One is only as young as one chooses to feel….we’re in the mid-range group, finally jumping in just about the time things were starting to shift. No more locationless or virtuals, EarthCaches starting to take off.
We really enjoy hearing the stories from the true “oldtimers,” when caches weren’t in every guardrail or city park, but encouraged you to get out and explore. The stories of “The Gauntlet,” or some of the very early events and the fun make us wish we’d been part of it all much sooner. We love to seek out those really old caches that are still around, allowing us just a glimpse of what the sport was in its early years.
One thing we started to notice with our own caching after awhile was, I don’t want to say boredom, but the phenomenon of already knowing what we’d find. Sometimes that is just experience, but we had started getting the inside scoop from previous finders or all that, and we realized….then we’ve lost the element of surprise. For that reason, we decided to pretty much stop the whole phone a friend or getting the inside line ahead of time, so the surprise element will still be there. Oh yeah, we’ve caved a few times now and then, mostly under peer pressure [;)] but have discovered that by just going out, seeing what happens, and logging the dreaded DNF if that’s the result, we manage to keep it interesting for ourselves.
Otherwise, why not just go for a hike? Or skiing? Or canoeing?
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