Thanks for the Cache

It seems hard to believe that it has been nearly seven years ago now since I first was introduced to Geocaching. And it was O. Rex who first turned me on to it. I had a GPSr, but we were using PDAs back then, Handsprings with a GPS attachment. I had one ( a gift ), but wasn't really sure how it worked. I was only dimly aware of this thing called Geocaching. Fast forward, and here we are marking significant milestones ( just passed # 300! ). While some people do in a month what we do in a year ( or four ), for me, it is not the quantity, but the quality. When I first started doing this, we were coming down off of some pretty big trips hiking out west. I ( we ) had some heady plans to see the world ( trekking in Nepal and hiking Patagonia ), but they were not to be. Health issues and life in general denied us these opportunities (so far). Geocaching became a new passion. A replacement for what we wanted to do, but could not. It allowed us to condense into a few hours some of the experiences it might take a week to do. It gave us something to do during the day; to plot and plan mini-trips that could be distilled into an evening or a Sunday. It helped define us and added meaning to what otherwise might have been just another day, or week, or year. Simple trips to the store became adventures and every foray to somewhere new became an excuse to geocache. Today, we have each cached in other states. We have even cached in another countries. We have cached in the summer, and the cold, in the rain and in the sun, day, night, we have even tied caching into camping trips and in our day to day work world. Heck, I have even cached with my mother. I rarely go anywhere without checking to see if there is a cache I can do along the way. While one of the best parts was discovering cool new places in my own state where I hadn't been, the best part was hanging around with my good friends and Rex in particular. You couldn't ask for a better caching partner. He has always been willing to do the crazy things few others would, canoeing in the rain, visiting cemeteries late at night, caching cold winter evenings, with Rex putting Christmas lights on his backpack. I, and I think we, have 100+ great memories because of geocaching we wouldn't have had. This is why I love geocaching. Thanks for the Cache