Meeting notes: May 3, 2003
Hello cachers,
The May meeting of the GGA was held at Heritage Park in Cobb County. We celebrated the third anniversary of Geocaching with some history of the game. The first Geocache was placed on May 3, 2000. It was listed on an Internet newsgroup site and was visited twice the next day. Soon a small web site was put together by Mike Teague to have web pages for the caches that were springing up. Jeremy Irish approached Mike about expanding the site to a higher level, and the www.geocaching.com site that we know today was born. That first cache, ID=15, was placed in Oregon near Portland. It is no longer there but another cache was placed nearby by Makaio and Ponyrider, ID=146. The oldest active stash is "Mingo", ID=48, and was placed by Kansas Stasher and still gets regular visits. The oldest active cache is GA is the Beaver Cache, ID=29. It was hidden on 6-3-00 and also still receives regular visits also.
Caches evolved over time from just placing Tupperware and ammo boxes in the woods. A few cachers began to expand on the idea of Geocaching by creating puzzle caches and multi-caches. Early on caches were banned in National Parks because of poor placement and because cachers did not seek permission. Cachers created virtual caches so special places could be featured as caches even though no container could be placed there. Here again, puzzles and questions about the area are used to verify that you have found the "cache". A category of "unknown" caches was created for some of the puzzle caches to add to the mystery of the find. Letterboxing is a similar activity that is clue based instead of coordinate based and the two have been blended into a "letterbox hybrid" cache type. Letterboxes contain stamps instead of logbooks and you collect stamp impressions instead of trinkets. Eventually someone thought of a way to create a webcam cache by taking coordinates at a location near the field of view for one of these online cameras. This fun cache type requires that you have someone electronically save a photo of you in front of the camera for cache credit. The GGA is proud to be the first group to hold an Event Cache where cachers get together to meet and swap stories and such. We later became the first Association to form. Reverse caches, or locationless caches, also came about where cachers take coordinates for object throughout the world depending on the requirement listed on the cache page. A few early cachers put small items in caches with tags on them and created traveling caches. They have their own cache page and go from cache to cache. Some of those early travelers were the Mars ROVER caches by mtn-man and the Scooby and Shaggy traveler by Markwell. Jeremy ran with this idea and created the "Travel Bug".
For an example of how fast Geocaching is growing, the 1st Anniversary Cache by mtn-man is cache ID=2167, the 2nd is cache ID=21321 and the 3rd is ID=67233. These have all been placed on May 3 of 2001, 2002 and 2003 respectively. As of May 3, 2003 there were 51700 active caches in 171 countries. In the previous seven days there were 34,849 logs by 8690 account holders.
Erik discussed some of the guidelines for placing and creating cache pages. The guidelines for cache placement do change from time to time and the current guidelines were reviewed. Most changes occur as problem areas are discovered as Geocaching grows. Some good question and answer exchanges came out of this discussion. It is good to review the guidelines page before you place a cache.
http://www.geocaching.com/requirements.asp
Allen Lacy also showed us how he modifies an ammo box to make it into a better and more camouflaged cache container. He paints and adds an identifying graphic to the side of the ammo container. The method he uses is featured on his web site at http://www.allenlacy.com/GPS/CacheKit.htm and on the GGA website at http://www.ggaonline.org/resources/cache_kit/cache_kit.html. He also ran through the things that he carries inside his backpack on a cache hunt. The items he takes on cache hunt are on his website at http://www.allenlacy.com/GPS/CamelBak.htm. Allen uses the CamelBak pack which has a built in water reservoir. He discussed the good points about the system and how he can put ice in the water bag, etc. For short drive-by caches you can go pretty lightweight but for longer hikes and more dense areas it is good to have some things such as handy wipes, bug repellant for summer, a simple first aid kit and even snake bite kits. Carry water with you and even a snack or two. Don't forget you trinket goody bag! It is better to be over prepared than under prepared. Being prepared can help to keep you Geocache adventures fun.
We had 5 new members and 14 return GGA members. I am proud to say that J.C. the puppymonster finally made it to a meeting and is now an official GGA Member!
Thanks to all that attended.
mtn-man (Greg)
