We are by no means early adopters when it comes to geocaching, having only discovered it in the summer of 2013. I got to thinking recently about how our lives would have been different if we had taken up the hobby closer to its inception in 2000, how we could have been reaping all the health benefits of long countryside walks for the best part of 15 years rather than spending all that time watching DVDs and eating pizzas – although I do look back on the movies we watched and pizzas we ate with great fondness.
Then I got to thinking about some of the great places we had been in the first 10 years of the millennium before we knew about geocaching and deep inside me a little something curled into a ball and gently sobbed.
In 2001 we went to Disney World in Florida and had a fantastic time immersing ourselves in the Mouse’s marvelous magic . On the 3rd of July that year, Magic Kingdom Virtual (GC10FB) was published, which was exactly when we were there!! We could have been amongst the first people to ever log that cache. *whimper*
See… I was there. Ironically this is identical to the picture you needed to provide to claim the virtual!
In May 2002 we went to Athens and I realised a dream of mine to stand and gaze upon the Acropolis with my own eyes – something which, due to my blindness, is no longer possible. While we were in Athens we could have found and signed ATHINA KIPOS (GC25EB) a cache that had been placed the previous October. *sniff*
see… I was RIGHT THERE!
And in 2003, the big one, we went to New Zealand, the birthplace of my better half, for an amazing 3 week holiday. I can barely bring myself to search the caches that we could have found but I know that Huka Falls (GC931D), a traditional placed in 2002, was among them.*sob*
Lake Taupo… Huka Falls… I WAS RIGHT THERE!!!
Then there was our trips to Lille and Paris in France and then back to the states again to visit my sister in Minnesota and That’s just the international travel. In the UK we went to Sheffield, Bristol, Leicester, Cornwall, Shrewsbury and … and… and *sigh*. If I had known about geocaching back then I could have had finds spanning the entire globe by now.
Still… it’s almost October 21st 2015 which means if I can just find my way to the fictional town of Hill Valley in California I might be able to nick the DeLorean from Marty McFly when he arrives and then those caches are mine. muhahahahahahaha.
If you had a time machine which places would you pop back to so you could snag a smiley or two?
Washknight - Geocaching Blind 
Egypt – there must be some at the valley of the kings, or Karnak (the BEST place I visited!). It would have been amazing to discover my own little bit of ‘treasure’ and feel like a real explorer 🙂
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Yeah Egypt would be a cool place to go geocaching. Whilst there aren’t physical container caches at those locations there are earthcaches at both Karnak http://coord.info/GC19AXT and Valley of the kings http://coord.info/GC1956A
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Perhaps I’ll go back someday and try get them logged 🙂
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I’ve been geocaching only for a year but in a way, glad I’m still quite new as there are so MANY caches nearby and within a very short distance. However, I would love to go back to just February this year when I visited the good old US of A and arrived during Storm Octavia. Never seen snow like it and it doesn’t make for good caching weather. I did manage to find five but my plans were well and truly scuppered. I’d like to go back and get a few more and also find out where my TB has got to – it went missing immediately !!!!
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Oh what rotten luck. We released a rugby ball tb 2 years ago with the goal of going to nz and back in time for the world cup. It didn’t even get out of the uk before it went missing!
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I started at the beginning August 2001. I only found 42 or so caches that first year. I’ve got caches on my watchlist that were just caches that were near where I might be visiting back in the UK that are now sort after due to their age but I’ve not got around to finding most of them, although I’ve have found a few favourites! There is no going back! But if there was I’d go to New Zealand again!
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I bet there weren’t that many caches to find back when you started.
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I’ve been caching since 2010 and we’ve only just gone over 350 caches… we’re a bit slow & steady and had a rather long cache-free time after we moved house 3 years ago but we’re getting back into it. We’d probably just get the time machine to take us back to a circuit of caches near where we used to live… we were about 5 minutes ‘late’ and seemed to be following a cacher who got the FTFs. We also do the occasional *shhh* M***** (you know, the M word that geocaching.com don’t like you to use) and when we joined it was very new and there were hardly any in the UK. Our first nearest one was about 20 miles away so we went all the way there to get it, then set about laying our own which were uncaught for a long time. We log the odd one but don’t go out of our way to find them, geocaching is much more fun.
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Can’t say I have ever found a mu… you know one of those things. To be honest, I looked at the local ones and I just found myself thinking why would I want to go to ASDA car park other than to go shopping? Thanks for reading 🙂
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Just be sure to bring me back a hoverboard… Should make some of the T5s round here a little easier 😉
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Oh the places I could have cached! I discovered Geocaching back when I was married. I honestly can’t remember the year as we didn’t do it much. Rediscovered it again and introduced my BF to it. We have been caching fools ever since! He has been to Egypt and we plan to go someday. Will make a mental note of those earth caches [we love earth caches]. We are tentatively planning a trip to the UK next autumn. Part of that planning will be researching interesting Geocaches to do! Cache on!
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Oh by biggest geo-regret is that I wasn’t caching when I went to Argentina and Brazil in 2011! My friend that lived there at the time has since moved back to Ireland making it less likely I’ll go back…. Maybe someday!
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Never say never huh. The caching in South America must be like nothing I’ve experienced I expect.
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