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Funny Geocaching Stories?


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I have about a million funny geocaching stories. It's that kind of hobby.

 

For some reason, today the cruise-related stories are popping to the surface. I did one cache when I was on a cruise that went through the Panama Canal and then up the west coast of Mexico. I did a scuba dive in the morning, and then got a taxi out to a spot that looked, from all my research, to be the best access. I told the taxi driver to meet me at the same spot in an hour. I made my way to the cache (which was quite a bushwhack through dense bushes with THORNS) and found it and signed it, and then as I started back I discovered that the bushes had torn my backpack open, and that my wallet and cruise ship ID were gone! Luckily I retraced my steps and found the items (whew!) and made it back out to the road with about 2 minutes to spare. I was muddy and scratched and completely happy.

 

On that same cruise, we stopped at Cabo San Lucas at the tip of Baja Mexico. During the day we did a kayak trip and my dry bag malfunctioned and my GPS and Palm Pilot (that's what we used back then) had gotten wet and died. But Ihad a backup GPS on the ship, so at the end of the day I took a tender in from the ship at about 4 PM; we had to be back onboard by 5:30. I figured it would be plenty of time to get the cache I wanted (back in 2005, there were only a couple of caches in Cabo) so I got a water taxi to take me out to the right beach, climbed some nice rocks, and grabbed the cache. I headed straight back and made the last tender out to the ship. All cool, and pretty typical for me.

 

Except: because of the wind direction, the ship had moved to turn itself around at about 5 PM. My wife and friends were convinced that the ship was leaving, and I had missed the ship and would be left behind. They were in a complete panic because, in my usual excessive confidence, I had not taken my wallet or passport with me. Heh. I have pretty much never heard the end of that one!

Edited by fizzymagic
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Oh, my! The memories are coming back. I have to share another one.

 

Back in early 2003, I went on a hike with Alamogul (look at his profile to understand more) and a couple of other guys on Mount Diablo. We started relatively near the top and descended, grabbing caches as we went. We got to the last cache we planned for the day, but Lee (that's Alamogul) saw that there was another one only .38 mile away. I had a topo map with me and tried to dissuade him. "It shows that the cache is 1000 feet lower than we are now! You want to descend a thousand feet in 3/8 of a mile?"

 

Turns out he did, and he convinced the rest of us.

 

So we did the very steep descent (which, as it turned out, was directly through a bunch of thick poison oak) and got the cache.

 

But now it is getting late and we have a 2000 foot climb back up to the car. We started up and it got dark (and I was the only one with a flashlight!) and it was kinda touch-and-go for a while but eventually we reached the car.

 

Where a ranger was waiting for us. The park was closed. He told us that we should be fined $80 apiece and the car towed. We told him about our travails in the most pathetic voice we could muster and he let us off and drove ahead of us to unlock the gate to let us out of the park.

 

So let that be a warning to anyone who wants to cache with Alamogul. He's a wild one!

Edited by fizzymagic
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Oh, my! The memories are coming back. I have to share another one.

 

Back in early 2003, I went on a hike with Alamogul (look at his profile to understand more) and a couple of other guys on Mount Diablo. We started relatively near the top and descended, grabbing caches as we went. We got to the last cache we planned for the day, but Lee (that's Alamogul) saw that there was another one only .38 mile away. I had a topo map with me and tried to dissuade him. "It shows that the cache is 1000 feet lower than we are now! You want to descend a thousand feet in 3/8 of a mile?"

 

Turns out he did, and he convinced the rest of us.

 

So we did the very steep descent (which, as it turned out, was directly through a bunch of thick poison oak) and got the cache.

 

But now it is getting late and we have a 2000 foot climb back up to the car. We started up and it got dark (and I was the only one with a flashlight!) and it was kinda touch-and-go for a while but eventually we reached the car.

 

Where a ranger was waiting for us. The park was closed. He told us that we should be fined $80 apiece and the car towed. We told him about our travails in the most pathetic voice we could muster and he let us off and drove ahead of us to unlock the gate to let us out of the park.

 

So let that be a warning to anyone who wants to cache with Alamogul. He's a wild one!

 

Oh my goodness! That is insane!

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I was leading a group of kids from church on a geocaching hike. Almost all of them were completely new to geocaching. We were playing huckle buckle beanstalk style, and almost everyone but me had found the cache. But I refused to give up, so the kids and the other adults watched me continue searching... until I tripped over the shoebox-size container that was just sitting on the ground, with nothing covering it.

 

----

 

A small group of us were working on a multi-stage puzzle cache. The penultimate stage required fitting a number of pieces together in a way that would indicate where the final cache was located, so we figured out how everything fit together, found the final cache, signed the log book, swapped a few trackables, took a few photos, and put the cache back where we found it. Then we gathered the pieces from the penultimate stage, so we could take them back to their hiding place on our way back to the car.

 

Except one of them was missing. We searched everywhere, but somehow a piece of unpainted PVC pipe almost 4ft long had vanished. The other pieces that it fit together with were still there, and we had been alone in the woods with no one else around. But it was gone...

 

(I replaced the missing piece later, but I still have no idea what could have happened to the original.)

 

----

 

One of the caches I found required a hike of about a mile along a winding path that followed the contours of the hills. The cache owner warned everyone of poison oak along the trail, but said there was none at the cache site itself. And sure enough, although I saw poison oak on either side of the trail, there was none near the cache, nor was there any along the short walk from the trail to the cache.

 

But when I was logging my find, I read some of the other logs. A number of them mentioned bushwacking for more than 1/4 mile, through thickets of poison oak. Apparently, a lot of people seeking the cache decided to follow the arrow at one of the many sharp bends in the trail. But they were never more than a couple hundred feet from the trail, as they plowed through the woods and through the poison oak.

 

I later discovered that it's fairly common to find the best trail to the cache site only after you've bushwacked to the cache site and found the cache. But at least you can take the trail on the way back.

Edited by niraD
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I was searching for a cache with a unique camo in a suburban setting on a Mother's Day. Just as I picked up the cache, a nicely dressed mother and her daughter come around the corner. They started conversing with ne and I could tell they were trying to convert me and were probably Jehovah Witnesses. I politely told them that I was happy with my religion and they spotted the cache in my hand. From it's appearance (it wasn't a tupperware )there was no way to pass it off as something else. So when asked "what is that?" I explained geocaching. The mother called the daughter over and said "you might be interested in this". I then spent 5-10 minutes explainung geocaching to them. Maybe I converted them!

Edited by Wacka
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One time I and a buddy were in a park to get a couple of caches whose names started the same but different sizes. We got to GZ and started looking. After a few minutes of fruitless searching I set my GPSr down on a log to let it settle. We started spreading out our search, read the hint, used that - but nada. At one point I even checked the log my GPSr was sitting on, picked it up and moved a small chunk of wood to see if somehow it was inside the log. After many minutes we realized we were looking for the wrong cache - looking ofr the regular but at the mirco cache location. At this point it only took a minute to find the micro - in the chunk of wood my GPSr had been sitting on the whole time!

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Well, it's funny in retrospect.

 

After spending a week in South Korea visiting friends, my wife and I set out for the airport at Incheon for our flight back. We checked in, checked our bags, and then I left my wife in the airport so I could snag some of the caches around the airport. South Korea doesn't have many non-micro caches, and I wanted to swap some trackables at the TB hotel.

 

All was good. I hopped a shuttle, got off at the right stop, found a couple caches, swapped some TBs, and then got back on the bus.

 

The wrong bus.

 

I had about an hour and a half until my flight left when I got on the shuttle. Plenty of time, if I had gotten on the right bus. Or even if I had walked back to the terminal. But instead of looping back to the terminal, the bus went out into the hinterlands, making stops at various cargo terminals, and stopped at the bus depot three miles from the terminal. It took about 40 minutes. I got on the next bus headed back for the terminal and sat there, tense. And the bus didn't leave. Then, finally, it started up, but instead of backing up, the bus driver inched forward and nudged one of the off duty bus drivers with its bumper. Hilarity ensued, for all but me.

 

I was going to miss my flight. My wife was going to kill me.

 

The bus made its way, agonizingly slowly, back to the terminal, another 40 minute ride. I fumed, silently, checking my watch and the GPSr screen continually as a sickening sense of defeat grew. Finally it stopped at the departures door and I sprinted off in dread. I had ten minutes until my flight left. And the security line was at least 100 people long.

 

Contemplating the impending divorce petition that I was sure she would file as soon as she landed in Atlanta without me, I rushed to the first open counter and breathlessly explained my situation to the suddenly wide-eyed employee. She rushed me to another employee, who rushed me through an unmarked door next to the security line. (Presumably this line is now marked with my picture and the caption, "For idiots only.") I got through security, now three minutes until departure. Still had to hit passport control. I spotted an open station, sprinted in front of a befuddled family of five that was moving slowly, and got my stamp.

 

Fortunately the gate was right by passport control, and the crew had apparently been notified, as they were waving frantically at me. I got on board and heard the "thunk" of the door being sealed as I made my way though the plane. I was too ashamed to look anywhere but at the seat numbers, as I'm sure that, if looks could have killed, I would be dead a hundred times over from the glares of my fellow passengers as I made my way back.

 

My wife justly punished me by making me ride in the middle seat the entire flight back -- this is on the Incheon to Atlanta flight, which is 14.5 hours and only just fails to make the list of the 20 longest non-stop flights in the world. But she was kind enough to start speaking to me again after a half hour of chilly silence, prompted by my profuse apologies and several oaths to never, ever do this again.

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^ Great tale; I could feel the building anxiety.

 

Here's one of my own, from a four-guys-in-a-rental road trip, at the back of a cemetery.

CB finds it, quietly slips it to me, I sign the log in the van, CB puts it back discreetly, we keep pretending to look, KBG comes out of the bush, Didn't find it?, we shake our heads, KBG looks in the most likely spot again, finds it, What, are you guys new at this?!?!?

KBG unrolls the log, I ask with a straight face, Anybody found it lately?

Hey, somebody was here today.

[Light bulb goes on over KBG]

[Next phrase unprintable]

We all laugh.

 

If the spirits were watching, I'm sure they'd have appreciated the light moment. Thanks for the hide.

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It's not a tremendously funny story, but I think it illustrates one of the hazards of geocaching!

 

I've been caching for nearly a year and really took to it. My husband sometimes caches with me but often I go out alone. Last December I decided to do a circular walk in a very rural area of Essex, England, which involved tramping through deserted fields, looking under bridges etc. My husband had a prior engagement and couldn't come. By the time I got on the road, it really a bit late in the day given that it starts getting dark about 4pm at that time of year, but I thought I could make it around.

 

So I parked up in the village next to the walk, put on my boots and set off, car keys in coat pocket. As I was walking around, I did think to myself once or twice that I should put the keys in my bag, but as my hands were in my pockets a lot and I kept feeling the key, I didn't get around to it.

 

You can see where this is going, can't you.

 

I got to the final cache and set off on the walk back to the village. The light was going by this time. As I walked along the road, I put my hand in my pocket and my keys weren't there. There was about 100m of denial, another 100m of frantically checking my pockets and bag and a further 100m of 'oh, f***'. The village was a good 45 min drive from my house, my husband wasn't reachable on the phone and there is no public transport. While I had a reasonable idea where they keys had fallen out, it was by now too dark to go back and look.

 

So I got to the village pub (which wouldn't even usually have been open at that time but they were doing a private party for some locals) and explained what had happened. They gave me the number of a taxi company who basically laughed at my request to be taken a mile up the road in the middle of nowhere in the dark to look for my lost car keys. The pub landlord offered to take me back so we drove and looked around with torches for a few minutes. Of course, we didn't find them. He took me back to the pub and I had to call my next door neighbour to come and pick me up. Fortunately, she was totally lovely about it and even took me in and gave me a glass of wine when we got back.

 

The next day, my husband took me back to the village to pick up the car. Since we were there, I suggested a last ditch attempt to look for the keys.

 

Guess what we found after about a minute of kicking aside leaves and looking around. Yep.

 

Keys now go in a zipped pocket or bag. :)

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This one wasn't very funny at the time. I noted an Earthcache on the top of Kokerbin Rock, which was only about 9 kilometres from where I was camped in my caravan. I had climbed the rock (the 3rd largest monolith in Australia) about a year previously, prior to the earthcache being placed, to find a couple of conventional caches. I climbed to the top, made the relevant notes and went back to camp and logged the find. Four days later, I decided to enter a few GC's into the GPSr for later on and couldn't find it. After searching the van and the car, I realised that I must have left it on top of the cairn on top of Kokerbin Rock. Mad rush back there and a double-time climb up the 122 metre high rock (nearly killed me), only to find it wasn't there – of course it wouldn't be, not after 4 days!! I got back to my camp, cursing and swearing and flopped back down to recover, and Blow Me Down! – There it sat, large as life, out in the open sitting on top of the bedside table. Oldtimer's Disease is creeping up! I think I might have to put a cord on it and hang it around my neck.

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While searching for a regular sized cache years ago in a fairly open wooded area of a national forest, I started growing more and more frustrated as I searched every available spot for a cache that I had spent a fair amount of time hiking to. It was a hot, muggy Mississippi summer day, my water supply was dwindling, and one pant leg was wet after falling in a creek (along with my GPS) a little earlier.

 

The mosquitoes were buzzing, my arms and face bleeding from taking a "shortcut" through a blackberry patch... I finally decided I had had enough. Disgusted with the DNF I was going to have write, I kicked the dirt in anger, only to hear a familiar "thunk" of a hiking book hitting an ammo can. It was stuck down in an old stump hole that had filled in.

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I love all of your stories!

 

I'm going to tell one from my first day of geocaching.

 

Well I discovered this app not to long ago (December) and I really didn't understand that geocaches go off of trails; I just thought you go straight to them. Well that ended me up into a thorn bush the size of big foot. I was stuck for 20 minutes until some bikers came by and rescued me. It was unbelievably frustrating as the geocache was within sight but I had gotten myself into such a bind that I wasn't able to retrieve it until my rescue.

 

I'm just saying that it should be written somewhere that you don't necessarily go straight to the geocache. It was awful at the time but now I look back it and snicker.

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Not sure how funny this story is, but it tickled us when it happened. I'll keep out cache and cacher details to protect the innocent. ;)

 

One time on a trip, we visited a tourist spot in a large city. The cache was a mystery that had you go to an informational sign, do some figuring, and then realize that the cache is a micro attached to the underside of the informational sign. The place was packed with tourists.

 

We were trying to get at the cache under the sign, but there were two people standing at the sign, studying it. After watching them for a while, we realized that they were cachers.

 

I got a bit silly, and casually walked up to the other side of the sign, slipped off the cache, and then we went to the side and started logging it. Fairly soon after that, one of the cachers became aware of us, looked at us suspiciously, then I overheard her talking to her caching partner that she thought we were cachers.

 

We had a little laugh and brought the cache over to them. It was very nice meeting them and chatting with them. But I was quite pleased with myself for not only being sneaky enough to retrieve a cache in a highly crowded area, but also from right under the noses of two fellow cachers! :anicute::laughing:

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I'm just saying that it should be written somewhere that you don't necessarily go straight to the geocache. It was awful at the time but now I look back it and snicker.
Well, when I introduce new people to geocaching, I make a point of explaining that you may find the container 5-6m (16-20ft) from where your device points under ideal conditions, and that under less than ideal conditions, it can be further away than that.

 

And in the "How do I find the cache and what should I do once I've found it?" section of the Geocaching 101 page, it says "For instance, did you know that there is a slight "error" to every GPS device due to technological limitations? Your device can get you close to the cache, but there are a number of things to consider as you get closer to the cache location."

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We have a story that makes us chuckle to this day.

We had been caching for, maybe, 3 months and were off to a cache in a large woodlot called "Joe's Bush". As we drove to the woodlot, we read the cache description and it said "Park on the South side of the road". OK .. cool... look! The GPS needle is pointing directly to our right into the woodlot! It's almost a quarter mile to the cache, but the description said to park on the South side of the road, so we did, and proceeded to bushwhack all the way to, and back from the cache. Too bad there wasn't a trail somewhere, but it was a fun hike anyway.

 

OK. Make our notes and off to the next cache, continuing along the road.

 

Not even 300 yards along the road was a parking lot!

The parking lot for Joe's Bush .. on the south side of the road!

 

And there was a trail! And someone had even left a couple of walking sticks against the gate post!

 

This fall, there were a couple more caches hidden in "Joe's Bush", and guess what? We used the trail!

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