October 26, 2013

Where Has The Time Gone?

Today marks the 10th anniversary of my very first cache find. It seems like it was just yesterday when I loaded that cache's coordinates into my Garmin GPS 12 and headed out with my daughters on our bikes in search of our first cache.

But at the same time, it's amazing how much has changed in the geocaching world since then. The biggest change, of course, being the smartphone revolution with their built-in GPS's, and the development of various geocaching iOS and Android apps that can show you which caches are near you anytime, anywhere.

Back in the day, I used a program called, "EasyGPS" to load waypoints downloaded from geocaching.com into my Garmin device. And I used "Cachemate" to load the cache information into my Palm Pilot (remember those?). How archaic was that?

Not only has the technology changed dramatically in 10 years, but so have my caching habits. I started out caching with my kids, who loved geocaching at first, but as they got older, decided it was too dorky. See photo above, taken at our first find. Now they are young adults, and rarely have time to go caching with their old man.

So for several years after my daughters stopped caching, I did a lot of solo caching, cleaning out all the caches in and around my home base. More recently, my habits changed again, and I've been caching regularly with friends I've made along the way, and now rarely cache alone. We've also expanded our search radius, so to speak, covering thousands of miles on numerous road trips in attempts to complete various challenge caches (Quads, Counties, DeLormes, etc.).

In all this time, I've found 3,237 caches, which amounts to close to an average of one find per day. And the good news is, I still find caching as fun and enjoyable now as I did 10 years ago.

Cache On!

3 comments:

Unknown said...

Congratulations! Looks like I have you beat by 2 months and 4 days, so welcome to the club. I don't have my profile handy, but I'm at about 2,700 in that time. My kids too went on to find it dorky, although my son is still only 14, and I drag him along to caches on roadtrips. I too have met many friends and caching partners through Geocaching, but I'll bet half my finds are still solo. By the way, nice blog, it has to be one of the longest running Geocaching blogs out there. With about 95% of them being abandoned. :-). Jim (Mr.Yuck on Geocaching.com)

Unknown said...

Congratulations! Looks like I have you beat by 2 months and 4 days, so welcome to the club. I don't have my profile handy, but I'm at about 2,700 in that time. My kids too went on to find it dorky, although my son is still only 14, and I drag him along to caches on roadtrips. I too have met many friends and caching partners through Geocaching, but I'll bet half my finds are still solo. By the way, nice blog, it has to be one of the longest running Geocaching blogs out there. With about 95% of them being abandoned. :-). Jim (Mr.Yuck on Geocaching.com)

GeoJoe said...

Thanks Mr. Yuck, for the nice comments. Sounds like we have a lot in common.

I've actually considered abandoning this blog as well, as I don't cache with a smart phone, and don't keep up with that technology. I still prefer caching old-school with my Garmin 60CSx, so this blog doesn't appeal to the new generation of cachers.

Signed,
Grumpy Old Man (and get off my lawn)