Some people have asked what I get out of geocaching. Of course, others know that I’m weird and think it’s just par for the course. But it really is a lot of fun! I’ve been to so many interesting places, many right here in this area, that I never knew existed, even though I’ve lived here almost all my life!
A geocacher named Dalls recently reached the milestone number of 1,000 geocaches found. In the geocaching world, we hold meet-n-eat events for folks that reach this milestone. Actually, we will use almost any excuse to eat, but at these events, the guest of honor is awarded a gold-painted ammo can to commemorate their achievement. When Dalls logged his find for his event, he talked about his first weekend of geocaching. He talked about the excitement of finding something that was right there, under everyone’s nose, and nobody else knew about it but us! People walk right by thousands of these things all over the world every day and don’t have a clue!
His reminiscing reminded me of my first weekend geocaching. My brand new GPS had arrived on Thursday, 3 June 2004 and by Saturday the 5th, I couldn’t wait to get going. I searched Geocaching.com, and found several within a short drive of my house in Arlington. I recognized the first one immediately, Tennessee Sequoia by Salvo. I had driven by that thing a hundred times, I knew right where it was! So off I went down Hwy 64. I pulled off the side of the road, avoiding the for sale Porsche that was parked in the access road, made my way back to the “tree” and got the required information that had to be emailed to the owner in order to claim my first “find.” From there I went to Lakeland City Park and found my first actual container, Lakeland Micro by CWL. Man, I felt like someone had let me in on the greatest secret in the world!!
Over 730 finds later, it’s still the coolest hobby I’ve ever had. There’s a ton of them out now, but at one time, I had a 15 mile circle around my house cleaned out! I’ve seen some neat places, met some really neat people, and traveled over 15,000 miles. But Dalls’ log brought back the excitement that I felt that first weekend. Thanks, buddy. I needed that reminder. And yeah, I guess you do look a little like “The King,’ at least when he was young; he’s looking a little rough these days! But I still think you look like Brian McCann! Happy caching on the way to your next K.
1 comment:
Some people have a love/hate relationship with geocachers that directly know of our sport. A few months getting into the sport, someone asked me about it, they sounded very interested. I let them borrow my Garmin Legend and off they went and found two caches and listed the finds on the cache page. After that, no interest at all. Currently, when around them, I don't bring up the sport because of the comments I have heard, that we are geeks or stupid and a complete waste of time.
Like Dalls log, I know why I enjoy the sport and the orginal cache at the Big Cypress Tree Park is special to me.
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