What I Value About Geocaching

I know I have posted something similar to this in the past but I feel it is important to reiterate the reasons why I enjoy geocaching so much. I stress this all the time and I feel like it is never enough, you discover totally new places. I cannot even begin to count the numerous new places Erin and I have stumbled upon caching. We only have 400 finds mind you at this point. I am so intrigued to get back out in the world and find even better and exciting places that I know exist but I just do not know where yet. Geocaching pushes for us to enjoy nature’s true beauty through and through. If you go out knowing you are about to embark on something new it makes the experience that much better. I enjoy myself caching so much more when I know we are going to visit places we have never heard of nor been to. Caching also brings together a lot of different people. There are events and such that allow you to meet the cachers in your area. This can be a great experience for when you are out in the field. If you happen to meet up with a cacher you previously met it will make that encounter much smoother. Sometimes it will even help when you are out attempting to find those difficult caches. This way if you have befriended some fellow cachers and know they have found them you can give them a call. Provided they give you their number, then you have a phone a friend for life. Lastly, I believe that geocaching has brought Erin and me even closer. I realize that some couples cannot geocache together because one of them does not like it. I acknowledge that I am lucky and I take full advantage of it. We have a blast every time we head out and I feel it has made us closer all together. Geocaching is definitely something that I want to continue until I physically cannot or until it disappears, which I hope will never happen.

My Recent Span of No Geocaching

I wonder if other cachers become as antsy as I do when I go a long time without caching. It has been a few weeks now and we are still sitting on 400 finds. I have been so busy with school and tests and job interviews that geocaching had to be put on the back burner for a little while. At this point, though, I am just itching to find an excuse to go out and find a quick five finds or so. That is quite impossible for me though seeing as our GPS in Erin’s possession who is three hours away from me for this semester. It is a break like this that merits a long day of caching the next time we are together. Hell, probably when I am done writing this blog I may go and begin to plan a nice day of 50 or so finds for us. Although I am always motivated to find many caches each time I go out, it is after these longer breaks that my motivation is through the roof. The worst aspect of this break is that I know it is going to continue for quite some time still. I do not think I am going to see Erin for a lengthy period of time until the end of March. My only hope is that my dad lets me tag along with him for a few finds when I am home for Spring Break. At least then I am able to get out and do what I love, even if it has to be without my partner. I can guarantee you this that the first chance we get; we will be out caching again and trying to reach our next plateau, 500 finds. Moreover, after finding 400 in our first year of caching, I think it is safe to say that our goal for the next year is to at least hit 1000. I will stand for nothing less than that come February 25th 2010.

Caching Story from Back Home

My father is the one that showed me geocaching and got me into it. So naturally when I go home from school for any reason I enjoy caching with him as much as possible. However, while I am away, he has found a few good caching buddies to accompany him on days. One of which I would say that they have become rather good friends in and out of geocaching. Anyway, the point I am trying to get at is that my dad’s buddy is about to reach the 1000 find plateau and it is up to my dad to hide the infamous silver ammo can. Now, he has yet to hide a cache and after what we have been thinking for this one I can see why. My father is very picky when it comes to his hide having to be perfect. There can be no rock unturned or else he will feel like it is not a good enough hide. I went home last weekend to help him out and I think we have a solid idea of what we want to do with this cache and I truly think it is brilliant. My dad is intending on making this cache a multi that will incorporate everything that his buddy hates to encounter while caching. Ingenious! I think there are about five stages that add up to about 1.75 miles of walking, but it is going to be interesting none the less. My dad acknowledges that this cache probably will not be found very often due to the difficulty he is making it and the duration it will take to find the cache. I tend to think that only the hardcore cachers will snag this one simply because it is yet another cache to pop up on their radar. I keep calling him and seeing if it is all hidden yet, but the hide has yet to be complete. It is my hope that I can be home the weekend they go out to find this because I really am going to get a kick out of seeing my dad’s friend try to accomplish this find. It is definitely a cache where I will be able to tell him that he earned his 1000th find.

The Adoption of Our First Hidden Cache

Since Erin and I are only here in Bloomington-Normal only to go to school we try to do as much caching as possible. This way when we move back to our homes we will feel successful in what we accomplished while being at school. Also, since a lot of our caching occurs down here, we decided to hide a cache in the beginning of last fall’s semester. It was going to be our first hide and we wanted it to be in a place that we had cached a lot. It only made sense to do it that way at the time. However, now we are coming up to a rather large dilemma about to be on our hands come the beginning of May. We will both be moving back home for good with not much of a reason to frequent the Bloomington-Normal area very often. This is going to pose an obvious problem in that we are going to be unable to check on our cache and keep up with it. Our first thought was that we may have to archive a cache that is not even a year old. Right away I was against it but at the time I was unsure of what else we may do. After thinking about it and looking around, now I am fairly certain that we are going to look for a fellow cacher in the area to adopt it. That way we know it will be taken care of and still be out there for other cachers to find. It is our first cache and naturally we want it to last as long as possible. It is our hope that within the next few months we will be able to convince one of our caching peers to adopt our cache and take care of it like their own. There is high hopes for this cache and they do not stop with us moving back home.

The Reason for This Blog

I have said this a few times in other writings, but the reason this all began was for one of my business classes during my senior year of college. I must admit that when starting this thing I was unsure of how long the motivation would last. Although it is still very early in this whole blog, but I can tell you that I am glad I was given this opportunity. My teacher told us to create this project out of something we loved. That was the easiest decision for me to make. I may have only bee geocaching for a year now, but I can tell you that I want to do this until the sport disappears. If it does not disappear, which is my hope, then it looks like I am a lifer. It is my goal with this blog to allow fellow cachers to read up on some of my adventures and ideas. More so, I love to hear other ideas and adventures as well. This is a perfect opportunity to share out stories and thoughts and I hope that eventually it will be taken advantage of. Along with this blog, I was given the task to create a website. Now, it is nowhere near from being done at this point, but I am currently working on improving it weekly. It is nothing too high tech, but it serves as another great place to read about the sport that we love, geocaching. By clicking here you will be directed to my website where I advise you to be very critical of. Contact me with ideas and criticism so I can further improve my goal, and maybe get a good grade on this project. Although we were told to do all of this with free platforms, I hope to one day buy a domain name if this project takes off like it possibly could. Regardless, the most important part for me is to have fun doing it. Writing about geocaching comes easy to me. It may not be formal, but then again, I am not here to be formal about something such as caching. I just want to be real and lay as much out there as possible about one of my passions.

As Winter Caching Comes To An End…

I am sure I have mentioned it already in the past, but winter caching is my favorite time of the year. I love to cache year round, do not get me wrong. If I had to pick a time to get a lot of caches found though, I would pick winter in a heartbeat. With that said, another season of caching is upon us and it is bitter sweet for me. No longer will there be days when I can wander wherever in a forest without the fear of poison ivy creeping up on me. Not to mention the spider webs that you seem to walk through with every step. I realize I am probably sounding like the anti-warm cacher, but in all reality I am not. I love to cache when it is warm because I do not have to bundle up like I live in Antarctica. At this point in time, I have a few more weeks of safe “jungle” caching before it is more time for the urban caches. I still try to cache in the woods as much as possible in the warmer months; however, I have to be much more careful. So long go the days where few muggles are around as well. I think that everyone can agree that winter caching is peaceful in that there are not many eyes on you at all times. It should be expected though. As much as we love it when the weather warms up, everyone else does as well. The best part of the future months ahead of us is definitely the longer days. Now, instead of being limited to caching until 5 before it is pitch black we will have until virtually 9 by the summer time. This is going to allow us to get out for longer periods of time and hopefully up our numbers even more. If not, at least we will be able to decide at 4:00 p.m. if we want to go caching or not because we still have 5 hours of daylight. You just have to love that!

Climb to 400 Finds

I know a lot of you veteran cachers out there will laugh at me for being proud of how quick we got to 400 finds, but it is something that I did not think would occur this fast. For us being rather new cachers, climbing to 400 is definitely a nice feat for us. We jumped from 300 finds to 400 in a matter of less than a month and a half. That is more than 2 finds per day. I realize that some cachers can grab 100 caches in a day! However, our journey to gaining 100 finds in a month and a half is totally satisfying. Not to mention, we are coming up on a year of caching at the end of this month so reaching 400 is definitely another nice milestone to have under our belt before reaching our one year anniversary. After sitting back and thinking about it, I am not sure exactly how we got there so fast. We did have a weekend of 47 finds, but the other 53 kind of crept up on us. Even writing this I am struggling trying to figure out how we racked up 53 more finds past the weekend we found 47. I am assuming that it was the few times we would go here and there and grab a few caches. For instance, this weekend we went to Chicago to visit the Field Museum and grabbed four caches while walking to the museum. However, yet again, I am stuck at 49 finds that I am not accounting for. The downside to this feat for us it was is going to occur over the next couple of months. Our finds are going to drop of severely due to how busy Erin and I are going to be. With us both graduating this semester, we are about to approach the home stretch of college work and we are beginning to acknowledge that caching is going to have to be put on the back burner for the next few months. Good luck caching!

Country Road Caches

Cachers all know the extreme variety of caches that can be found on any given day. Me personally, I love to find myself driving out into the country nabbing all the country road caches that I can find. With that said, I am very allergic to poison ivy so the only time I really venture out into the woods is the winter time. This gives me the unique opportunity to see the world from the country point of view. Some cachers may complain because this type of caching can put a lot of miles on the car, but I take full advantage of it. Sure, half of the country caches are bridge and cemetery finds, but even some of those are real cool. Plus, I have visited cemeteries in which I would have never stepped foot in otherwise. There are some real interesting old graves out there in this country, trust me. Another reason I love it so much is the serenity it brings. There are not very many muggles out to disturb me while I search for cachers. Besides the scarce passerby, I am alone out in the country and have my peace to cache. Don’t get me wrong, I love to cache anywhere, but if I had to choose a full day of country caching or everything else, I would probably pick the back roads. Erin and I have had so many awesome experiences on them that I have already lost count. From the cache entitled, “Baby Doll”, that actually was a baby doll’s head on a pole (I know it sounds disturbing, but it was not) to the numerous cemeteries with grave stones dating back to the mid 1800s. There is never a dull moment out there even when you are just driving. If you have yet to experience a day like this I highly recommend you schedule one as soon as the weather warms up and you are up for an adventure. Let me know how it goes.

The Decathlon

Back in my hometown there seems to be a true caching frenzy occurring. More or less, the area is becoming a literal hot bed for new caches to pop up at any time. Not to mention there is a great group of core cachers around the area to keep everything in a positive motion. There is one cacher in particular that comes to mind when I think of home though. He goes by the name of Brijac and he has become famous for his insanely tough puzzle caches that sometimes stay unfound for weeks and months even. In December he decided to do a little caching “decathlon”. His goal was to place ten different caches all throughout the area and see who was the quickest to find them. If you knew my area, you would know that this was spelling instant success for a time like this. He hid a cache introducing the decathlon idea and laid out all of the ground work for an amazing series that I probably will never forget. He was going to hide different types of caches all in ten different fashions. I thought this was ingenious and wished I could have come up with it myself! From the night of the first event up until now, every time he posts a new cache in this decathlon the cachers go nuts. My dad will call me asking me to direct him where he needs to go while he is driving. Picture this: I am on the Geocaching website looking at the maps and descriptions while my dad is frantically driving to wherever I tell him. Yes, it can get extremely stressful. On the other hand, the few times he has been FTF on these particular caches I have felt pretty good because I had a hand in making that happen. None the less, it is now February and the decathlon has yet to finish. I think they are on hide number nine so the results should be almost clear who the best cacher back in my hometown is. My father would tell you he is not and I would have to agree. However, for only having roughly 370 finds compared to the thousands of finds the others have, I am pretty proud of him. If I had to guess right now, he is probably going to finish up somewhere in the middle of the road at fifth place.