I am a Geocacher – Have been for over 19 years. I won’t be much longer, so, I decided to journal the end of my caching “career” with a series of posts dealing with this particular hobby, winding it down and putting it to bed.

PART 1

Before I begin:

I began Geocaching a little over nineteen years ago. It was on Mother’s Day weekend in 2002. A friend of my (then) wife’s described a game she was playing using something called a GPS receiver to look for “Caches” out in the woods. I invested in a GPS receiver (GPSr), looked up the Geocaching web site (Geocaching.com) and taught myself how to enter what was on the web site into the GPSr so I could go out caching.

The first find became a comedy of errors. We (Me, the wife, our two kids, a dog (Mocha), and Celeste, the wife’s friend who introduced us to the sport) went out to Lake Texoma to see if we could find “Smooth Sailing” (GC3941), an early cache placed a mere three months before we found it.

We went to where we thought would be a good place to start. Thirty minutes later, we were back at the car, regrouping. We were within 500 feet of the cache, but there was no way we could get there from where we were. Drove and found another place which we thought was a good place to start. Less than ten minutes later, we found what we were looking for. We decided on our caching “handles” then and there, signed the log, exchanged little “gifts”, and went forward from there.

For about two years, we would arrange to take little trips as a family to find caches. A great majority of those caches were of a standard type, consisting of a surplus ammunition can containing a logbook and various “McDonald Toys” (Happy Meal extras). We had a camping trailer which allowed us the freedom to discover new caches over a wider area than just our home base of Allen Texas. We found caches from Wyoming to West Virginia on our road trips – including a visit to one of the early geocaches (Mingo – GC30) and a first to find in Nebraska!

By around 2005, we were burned out as a family. I found myself divorced and doing a solo gig. There were a couple of girlfriends who were mildly interested in going caching with me. One suggested going out in the nude to some of the more remote caches. After doing some research, I found that there was someone out on the west coast who was doing exactly that. Called himself “Nudecacher”. Another girlfriend went out with me a couple of times but was decidedly lukewarm about the whole thing.

I met my present wife in March 2007. She was lukewarm about the caching thing, too, but didn’t mind if I went out locally by myself. While I had quite the run on caches both with the family and by myself, I found that I was slowing down in the rate I went after them. Part of the slow-down had to do with making several moves, two of them within a year of each other (another story entirely), changing geography and a realization that some of the places I was going were not entirely safe. For instance, I was returning from a cache when a mountain lion crossed the path I was on! Shook me up, for sure.

For the past couple of years (2019-2021), my finds dribbled off to nothing. Sometime in June, I got a note saying that my premium membership in Geocaching was set to renew on August the eighth. I looked to see that I was sixteen or so caches away from hitting one-thousand caches.

That became my goal.

One thousand caches and I would be done.

It was not an easy decision to make. At the same time, I could no longer rationalize going out to try to “Find Tupperware in the Woods” as I once did.

So, I took a deep breath, consulted the Geocaching maps, and decided on going after those final sixteen caches. This is my blog on my final adventures.

Be Seeing You!