Geocaching

I'm going to go out and play tomorrow.  I SHOULD be working on guitars or music, but there is an ammo can out there that is lonesome and needs finding.  Tomorrow will be the day, Lord willing!

I went out with one of my youth from church today and we managed to find 40 caches and had 3 DNFs.  Not a bad day at all!  The weather was perfect, too!

That are a lot of find caches.
3 DNF's are not bad.

You can't let that ammo can being lonesome today.
The log that you have found this is 

On Monday I've logged a cache while I was walking with the dog.
I've seen an other cacher logging this cache.
So this cache was found without the Garmin.

So I had always wondered about geocaching, thought it might be fun. Last month, when I revisited the CHM forum, I stumbled across this thread, and it prompted me to look into it a bit more.

Next thing I knew, I was sucked in. I'm just beginning, particularly because of my first outing. I visited a local park, found two caches near the parking lot, ventured into the woods and found another. The next two I couldn't find (one ended up being missing, probably because of a windstorm, and the other required a slog through mud and brambles, for which I was not dressed properly). I returned to my car to find that someone had smashed a window and done additional damage, and my backpack had been stolen (lost about $700 worth of stuff and had to pay $250 for the repair deductible, and my car was out of commission for some time).

I was finally able to get out and find some more despite the busy holiday season and bad weather. I'm eager for the weather to improve so that I can really go out hunting.

This promises to be a fun hobby, especially once I get the hang of it.  

I haven't been doing as much geocaching as I once did.  Oh, I am still at it, but having to drive further and further now makes it harder to just run off to do.  Take my advice and DON'T find everything right around you.  Start going other places and save the ones 15-20 miles away from home for days when you have little time or the weather is questionable.  I have to drive 35-40 miles to even play anymore.

I did get ONE yesterday.  It was a full size cache and there were two geocoins in it.  I am taking that and a travel bug to Florida soon to move them.  I intend to find a few caches while in Florida.

The more geocaches you have find nearby, the harder it is to find more.
We've to drive further too to find more.
Not far from us is a new serie with some nice caches.

I suspected that much. As I studied the map, I wondered about all the people with thousands of finds. The other day I was investigating a new cache in my area, and I met two men who have been geocaching for quite a while. One has about 7,000 finds, and his brother has between 11,000 and 12,000. It's got to be hard to find something new without driving to a new county or even state. The woman who placed that new cache has between 7,000 and 8,000, and I noticed she has found some as far away as England and Ireland. Fortunately, there are a HUGE number in the Puget Sound area.

Even though I don't like to travel, I actually find myself thinking how fun it might be to visit other states. But I know I'll never find those caches in Antarctica.

I'm excited to place some caches of my own. I've got some good ideas for meaningful and challenging caches. My niece is a Marine who works in the armory at a nearby military base, and she said she's pretty sure she can get me some ammo cans. But I want to wait until I've found more and have a better idea of the whole thing.

How cool Disposible HERO that you discovered how cool geocaching is.

Ammo cans are good.  Watertight camping boxes that you can get at most sporting goods stores also work well if you camouflage them a bit.

I am one of those people with a lot of finds.  My current number is 6063.  I hope to hit 7000 sometime during 2016.

We are close to 1600 finds.

We have found 15 this week while in Florida.  Most were full sized containers.  One was an easy earth cache.  I dropped off two geocoin and one travel bug that I had previously found.  We found another geocoin that we are bringing back to Tennessee.

We started in December with a new serie of caches.
We have only to do 3 now and then we've found all caches.
Cache number 1700 is found.

Since you can get a digital souvenir today, I am headed out to find some caches today.  Also, if you want to finish your calendar on your www.geocaching.com page, you will need to find one on Monday or wait for 4 more years.

If you want the souvenir that is available only on Monday, you need to attend a Leap Year event that day.  That would get you the souvenir AND fill in that date for your calender.  I am going to do it just for the souvenir as I have my calender completed.

I had a good breakfast at Shoney's before heading out yesterday.  I took the book that I am reading and dived in while eating.  I love to do that.

After that, I drove for about 30 minutes to Smyrna, TN where I was able to get 12 finds yesterday.  Because I was so rusty from not caching lately, I was spending WAY too much time even on the easy ones.  I did have one DNF that was supposed to be super hard anyway.  I searched for it twice and still couldn't find anything.  The second time I went I had gotten a hint from a friend and still couldn't find it.  My phone and GPS were of little help either as I couldn't get them to really settle on any one area to begin a proper search.

alldatndensum wrote:

I had a good breakfast at Shoney's before heading out yesterday.  I took the book that I am reading and dived in while eating.  I love to do that.

After that, I drove for about 30 minutes to Smyrna, TN where I was able to get 12 finds yesterday.  Because I was so rusty from not caching lately, I was spending WAY too much time even on the easy ones.  I did have one DNF that was supposed to be super hard anyway.  I searched for it twice and still couldn't find anything.  The second time I went I had gotten a hint from a friend and still couldn't find it.  My phone and GPS were of little help either as I couldn't get them to really settle on any one area to begin a proper search.

This sounds like a very cool hobby, I wish I had more time to devote to something like this.

That's just it, Mike.  You don't have to have a lot of time.  You can hit one every now and again.  You can take a free day and grab a bunch.  The great thing about geocaching is that you are not competing against anyone else.  Each time you go it is a new adventure.  The thrill is finding something that other people don't know is there and discovering cool places that you've never been.  Sometimes you find new places in your hometown that you've never been to before.

You should sign up for a free account.  You don't have to buy a GPS or programs.  You can use a free app called C:GEO to try things out.

Remember to find a geocaching event in your area today for a special souvenir on www.geocaching.com.  Also, if you are trying to fill in your geo calendar, then you can only get Feb. 29 every 4 years.  I got that date filled in four years ago, but I am going to get one (Lord willing) event today just because I can.

Cool! Need to give this a try.

I did 26 caches by myself today.  The next to last one was a "first-to-find"!  I like being able to get that bragging right.  LOL

That's right, you can brag about 25 founds and one FTF.
Maybe there are some caches to find in the mountains this weekend.

I went out Wednesday and got 78 finds and 6 DNFs.

Yesterday, I only found two on the way to play some music with some guys I know.

It has been awhile since we've found caches.
Yesterday it was time to find some more.
We've found 4.

I found one on Friday and then found two more today and attended an event.  So, that makes four finds total.

Found 9 caches more.
In June we hope it's possible to log the highest cache in Europe.