Good day folks!  This is rlove2seek.  We are a husband/wife geocaching team from the Northwood’s of Wisconsin. Just to let you all know, this is the male half jotting down this scribble…so do not hold anything against the Mrs. rlove2seek. I am not an English major or an author, so please bear with me.  I thought I would write about a couple things that I think people that cache can relate to. Everyone that caches had to start somehow, somewhere and that is what I thought I would cover first.  Secondly, I thought I would briefly cover what geocaching has brought into our lives.

I can say without any doubt that social media is what brought us into geocaching.  I have had a blog about bicycling since 2008.  I have met many interesting people through that blog.  One of them lives on the Iron Range of Minnesota. He is a bicyclist and a geocacher.  I first heard of geocaching through his blog.  When he discussed geocaching a couple of times, I thought “that sounds interesting.”  But in the end I never acted on it. It was a couple years later when a friend from my hometown mentioned on Face Book that he, and his girlfriend at the time and are now married, had hit a milestone. They found number 1,000. I thought, they have found a thousand of them!?  Are you kidding?  These are locals so there has to be some nearby. I went to the Google and started my search.

I found Geocaching.com and looked it over. WOW, there are some very close to where we live. The next step was learning how to find them. Through a little research we figured that out. I had a smart phone and soon discovered there was an app that we could use. I loaded that app and the next day we were looking. We found 5 caches that first day, but more importantly, a seed was planted that would grow into something we could not have imagined on that day. Two days later we were at it again, and this day out we found 11 geocaches.  And…one of them had a travel bug in it. I scooped that baby up and headed for home to learn about this travel but thing. As it turned out, that TB was headed south of us. It was new to us, but shortly after learning the TB’s mission I drove 100 miles to drop it off at another cache so it was closer to its goal. How is that for being a noob? I am not so sure I would do that now!

We had been geocaching on two occasions and it was plain to see we were going to need an upgrade. We had found our first cache on the 17^th of the month and our second day out was the 19^th. It was now time to visit our son who works for a Gander Mountain. We stopped in and told him we are looking for a Garmin. He was mystified to say the least.  We could see the look. A Garmin? Geocaching? Really! And then there was us, yes sir that is what we want. Anyway, cutting to the chase, we left with a Garmin Dakota 20. The geo-bug had bitten. In just those two days of geocaching we learned so many interesting things.

We live in the country, and now that the 16 little green rectangles near our home had turned to smiles, it was time to broaden the geocache hunt zone.  I had discovered a power trail in MN that was not very far away. Of course, at that time I didn’t even know what a power trail was. To me it was a road in the country with a LOT of those little green rectangles. I arrived at this road which was in desolate area. I pulled off the road on to a little trail, walked down the road with the trusty Dakota 20 in hand, and started my search. I had searched about 15 minutes when I heard a vehicle coming down the road. I couldn’t believe my eyes when the vehicle stopped. A man and his dog hopped out with GPS’r in hand. He was looking down at his GPS’r and didn’t see me standing a short ways in the woods. I startled him when I spoke and it was obvious that we both up the same thing…geocaching. He asked me if I had found it to which I replied in the negative. I remember this very well. It did not take him a minute and he had the cookie tin in hand. I had just spent 15 minutes and he had found it in about a minute! He told me they were all running about 15 to 20 feet south of where his GPS’r was putting them. Now I on the other hand, had followed that little arrow and that was that! He had found more caches that morning than we had in our three days of caching. Turns out he has over 14,000 finds. On top of that, he asked me if I want to join him for the day. I turned him down and still kick myself for not taking him up on his offer. Even though we had found 17, at the time I had no idea what geocaching would end up meaning to me. He is a great guy, we had a good conversation but I didn’t know of the social side of this new to us sport.

Fast forward three months when we learned of a geocaching event. We had not known of an Event cache. I accidentally found it while looking for new geocaches to search out. We didn’t know if we needed an invite or how one went about going to one. I messaged the friends I spoke of earlier that had the 1000 milestone and asked them if it would be ok if we came to the event. They said “Sure! You are more than welcome to come.”  So, after 4 months of finding treasures we attended our first event. In those four months we had about 500 smiles on the map. We knew our two friends from our home town when we arrived, but we left with a bunch more new friends. Of all those smiles on the map, this was without a doubt the best!

I could go on and on about the great things related to Geocaching, but I am sure you are tiring of reading my babble, so I will end with this. Yes we have found a lot of caches, not as many as some, but more than some others. Geocaching has taken us to many new places. We have learned of historical events. We have learned of geological features.  There are many other things geocaching has done for us. But to us, treasures we have found in the woods or on a plaque somewhere, pale in comparison to the treasured friendships geocaching has provided us. To that I say, attend an event. Go to the picnics. I do not think you will be disappointed. The real treasures are at the events!