Monday, September 15, 2008

Cacheaversary

I have just completed my second year of geocaching. Better know as a cacheaversary. This term was coined by fellow geocacher and podcaster darrylw4 on his blog posts, so I give him credit for coining a new word. If we can get it used enough in the lexicon, we may see it in the dictionary someday.

My first day caching was labor day 2006. I had been introduced to geocaching by accident. I attended a monthly Boy Scout roundtable the prior month, where the topic was use a GPS with a map. I almost didn't go, but decided the topic was interesting enough to attend. My friend, Brian was presenting that evening. The topic was interesting enough, but the one thing that stuck with me was when he mentioned geoaching in the 'other resoures' section of the meeting. He described it as treasure hunting with a gps. I checked out the website that evening, and signed up for the free account. The next week, I ordered the Garmin GPSmap60cx that I still use today.

A few weeks later, I figured out how to load caches on the GPS, and then was off to the nearby park to attempt my first hunt. I bought my daughter along for support. The fist location has us searhing in a pile of rocks We searched for a half hour, but no luck. We decided to move towards the next one. After few minutes...SUCCESS!! We found the cache up in a tree! I boosted my daughter up to grab it and we savored our victory.

We decided to go back and try the first cache. After another half hour, we were about to give up. But I pick up one of the rocks, and this time turned it over. The cache was hidden in a carved out section. Success again! We signe the log and headed for home to record our day on geocaching.com.

In the two years since I stated geocaching, I have had one adventure after another. Geocaching take you places you never thougt you would go. From out of the way local parks, to a high cliff on the shores of Maui, to doing a podcast with Karen.

What is next?? Stay tuned.