Geocaching's 15th Birthday

Today marks the 15th anniversary of the first geocache placement.

On 2nd May 2000 selective availability was switched off and suddenly all GPSr's became accurate allowing anyone with a GPS receiver to pinpoint their location (or the location of an object) accurately.

The following day Dave Ulmer buried a five gallon bucket in the woods, containing a Delorme Topo USA, 2 CD Roms, a cassette recorder, a "George of the Jungle" VHS tape, a Ross Perot book, 4 $1 bills, a slingshot handle and a can of beans. It was located in an isolated spot in Oregon and the first finder of that first cache was Mike Teague who took the money and left some cigarettes, a cassette tape and a pen and told people about it. 

These days burying a cache is forbidden and you aren't meant to leave items of food or items like cigarettes but the basic premise of geocaching hasn't changed since that very first cache 15 years ago. People hide a container, publish the co-ordinates on the internet and others use their GPSr's to go and find it. 

The very first cache was badly damaged many years ago but a plaque and a replacement have been placed and we visited them a couple of years ago on a trip to the north-west corner of the USA.

You can find out more about the hobby here: Geocaching  I can guarantee that there will be at least one geocache hidden within 0.5 miles of your house.

I have now been geocaching for just over 11 years and thought it would be nice to find one this morning to mark the anniversary. This cache was found under a footbridge and the logbook is a film canister in the base of the gnome. 

I took a few pictures but this is my favourite composition because it gives the cache a bit of context. However the background is too bright so Im not entirely happy with it.