A week or so later, on the way home from Thanksgiving dinner that November in 2004, we decided we’d try for our first find. The one we selected was Duck Pond Frenzy #1 (GCGHQZ). You can understand our excitement when, after a 15 minute search (without a GPS), we made our first find.
We were hooked. Later that day, we got finds # 2 and # 3. Then, the next day, we got a GPSr -- an eTrex Legend that we still use today. We were off to the races; caching every chance we could. It wasn’t long before we saw the need to go paperless, so a Palm Pilot soon followed.
We began to meet fellow geocachers on the trail, as well as at events we attended – some of whom became close friends.
Through the hot San Antonio summer months, you could find us chasing smilies almost every weekend. Our biggest rules were: One smiley per GC number and find them/solve them without help.
Another great benefit, to us, of geocaching was the opportunity (excuse) to stop and stretch our legs on long drives to visit family. It wasn’t long before we began varying our route to Louisiana just so we could hit “new” caches along the way.
Before we knew it, it was December 31st, 2005 and we had just logged # 500.
Things slowed down for us over the next several months and by the end of August, we were sitting at about 700 finds. But, after going on a short vacation in early September and being in somewhat of a chase with one of our oldest caching friends, we suddenly found ourselves with only 250 to go to reach the 1000 milestone.
We began to think that we might be able to reach 1000 before the end of the year – a significant milestone for anybody. So, we began to pick up the caching pace. By the end of September, we had reached 845 finds. And, by the end of October – 974.
We now realized it wasn’t only possible, but probable that we’d reach 1000 by the end of the year. But what if we were able to get number 1000 while on vacation, during Thanksgiving, in my home town in eastern Maine? So, we began making plans to make it happen.
Looking through the available caches in that part of the country, we selected one (GC8746) that was less than 10 miles from my boyhood home. Now, we had to make sure we had enough finds before leaving San Antonio so we could easily make our targeted cache number 1000.
We began to discuss our idea with my family. My sister, Donna, got really excited about the idea. She wanted to go with us when we went for number 1000. When the day arrived, Donna arrived with her grandson, Dawson. Dawson, 6 years old at the time, had been told of the adventure we were going on. He walked in carrying a stick as long as he was tall. When asked what it was for, he said “We’re going into the woods. We need this so we can whack a deer!”
Although I had been to the cache’s location many years ago, I couldn’t really remember how to get to it. It took some driving around over old dirt roads, but we eventually found the right one and arrived at the cache location. At that time, my brother in law, Bruce arrived to join the party. To commemorate the occasion, we left a travel bug made from our personal wooden nickel with a mission of finding its way back to us one day.
We can’t begin to say how much it meant to us to reach 1000 finds, let alone to be able to share the milestone with our family. We can only hope we have as much fun finding the next 1000 as we did the first 1000.<BR><BR>
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