On January 22nd, 1990 Dr Seuss’ “Oh, The Places You’ll Go” was published.
On May 3rd, 2000 Dave Ulmer’s “Stash Cache” was published as the very first geocache.
On September 15th, 2007 our first geocache was published.....and in the 12+ years since then.... Oh, the Places You'll Go!
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“Away You Go” was the first Traditional geocache we hid. To date we have hidden 28 additional traditional geocaches, most of which have been for our annually hidden 'Birthday Caches' beginning with “geocASHLYN” and most recently “geocADDISON IX”. How many of these have you found over the years?
Since that day, we have also placed seven different cache types for geocachers to find. Of course, this does not include the Adventure Lab cache type which we have hidden as well. To date this includes sixteen Multi-caches, six Letterbox Hybrids, fifty-four Mystery caches, seven Earthcaches, twenty Wherigo caches, and as well as hosting seventeen events, which included the "SW MI Chili Cook Off" events (a must-attend event in the Spring).
We hope that you have enjoyed these geocache hides over the years, and possibly the many more to come. In honor of our 150th geocache hide “The Big 1-5-0 It’s Been a Good Time with Adventures”, we are placing this geocache. Whether you are new to this game or have been around for almost as long as Dave Ulmer, we hope you have enjoyed the places we have taken you to.
When we first started geocaching, many of our first finds were traditional caches, but soon discovered the Puzzle Cache type. That led to the creation of the puzzle for the final in our Daughter Series “Need Five to Arrive”. The unique part of this puzzle that each clue was a puzzle itself. You needed to decode the clue, found in the traditional caches in that series, in order to figure out how it figured into the overall puzzle solution. This was not a simple A=1, B=2 kind of clue either. You had to decode a phrase using the ROT13 decryption method which is used for all hints on geocaching pages, if given.
A couple of months later, we expanded our hiding style with our first Multi-cache “Prowlin4Snakeeyes”. Unfortunately, it was short-lived due to some over-zealous hunter and a nearby tree stand. Soon after we placed another Multi-cache named Sponsored By…… This one was brought about by some late-night brainstorming on how my name fit into many corporate or product names. Thus was born the first LEEocache, a theme that we would continue in the years to come, and would become the inspiration for my web domain name.
Over the course of the next 5 months, with the cold weather settling into Michigan, I had a lot of time to create several puzzles for everyone to enjoy. Some of these puzzles were inspired by their hide location, like “Bullseye”, or “Dead End”, others were created using fonts, or word searches,or they were replicas of other cool puzzles that I had found while out geocaching. We also placed another five multi-caches before we expanded into Earthcaching with the “Macatawa River Gaging Station". While a Gaging Station is not as cool as some other geological features we have found along our journeys, it helps you to learn about the world around you. A short time later we earned our fifth geocaching hide icon when we placed “Little Lady’s Letterbox”. This was then followed up by hosting our first event cache “Y-Knot? WWFM Event” for our sixth geocaching hide icon.
Several months passed where we hid more Multi-caches and Puzzle caches including our first two Challenge Caches; “A Baker’s Dozen Challenge Cache (In Michigan)”, and “It’s (Not) About The Numbers – Challenge Cache” which are still active today. These caches require you to find geocaches with a specific characteristic per the written qualifications in order to able to seek out the final location. If you haven’t heard about Challenge Caches, I recommend these two as they can add some fun to your geocaching adventures.
During this time the Wherigo geocache entered on to the geocaching landscape, and in August of 2009, we hid our first one… “Age of Discovery is Wherigo” – Of course this is to not be confused with “Lakeview Park Tour” which was placed three months earlier. We adopted that geocache hide in August of 2013 when that geocache owner no longer could maintain it. As it was a part of the early history of Wherigo of Michigan, we could not let it just get archived. This now gave us seven different geocache hide types to our credit in our first two years of geocaching. Oh the places you’ll go, and the places we have seen.
To add our own twist into the game of geocaching, we have placed several geocaches that have since become known as LEEocaches. The first (unofficial) LEEocache was the aforementioned “Sponsored By…”. This was followed by probably my favorite puzzle cache that I have ever created “monopoLEE”. Of course, what better way to celebrate an extra day of the year than with a “LEEp Day” puzzle. The first one being placed in 2008, followed by “LEEp Day Too” in 2012, and “LEEp Day III” in 2016. Will there be “LEEp Day IV” in 2020? We shall see. Getting back to the LEEocaching, in August 2008, we felt it was time to place one by name “LEEocache”. This was followed by a Travel Bug Hotel Type geocache with the Multi-cache “QuaLEEty Inn (A Travel Bug and Geocoin Hotel)”. This one had a good run, but when Travel Bugs and Geocoins kept going missing, it was time to archive it. A year later we tried this concept again with the Multi-cache “sLEEp inn (A Travel Bug and Geocoin Hotel)” which remained open until 2011.
Of course, we still put out other types of geocaches which included my second favorite puzzle cache; “Silver Surfer”. This one took advantage of a unique Latitude and Longitude convergence in the West Michigan area. There was a great video to watch, some awesome music, and 'conversation' with an alien.
Over the next year we placed several more geocaches including “Mr Wher1goo” which celebrated the first geocacher in Michigan, or maybe even the US or the world to log 100 Wherigo finds. Another LEEocache entitled “Winter FriendLEE” which in all essence it was. Even the dummy coords; these took you to a giant snowplow in Hudsonville, MI.
As mentioned previously, our Travel Bug hotels each met their demise and closed (got archived) with the second one closing as someone took off with my large ammo can that was locked to the tree. The left the lock however. Thus was born “unbeLEEvable”. About six months later, I created yet another puzzle LEEocache, seeing the theme here?, with a '(de)Motivational' cache with “Matt FauxLEE” which if I could have made it work, I would have hid it in a VAN……DOWN BY THE RIVER!!!!
Combining our newfound love of geocaching and Wherigos, we placed our first LEEocache Wherigo when we hid “Major LEEague” in 2012. This is still active today, that is during baseball/softball season, just be careful to watch for foul balls. That same day we also hid “LEEocache QOTD” which is based on our caching experiences and modeled after the Twitter posts known as Geocaching QOTD by TheBadCop. For those not familiar with this acronym, QOTD means Question Of The Day. After this we placed our last LEEocache to date with “LEEp Day III” in 2016, so I guess it is almost time for another one?
We hope you have enjoyed this trip down memory lane with us, and hope you enjoyed the places you have been and hope this inspires you for the Places You Will Go. See you on the trail someday!
