Your First Cache

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Furrhan
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Your First Cache

Post by Furrhan » 12 August 16 12:01 am

So who remembers finding your first cache? Where was it? How was the experience?

I found my first cache on Tuesday afternoon. It was one from... That other website, but don't tell anyone! I was with two friends, one a trusted muggle and one a cacher, and I was the one to find it. It was like a fat test tube with a roll of paper inside. I must say, it's hugely rewarding to find it and write your name on it and I'll definitely be doing it again, especially now that I've bought a GPS! This one was under a rock in a park in the Hobart area but I won't say more than that to avoid giving it away. ^^

So what about you guys? Where were your first caches and what was your experience like? How did you all get into the sport?

Goldenwattle
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Re: Your First Cache

Post by Goldenwattle » 12 August 16 10:51 am

My first cache was a nano; one of those pretend lumps of chewing gum. I was so original (not) in my placement of it...under a seat. It disappeared a couple of times and I became suspicious birds were taking it. Anyway, after the second one disappeared I archived it, because by then I had come to dislike nanos and as I didn't like other people using them, how could I justify having a nano cache myself. I think of nanos as lazy, unimaginative (with a very few exceptions) caches. Plus they are high maintenance; often needing the log changed, and difficult for people with any arthritis in their hands. Nothing smaller for me now than a micro.
I wish there was an extra rating for nano caches, separating them from micros, as then, when I go on holidays and an area has far more caches than I could hope to find, I would not bother loading nanos in my bulk upload.
So, my first cache and the placement of it, was very ordinary.

Added:
Oh, I just realised you meant my first find, not my first cache. My first find was a micro keyholder attached to a tree. I thought how neat and clever and I was really pleased with myself. I now know the cache was nothing special, but I thought it was then. It was a good, simple, first find.
Last edited by Goldenwattle on 12 August 16 4:56 pm, edited 1 time in total.

MavEtJu
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Re: Your First Cache

Post by MavEtJu » 12 August 16 4:35 pm

Furrhan wrote:So who remembers finding your first cache? Where was it? How was the experience?
You never forget your first container... It was a warm Sunday afternoon, the kids were playing in the park while I was sitting on the grass while enjoying an icecream and idle wasting time on the phone. I read something about the pleasures of geocaching and downloaded some app which would explain it to me. Despite being around 40, I was still a virgin in this field. The application showed three caches around me and one right in the park. I knew the one close by, near a small bridge over a dry creek. I slowly walked to it, trying to understand the whole compass direction thing. While carefully circling GZ, I went closer and closer until I reached the right coordinates. I carefully put my fingers in the cracks between the rocks under the bridge and felt inside, hoping the find the container I was longing for. It didn't take long until I had it and I carefully pulled my fingers back, pulling out the container with them. I felt a guilty pleasure when I opened it and signed the logbook, knowing that if society saw this they would condemn this newfound hobby. I was still giggling inside when I put the container back, knowing that there are more fish in the sea with which I could have these experiences with.

LouiseAnn
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Re: Your First Cache

Post by LouiseAnn » 12 August 16 5:31 pm

My first cache was back in 2009 and it was a multi cache just down the road from work. My friend told me all about caching and I was so excited, I said "Lets go and find one now" and it was the closest one. It's still active. It was a fairly tricky one and we had a bit of trouble working out the numbers, but we found it ok :)

My online log was so lame, and it's still my shortest log.

lucky1955
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Re: Your First Cache

Post by lucky1955 » 12 August 16 8:50 pm

My first cache was in May 2014. I got curious about geocaching when a member of a fitbit group I was in kept mentioning it. An online search soon revealed a world wide hide and seek game and a search showed the closest one to home was 750 meters away. I read up on the cache and the hint and headed out walking from home. The cache was hidden in a log in a bush area between a main road and a grassed area of a local community hall.

After trying to zero in on GZ I finally made a find along with the many 'farmers friends' I had picked up along the way. Signing the log I was chuffed with myself making the find and realising that the cache had been around for 6 years at that point.

Two years later and over a 1000 finds including both GC & GA caches I think I am enjoying this game we play

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auzzy_mate
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Re: Your First Cache

Post by auzzy_mate » 12 August 16 10:03 pm

I had spent the weekend in Melbourne with a friend who had managed to somehow addict me to geocaching without even showing me a real geocache. Plenty of YouTube and websites later, then a look at an app on his phone and I was in.

I think the story of the cache he owned which had somehow had en electric fence placed around it by the site-consenting owner sold me to the fun that could be had. Long story short: the land owner agreed to the location of a cache under an old train bridge about 30meters onto his paddock, then the owner wanted to move grazing cattle into the area so he put in an electric wire topped fence. My mate was then suddenly getting comments in his email like "Shocking" and "Zapped". He disabled the GC but it was a funny introduction.

My first cache was up in Sydney, right near my work in Mosman. I looked for about 20minutes with only an "Reach Up" hint and was totally bamboozled. Dejected that my first find wasn't going well I contacted the CO and got a hint that made it even more confusing for me. On my third visit in three days I finally found it and the smile on my face was as big as the entrance to the Sydney Harbour.

auzzy_mate

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WazzaAndWenches
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Re: Your First Cache

Post by WazzaAndWenches » 12 August 16 11:00 pm

I read something about a strange hobby called geocaching some weeks prior to our first find in early '07. It was about 30km from Echuca (home) and on a road very close to where I used to go rabbiting. Anyway, I bundled the Wench and Wenchette into the car and we drove out to the area of the cache. I own a hobby shop and specialise in model railway so it was a huge surprise to find a full size Victorian T class locomotive parked on a short length of track just a few meters down the road from the cache. What a great find.

The cache; well it was nothing special, just a plastic container in a stump, but it stills holds a special place in our memories. Thanks embi.

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cantanga
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Re: Your First Cache

Post by cantanga » 13 August 16 5:47 pm

Mine was "The tale of esperinto santo" or something like that. The cache itself was a bit of sewer pipe with caps hidden under some rocks I think, maybe even pained green or brown , I'm not sure. I more remember planning it, printing out the cache description (obviously before the smart phone was a common thing) using my Navigon car GPS to guide me to it and riding my newly acquired motorbike out there to find it. A simple find and it was disabled not long afterwards due to dam works in the area.

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Snuva
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Re: Your First Cache

Post by Snuva » 16 August 16 10:30 pm

My first was a virtual, Trigpoint Scenes 1, in March 2004. The first physical cache I found was Hobart City - Scratchie Exchange in April 2004. I actually hid physical caches before I found a physical cache; a geocaching relative from the US was visiting.

chryzpa
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Re: Your First Cache

Post by chryzpa » 14 October 16 8:46 am

My first find without any help or finding by accident was on 5/10/16 near Barnes Trig in the A.C.T. I was over the moon and totally hooked from then on.

Tuena
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Re: Your First Cache

Post by Tuena » 14 October 16 6:11 pm

I joined in Dec. 2005 but didn't look for a cache until 5 months later. It was a medium traditional close to home, my Garmin 72 got me close & the hint got me there. In writing up the find I said the hint proved very helpful. I felt reasonably pleased with myself. Prefer Waymarking now. Much easier to find a cemetery than a cache hidden within. I also like Locationless caches & GCA in general. Found out about caching in a newspaper article (Canberra Times).

petan
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Re: Your First Cache

Post by petan » 17 October 16 4:57 pm

Our first attempt was a DNF. This was back in the days before smartphones and after reading as much as I could about the sport we made the decision to head to the Brisbane to the GPS shop (the one who likes apples) and based on the recommendations of the sales guy came home with a bright yellow eTrex. I'd printed off some cache pages in the hope we might find one on the way home. Manually typing in the co-ordinates we stopped off at Yatala Pies for the cache there and looked and looked and looked and couldn't find it. I admit now that our problem was that we automatically assumed it was ammo tin, little did we realize it was actually an eclipse tin and we were probably resting against the hiding spot while we tried to figure it all out.

Our first actual find was a couple of months later, we were on holiday and by this time had read heaps more and realized that not all caches were in ammo tin sized. And that was the start of a beautiful friendship.

Goldenwattle
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Re: Your First Cache

Post by Goldenwattle » 18 October 16 11:05 am

petan wrote:This was back in the days before smartphones
When I started I didn't have a GPS or a phone. I used to print out information and maps for finding the cache; then put in the coordinates into my car Tom Tom to get me to the area. After that it was down to 'paper work' and doing my best to track, to follow where others had walked. Sometimes this was very obvious (the old geo-trail :lol:); other times not so much and I had to look more carefully. This didn't work for caches where people had had trouble finding a cache, as there was bent grass, etc everywhere and I could see others had walked all around the place as they searched :roll:. Also standing there and looking for an obvious place to hide the cache was often fruitful. Finally after about 180 finds I bought a GPS and finding caches is much easier these days.

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jusojara
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Re: Your First Cache

Post by jusojara » 18 October 16 11:57 am

Our first cache was found with one of the old Nokia Navigator phones (pre-smartphones) where I needed to convert the cache coordinates into a format the phone would accept, dropping several decimal places from the conversion and hoping it was still accurate.

The cache was a nice easy find that we had to 'find' twice as the kids wanted to return to make some swaps (having not brought anything with them the first time). Luckily my birthday wasn't too far away and I received a Garmin and we were off \:D/

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