Who would have known when I signed up to a website on January 31 in 2002, I would be talking about it today just over 11 years later.

That website was Geocaching.com. To this day, I am still unsure why I signed up. I may have read about it somewhere, or found it when I was looking for something to do with my GPSr at the time, a Garmin III+.

Whatever the reason, I didn’t really get into geocaching until  April/May 2006 when I took the kids for a walk around the area finding a few caches. Even then it was pretty much forgotten again. It wasn’t until April 2007 that the bug bit.

So what is geocaching. From the website, “Geocaching is a real-world, outdoor treasure hunting game using GPS-enabled devices. Participants navigate to a specific set of GPS coordinates and then attempt to find the geocache (container) hidden at that location“.

In basic terms, you use a GPSr to find an object that has been hidden by someone else, sign the log and move onto the next one. There are a number of tag lines associated with Geocaching, but one of the best is “using billion dollar satellites to find Tupperware in the woods“.

Some call it a sport, some a hobby and if you ask Jenny, an obsession. 🙂

Whatever you call it, it provides an opportunity to get out there among it. You can drive, walk, ski, kayak to find these and locations vary from shopping centre car parks to the top of mountains and in 11 years I have been to a lot of wide and varying locations.

It has taken me to 3 countries and 2 continents (It is a shame that it wasn’t around when I did a lot of travelling in the 90’s). There have been days when I have found 600 when I tackled the ET Highway in Rachel Nevada (GC2ZK7J – 0001-E.T.) and other days when I have hiked up a mountain to find just one cache (GC1Z4QY – Mt Cavern).

It is not just a journey of finding Tupperware but also meeting some great people. I have met a lot of people from both Australia and around the world. All have the same interest but come from different backgrounds and many friendships have formed. I have also met the #1 Geocacher in the world (Alamogul) who attended an event in Nevada put on for me during my visit in 2012 (GC3CMT4 -Fun in the Dirt (Meet the guy from down under)).

Well today was a major milestone in my journey and I had a number of Geocaching friends that wanted to be part of that milestone. It was going to be my 10000 find – quite an achievement for an Australian Geocacher.

Locus Cache had borrowed a 4WD for the day from a workmate (she needed to get some miles up on a lease vehicle). Along with Honeysucker and CPwanderer we headed south, hoping to find a suitable cache to mark the 10000th find.

Early in the day we made a run from Hallett Cove to Aberfoyle Park for a First to Find and then continued south along the coastline to Aldinga Beach. We were about to make a find on the lookout to mark the milestone when a new cache was published down at Mt Compass. It was 23 kilometres away. The cache was GC45MMP – Compass Wetlands.

With Locus Cache driving and the rest of us hanging on, off we went.

Pulling into the car park, we were the only souls here so off to GZ. All our GPSr’s indicated the orange thing in the middle of the water was the cache location was but we didn’t think we had to get wet feet so time to search the nearby structure and with no one around we were uninterrupted.

Eventually we found the cache with about 8m on the GPSr.

Drum Roll – I opened the log book to find it was clean. Hooray, a First to Find for my 10000th find. 😀

After signing the log it was time for a celebratory beverage at the Mt Compass Tavern.

Who knows what the next 11 years will bring and where it will take me. Keep on caching. 🙂

[Show as slideshow]

Had the call that the Port Gawler Mangroves were ripe for the picking (well at least the geocaches) and would I like to go for a paddle.

Having bought a kayak 12 months ago and only used it once three weeks ago and not paddled for 15 years – why not.

We arrived at 10:30 as the tide was heading out, leaving an guard at the cars and started paddling.

We paddled for 2 hours covering 4.7 km in four canoes and getting 4 cache finds.

Mutiny on the Bounty 1 – The Bounty

Mutiny on the Bounty 2 – Stores

Mutiny on the Bounty 3 – Treasure

Bligh’s Revenge

I put together a video of the adventure – 2 hours of paddling in 48 seconds 🙂

How hard could it be. After all I had canoed down the Zambesi River in ’98 contending with elephants, crocodiles and hippos and this was just a 200 metre paddle off the beach at Tennyson.

I think where my idea came unstuck was I was 14 years younger back then and at least 14 kg lighter but I was willing to give it a go.

12 months ago I had bought a kayak to tackle the mangrove caches but it has sat in the shed since I had bought it so today was the day to christen it.

The geocache on the radar today was “Fishing for Red Herrings“.

Arriving at the beach it didn’t look too hard but as we were getting ready the tide was turning and the swell was increasing – not the best for some one who hasn’t paddled for 14 years but don’t they say you always remember how to ride a bike. I wonder if that is the same for paddling.

There was a varied flotilla of craft assembled for the trek but in the end there was only 2 that made the journey out through the pounding surf – the floating barge of shonylogic and my untested kayak.

After the third attempt of getting past the breakers, I was finally on my way following in the wake of the barge. About half way out the surf capsized me and it then became a swim to the structure as I had failed to practice the remount in surf procedure.

No good caching story is complete without some blood and I managed to get some while being pounded into the ladder by the swell at the structure.

Cache all signed and I got back on the kayak and paddled back towards land. Again at about half way in, I was capsized again. (there must be a bump there somewhere ) Oh well, time for another swim. It wasn’t long before the barge came out to me and offered me a seat back into dry land.

Back on the beach and it was time to check my stuff I had carried with me. We soon found out that zip lock bags are not that waterproof and hopefully I will be able to resurrect my CB radio.

It was a fun morning and was thinking maybe the kayak belonged in the shed but we then went top West Lakes for another find and it performed perfectly in the calm waters.

I have put together a short 30 second video of the hour long trek 🙂