First to Find

Being the first to find a newly published geocache is somewhat of a special honor in the slightly crazy geocaching community.  If you have a paid

Geocaching Comes to Tennessee State parks Event at Harrison Bay

membership to the Geocaching website, you can sign up to receive notifications when a new cache is listed.  There are several in our area that receive these notifications and will head out anytime of day in almost any kind of weather to be the first to find (FTF) of a newly published cache.  I happen to be one of these crazy individuals.

The first time I found a first to find was in May of 2015 with a great group of geocachers at the GC53TX1 –  Geocache Day at Harrison Bay event. We went looking for it as a group to find GC542H2 – Harrison Bay Tennis Courts. Since Dave and Nick were they youngest in the group, everyone decided to let them track it down with a few hints.  While at that event, I learned about the notifications from some of the more experienced cachers and decided to get it set up.

First to Find

Later that afternoon, I got my first notification (GC53FFX – Gas & Go#10) and headed out to give it a try on my own.  Arriving at location (also known as Ground Zero by geocachers), Laura and I began searching for the hidden object.  When we had finally found the cache, I opened the log and found no one had signed it, yet.  How exciting this was!!!  I had only been caching for a little over two weeks and had already met some great people at the event and gotten two first to finds in one day!  I was hooked!!

Well that was a long time ago and I have found at least one first to find every month since.  This month has been very busy for me and few geocaches get published when the weather takes a turn for the worse.  This month, we have had a lot of rain and the temperatures have gotten much cooler.  By this point in the month I had decided that an eighteen month first to find streak was pretty good and resigned myself to allowing the streak to end.

The Chief Richard Taylor Nature Trail

Today, Laura and I had some errands to run in Northern Georgia and were getting ready to head that direction.  Suddenly, my mobile phone made the familiar sound of a notification.  I quickly took a look at the screen and saw that two new caches had just been published in the Ringgold area.  Since we were heading that direction already, it was easy to convince my lovely wife to take a short detour. It would take us twenty minutes to arrive at ground zero, but it was worth a shot.

I used the navigation on my phone to lead us to the nearest parking to the cache location.  It seems that the cache was hidden on a new walking trail along the South Chickamauga Creek.  The navigator on the phone

pathway

apparently didn’t know about it, yet.  So we had to reroute slightly to get to the right location.  After driving around for a few minutes, we finally arrived at the right parking lot, but I was slightly disheartened!  There was another vehicle in the parking lot.  No one in their right mind would be going for a walk next to the creek when the temperature was in the low forties and the wind was gusting; It had to be another geocacher.  But we were here and both of us need to get more exercise so we decided to go ahead and grab the cache anyway.

I switched my phone to the Geocaching app and found the cache (GC677ER – WE’ER OFF TO SEE THE WIZARD) was only one tenth of a mile down the newly laid pathway so off we went to make our find.  Soon we arrived at ground zero and began looking around for likely hiding spots.  I looked up the bank beside the path and spotted what I thought was the likely location just five feet away. As I move away some of the obstacles being used to camouflage the cache, I laid my eyes on my prize.  I opened the container and was shocked to find a clean, unsigned log!!  We had done it.  My first to find streak has been extended one more month. I have now had a first to find every month for nineteen month in a row.  I signed the log and rehid it for the next geocacher to find.

South Chickamauga Creek

I somehow convinced Laura to continue down the path another two tenths of a mile to see if we could make it a double first to find.  As we walked farther down the path, we met up with a couple of muggles (people who don’t know about geocaching) walking in the other direction.  As we neared ground zero, I was coming to the realization my shoes were likely to get wet because water was standing on the right side of the path for twenty feet in both directions.  Laura decided to stay on the solid safety of the path while I made my way toward the probable location of the geocache (GC677E4 – MUNCHKIN LAND.  Somehow I managed to get to it without getting too muddy.  I wasn’t quite as surprised this time to find a nice new unsigned log.  I signed the log and put the cache back where I found it.

I did try to get Laura to head on down the path to get another recently placed cache (GC677DH – YOU FOUND THE EMERALD CITY, but I don’t think she is as crazy as I am.  She was getting cold and wanted to head on to our original destination.  I relented (If Momma ain’t happy….)!