What is Geocaching?
by Eric Struck
As of July 8, 2011, I had no idea what Geocaching was. David was in town for the 15th MBBB and he called me to tell me about an idea that Brian had come up with for the MBBB weekend. He said it was called Geocaching and that it was some type of world-wide scavenger hunt. He told me about the web site and told me that he and Marc would be checking it out that night to see if it was worth trying over the weekend.
I went to the web site to do some reading and thought that it sounded interesting, although I was skeptical about actually finding one of these supposed “caches”. I signed up for an account, got my GPS, looked up a couple of “caches” that were supposed to be in my area and headed out. My wife thought I was nuts, especially since it was pouring rain that evening, but that did not stop me from giving it a shot.
I started at the Costco parking lot. I walked around with my umbrella and GPS not even sure what I was looking for. Needless to say, it did not go well. I decided to try another one over by the “Welcome to East Meadow” sign on Hempstead Turnpike...strike two. I decided to call Marc and David to see if they were having any more success than me…..but they were not. We chalked it up to the rain, cover of darkness and the inexperience as I decided to call it a night.
On Saturday the 9th, we broke up into two teams and decided to give this thing another chance. My car headed out with myself, Marc, Span and Mehr. Span had decided to purchase the Geocaching App for his iPhone, which would hopefully give us a better chance of tracking down one of these caches. We plugged in the coordinates for a geocache called “Hang in There” and were on our way. The GPS led us to the entrance of Tackapausha Preserve on Sunrise Highway. The four of us got out of the car and began the search. Marc and Mehr headed down opposite sides of the trail while Span and I searched near the entrance. We were looking up in the trees since the name of the cache was “Hang in There”; but we were not having any luck. Span’s app said we were practically on top of the cache, but we were walking in circles nonetheless.
Then all of a sudden, Span notices a string at the top of a metal fence post that had no cap. As he pulled the string, out came a plastic container that was tied to the end of it…..Yahtzee!!! Our first cache had been found. There was a log to sign along with some other trinkets, including a mini Buzz Lightyear! We called Marc and Mehr from out of the woods and showed them the cache as we signed the log. They actually exist! Onto the next cache!!
We headed east towards the Massapequa Preserve, home of the Bethpage Bike Trail. Now we were looking for a cache called “ONE TWO TREE”. As we entered the preserve we wandered around the trees for a few minutes only to come up against a dead end. The sensible thing to do would be head back out to Sunrise Highway and find another way in. The Mehr thing to do? Climb across the fallen tree trunks, over the mossy-covered water and try to find dry land on the other side. The rest of us went back to the car and drive around to the other side. About 10 minutes later we all met up again on dry land, but had not found the cache. Span’s app had us walk in another direction which somehow got us onto the bike trail. A few minutes later we were zeroing in on the cache coordinates. After about a 100-foot bushwack off the trail we had found our second cache! Over the course of the rest of the afternoon we would find three more caches. Five total “finds” for our first day!! While Mehr was less than enthusiastic about the whole “adventure”, I was certainly hooked. I signed up for an account that evening and logged the five finds on my account.
Over the course of the next couple of weeks I would find eight more caches on my own, bringing my total for the month of July to 13. Those caches were primarily ones near my house and office that I looked up on the site. In August I did some more reading and found out that there are different kinds of caches. There are puzzle caches where you need to solve a puzzle in order to get the coordinates that you need. There are multi caches where you need to find the first cache to get the coordinates for the second stage and so on. There are also “virtual” caches were you need to go to a specific landmark and answer a question about what you see there in order to get credit for the find. I would wind up finding 41 caches in the month of August, bringing my personal total up to 54.
In September, I started to realize that there are many hiking trails on Long Island that I did not know about. I have lived here my entire life and there are endless trails, parks, cemeteries and landmarks that I might never had seen if not for Geocaching. There is even a retired F-14 fighter jet at the old Grumman property that is on permanent display that I had never seen…..and it is less than 3 miles from my house!
Today it is November 9, 2011, which is exactly four months since those first caches. My total number of caches found currently stands at 174. I have found caches in New York, Connecticut, Virginia, Washington DC and Texas. I expect to add New Jersey, Rhode Island and Massachusetts to that list in the next few months. I had a streak where I found at least one cache for 29 consecutive days and my best day was 9/4/11 when I found 10 caches. I have found five different caches that no one else had found in at least one year. I have completed virtual caches at the World War II Memorial, the Fort Worth Stockyards and the Wendy’s in Queens that they used for McDowell’s in Coming to America! On my trip to Dallas this past weekend, I brought six trackable items from New York and placed them in caches in Texas. I also picked up three trackables to bring back to New York. Needless to say, Geocaching has become a true hobby for me and I hope that we will do some at the next MBBB. At least this time we will know what we are doing!!!