Old School Geocaching

I spent some time on the Groundspeak forums today reading some interesting comments about what geocaching used to be like. I can't say that I relate to what the OP (original poster) feels now since I have been caching for just a little under a year but I can relate to some of the things that were written.

Geocaching has been around for about eight years or so. During that time a lot of people have come to enjoy the sport/hobby for many reasons. In the early years, it would appear that there were two types of cachers, those who loved the outdoors and wanted a diversion while they were out and geeks who wanted to get out from in front of the computer. Back then there were few geocaches and they were pretty far apart. There were few small containers and even less micros. A geocache hider placed a hide out in the woods, hidden and loaded with goodies.

As time marched on, the types of cachers and caches has changed. As more homes are built, the amount of wooded areas to hide caches diminishes. A lot of old school cachers have trouble adjusting to the change.

Another thing to understand is that the number of geocachers has increased drastically now that GPSr's are so readily available at a reasonable price. At one time the only people who had them were outdoorsmen: hikers, boaters, hunters, and campers. Now most new cars have a GPSr option and the handheld units are more and more affordable. The bigger anything gets the more it evolves. Since a large number of people who geocache would rather not go venturing off into the woods, a large influx of smaller urban caches has materialized. This has changed the way some people look at the sport/hobby.

With the large number of urban caches available, a new breed of cachers has emerged. Many of those are "numbers" cachers...they seek as many caches as they can as often as they can. The numbers are what is important...so important that a web site has been created to help these people pull all kinds of stats from the caches they find.

Don't misunderstand me...I am a little tempted by the draw of seeing 1000 finds by my name (at the rate I seek caches that could be next summer) but I recently had an experience geocaching where the numbers did not mean nearly as much as the thrill of the hunt. I logged about that a few weeks ago and I can still vividly recall most of the caches that me and my geocaching partners found. It is hard to do that with a ton of micro caches hidden under lamp post skirts.

But I cannot judge everyone by what I like. The sport/hobby of geocaching is pretty diverse. If you want to hunt ammo cans in the woods, they are there. If you want to crawl parking lots looking for LPC's, those are available as well. Like solving puzzles? There a puzzle caches all over the world. If you are a numbers person, you are going to have to go after the easier ones first and go after the harder ones when you have found all the caches close to you. I have to admit that is normally the way I cache, but I think I have seen the light. Even though I would love to have 1000 finds as soon as possible (I am not sure why this is such a magical number for me) I have found I get more out of the memorable caches than most of the micros.

For me personally the hunt is a lot of fun but it can be aggravating. I went out last night after I had finished working on a SiC's PC to look for a new (multi) cache that has been out for over a week and still remains unfound. When I got to ground zero I noticed a plethora of places to find stage one (which held the coords for stage two) but after 20 minutes of searching I came up empty. I have not been caching in over a week and I was itchin' to find one but I should have known that a cache that had been published for over a week and had not been found yet was not going to be a "walk in the park".