wife took baby Dylan for a walk and I snagged a cache 🙂
I tried to do this thing we call Geocaching back in the summer of 2003, I made an account and looked to see what was around to find. This was in Gander, Newfoundland and I had a choice of 5 caches within 20 miles and no GPS. Needles to say after trying to find the 2 closest without any luck I new that I would not be to heavily involved at the time, so it fell of my radar and I completely forgot about it and cannot for the life of me remember my name or the email address I used to sign up. Flash forward to 2007 and while working one day I found out that my co-worker was a cacher and not just you everyday run-of-the-mill cacher he was “Incepit”. So that summer the Magellan 500 came on sale and I bought it. I found my first cache about 30 minutes after I got the box open. The first cache I found was called “Green Rail” and was about 300 meters away, it doesn’t exist anymore. I now have about 1400 finds, the last 200 or so with my BlackBerry and CacheBerry, I will write up a review of CacheBerry for the software section.
Our introduction to geocaching took place in the summer of 2007. My sister, eebee, had brought her boyfriend home to “meet the family”. They’d been dating for awhile but because he was from Calais, Maine we hadn’t met him yet. Aaron (aka Aefuss on gc.com) had eebee fully hooked on the sport by then so when she brought him home they took us out to Killarney Lake to find a few caches. For me, the excitement of being the one to actually find the first cache we went for was nullified by the grossness of the spiderwebs and bugs. And I was not a fan of running around in the woods with all that deer poop! I think we found 2 that day before it started to get dark. We still didn’t “get it” but we had fun.
Over the next few months Terry and I occasionally talked about whether it was something we wanted to get involved in or look into further but we just never made a decision.
Aaron died January 23rd, 2008. I was looking for something that I could do/share with eebee during this difficult time in her life and geocaching became it. It also gave Terry and me something to do to get some exercise and get us off the couch and out of the house. We bought our first GPS and headed to Saint John to cache with eebee. We’ve never looked back.
We hit 1000 finds in August, 2009 and are currently at about 1250. We’ve also hidden 20 or so and enjoy the hiding as much as the hunting. But we mostly enjoy the people we meet along the way.
Oh….and the deer poop and spiderwebs? We just plow right through ’em now. 🙂
We visited with friends at their camp one evening, she pulled a bag out of their 4wheeler filled with stuff. I wondered what in heck she was going to do with a lei in the woods. An explanition of geocaching followed. We spent the evening thinking up nicknames. The next day we hauled out our rarely used GPS, went to the Rocks, and followed the arrow to our 1st find.
Now 3 GPSs, 2283 finds and 88 hides later, we still get a rush. The miles, bug bites, occasional computer rage and wet feet are well worth it. As an added bonus, we have made great friends who love the same wierd stuff, go figure!!
I (Nemo) have always been an outdoor guy (or a wannabe LOL). I like to fish (I have probably some 20 fishing rods right now), and I used to hunt for small games. For some reason I can’t shoot an animal now. Let’s not go there.
So,,, when I met my wife (Didi), she was one major outdoor girl, way more than I was (I hate to admit it). She was into kayaking, rock climbing, hiking, you name it. Not a ”professional” in any, but into a bit of everything. I was mostly a duck hunter, and a trout and salmon fisherman.
She had heard about geocaching at one point, and told me a friend of hers who was into this “geocaching” wanted to put a “geocache” on her lawn just to watch people try to find it. The description of this did not sound too appealing to me at first. I mean, when you first hear about geocaching like this you figure: what the hell can be fun with having people from around the world wandering on your lawn looking for a Tupperware box?
When we got married, we had a couple of bucks left from gifts and stuff(not much!), and I kinda wanted a GPS to go in the woods finding lakes that can hardly be reached, neat places far from civilisation, etc (I know I know, I am not so good with just a compass). So we looked for a GPS and ordered one on-line where we saved some 200$ compared to buying it locally (sorry). When we placed the order, for a reason I forgot now, we looked on the net for this geocaching thing, and a couple of days later signed up to check it out.
We got the GPS on Friday July 11/2008 in the morning, delivered at work (we were both working at the same spot). We downloaded a ”geocache” that was just some 500m or something from where we were working: ”Caffeine Fix GC141YV” it was. At lunch time we went for it….. and Voilà , that was it. We got hooked. The following day (a Saturday), we went to Fundy Park and did the 5 Fundy Park Cache to get the free geocoin, did a few other cache in that area, and that started our journey into geocaching!
We moved to Moncton since, and last week I did a presentation on geocaching to my fellow co-workers. I think we will soon get new members 😉
I love these stories, come on people you all have a story, let’s here them!!
I think Nemodidi should submit his story for his profile. Great story.
Our first caching experience.
It was December 31 2003 and we were in Ottawa visiting Our daughter Natasha and her family for Christmas. We had a new gps and the ladies thought it would be a good idea to try out geocaching. The guys thought it was a dumb idea, and anyway it was bitterly cold out.
So the ladies took off with our grandkids Jake & Ben to find a geocache down by the river. Well they found it and they came back to create the Jake & Ben account and log the cache. They also logged a DNF for something called a micro which was hidden around or on the spectator seats at a sports field.
Two days later on January 2, 2004, with a bit of arm twisting the guys went too ( we had to show them that it shouldn’t be tough to find a cache.) It took a while but we found that micro film canister. We also found The Gnome’s Outhouse cache.
When we got back to NB, we created an account and logged the three caches. But of course we did not need to log the DNF.
Well I guess I am a bit of an outdoor guy. Being in the military for almost 23 years I guess I would have to be. I bought my first GPS when I was staioned in Yellowknife. I travelled the Arctic at least once a month for 12 – 16 days at a time and the old map and compass was a little unreliable. I had heard about geocaching around then but thought it was a crazy assed game where you had to hike for days on end to find the cache and there were only a hundred or so in the world. Never thought anymore of it until I was stationed back to NB for our 3rd tour in this area. One night my daughter was feeling a little down about having left friends behind in our last posting and I was looking for something to take her mind off of it. I caught the tail end of a program on Discovery about geocaching and decided to do some research into the game. What ? There are hundreds of caches within a few miles of my house.? And some just within a few hundred yards.? I got my daughter up early the next morning (not an easy feat with teenagers) and off we went to find our first cache in late Aug 09 in the Lower Lincoln Cemetary. We logged a few over the next week or 2 but since then she has stopped going with me (she now has made friends and hanging out with Dad isn’t that cool). Now my wife usually tags along with me. In the few months I have been at this awesome addiction I have spent numerous dollars on swag, containers, spray paint, and oh yeah a new gps, placed 29 caches, found 400 (across 4 provinces and 1 state), but most importantly I have meet some of the most friendly, genuinely nice and whacky people in the world (just think about it for a minute or 2…we are all whacky to be doing this if you really stop and think about it, but only in a “good” whacky kind of way..!!). And I am very happy to be one of those whacky people..!!
That’s a great story. Glad to see you have jumped into the “addiction”.
My neighbor at work bought himself a GPSr for hunting and such and while searching for info about it found geocaching. He mentioned it to me and i looked it up. created a user name and then kind-of forgot about it (lack of GPSr didn’t help) then almost 8 months later in august of 2008 he was heading out at noon and i thought I’d tag along. that was the beginning of the addiction the next night using Google maps and some uncanny sense i biked out to find a geocache close to home. 2 days later i borrowed an old etrex from a guy at work and cached with that till November the rest is well history.
My first geocache find was GCHEVJ – Hanging With The Bunnies by luvmyjeepcj.
It was an exciting experience that I’ll always remember. It started out one day after some how realizing there was a geocache a few miles from my home. I was very excited and with only a printed out map of the geocache’s location I set out to find it. I did a ruff scale on the map and took what turned out to be a lucky bearing with my compass. I knew it was hanging in a tree and I felt confident I would be able to find it. After, snowshoeing to where I thought the cache would be I started looking.
To my delight the cache was found within a few minutes and only a few meters from where I guessed it would be. I can still remember the excitement I felt when opening the cache to discover it’s treasures. I looked at everything and read every page then signed the log book. At that time I didn’t have a geocaching account since I was not too sure about this geocaching thing. However, After quickly returning home I sign up and the addiction continues…
Just noticed this story so thought I would post. My first experience was with a elderly couple from England. They had come over for a visit and they had just started caching. They went to find the three nearby caches in the area and I went with them. We only managed to find one. After that I watched them log the cache and I created my own account a half hr. 750 caches and counting since that fateful day where I became a addict to this game.
Is it bad that I can’t remember my first time?
At my age, I have problems remembering the last time
My first cash was in the windmails up by the calidonia mountain. It was a large and my dad took us to the top of the mountain in the summer in his Ramcharger. He took a bugs bunny charictor holding a carot and hung it on the vizer of the truck. That was my first Geocache. Got to love cashing. It is my new honey.
I read an article somewhere about this Geocaching thing, in 2009. A blend of the outdoors and a techie GPS, sounded perfect. I bought a yellow Etrex (that I still have, if a newbie wants it) off Kijiji off a fella from Richibucto for $50.
I opened an acct, and printed off some nearby Irishtown Nature Park caches, took my son NBGamer22 with me. So I park in the lot, take out the GPSr, and say to myself, “how the heck do I add the coords?”. It took a half hour but I had 4 caches ready.
On the trails I ran into Treehugger21. I found a couple that day, I have the photo of my 1st cache.
I’d like to thank Zor, #1Scout, Rev Slippery, Dragoon, and Misha for some early advice! I remember all of you helping me out with my pestering questions. I hope all new cachers can find experienced advice like yours.
I first heard about Geocaching in 2002 when I was living in the Maryland USA. I read an article on a Delta Airlines flight and checked it out (we did some letter boxing around the same time so it sounded similar). I had one of the original eTrex GPS at the time and it was paper based caching at its finest in those days. I picked up 24 or so at the time including the Blair Witch House virtual which was pretty cool.
Then life happened – we moved back to New Brunswick in 2003, got married, bought a house and started having kids… so hence now I have a 2671 day slump on my profile.
I picked up caching again in October 2010 and haven’t looked back since. I love this hobby (my wife calls it an obsession/addiction… but she is the one that bought me that new GPS !!)