Geocaching is a great hobby for a lot of reasons. It was June 16, 2001 when I heard about it – I was 16 years old and working with UCARES volunteering with search and rescue related things and I heard a couple of guys I knew talking on the radio about looking for something up near Eureka.

They explained that they were playing this new game called Geocaching (it had begun about 13 months earlier in Oregon) where people will go hide a container (tupperware, ammo can, anything to keep things dry) in the mountains or anywhere really and put GPS coordinates and clues on the website for others to go try to find it.

Some have simply a log (a piece of paper) to sign to prove you were there, some have toys and trinkets to trade. Some are very easy and some are very hard. Some you can drive up and reach out the car window and some you have to hike for miles, swim, rock climb or anything else. It really is a game/hobby that can be enjoyed by anyone. When you find one you can log it on the website and it keeps track of which caches you have found and how many.

I started to get excited by hiding geocaches for other people to find, I got a real joy out of adding to the game so that other people had more to go look for. Over the years I ended up hiding thousands and finding thousands, here are my current stats:

I made many friends from geocaching, both from randomly running into people who were also looking for what I was looking for and from geocaching events – a set time and place to gather and socialize.

I love geocaching because it has led me to so many places I would never have known about before, I love learning and exploring and I don’t know of any better way to do that, no matter where I go in the world.

More recently I started recording my geocache hunts and putting them on youtube, if you’d like to come along for those here is the playlist below:

To learn about getting started, visit this page: https://www.geocaching.com/guide/

My profile on the geocaching website is here. If you’re interested or have questions, feel free to stop into one of our facebook groups: Geocaching in Utah or Utah Association of Geocachers.

I really don’t think I’d ever be able to really express how much I love geocaching and how much joy, fun, friendship and adventure it has brought into my life but I hope this page gives a feel for some of that.