During this outbreak of COVID-19, we urge you not to do this geocache. This is not the time to be geocaching. By all means, walk around your block but give geocaching a rest for now.
A little history......
From February 2001 to August 2002, about a year and a half, it took the small but slowly growing community of geocachers (at that time, mostly located in Vancouver and Victoria) to reach 300 caches placed. Since then, the game has grown expediently. Over the next 3 and one half years, 3000 caches have been added to the 300 and they are now found through out BC. Of course there have been more caches then that placed in BC to date, and if you look at geocaches found by cachers who have been at this great game for awhile, you'll find quite a few caches on their lists that have been archived. We, for example, have around 200 archived caches on our list. But the growth rate of new caches is still out pacing the caches being archived by a large measure.
This cache is to celebrate the number of caches placed and to give everyone a chance to share their story on how they started…..
Here’s ours,
I found Geocaching in February of 2002 while searching for information on GPS receivers for use in my four wheel drive. At that time, there was only two caches near Nanaimo, 'SamHil near Nanaimo' and 'Little Mountain Cache ' . The game look interesting but I didn’t own a GPS yet and both caches seemed like a lot of work so I kind of forgot about it. June of 2002 rolls around and my mother asks what I’d like for my birthday. I ask her if she would help me buy a GPS, she agreed. Before I bought one though, I had to see if I could play the game. I had just checked out Geocaching.com the week before and found that there where now 4 more caches. One required a boat, 'Pirates Treasure' , another, a pretty good hike up a ridge, 'Weight Reducing Ridge'. But these two, 'Westwood Lake Trail Mossy Rocks', and 'Newcastle Views' looked promising. So I borrow an eTrex from a work mate for the weekend to give this game a try. I look for Newcastle Views for about an hour and get very frustrated, leave and find I locked my keys in my truck, so I call my wife. We both look for another half hour. Damn this is hard!! The next morning I get up early and try the Westwood Lake cache. I found it in less then 5 minutes once I get to it. This is kewl, back to the house, take my wife to lunch and we have another go at Newcastle. We find it with about 15 minutes of looking. We’re both hooked now. We had our first GPS, a Garmin 12XL, in a week and it’s been a kick ever since.
This cache is dedicated to the cachers who helped establish the game in the Nanaimo and surronding area. It is also a tribute to my Mom who helped get us started in the game. She passed away in November.
We've started this cache with First, Second, and Third to find certificates each complete with a $5.00 Subway coupon. There are signature items from bcrockcrawler, all three that I've used including 2 of my coveted early moose and 6 copies of the BMX pin I'm using now. xstitcher has left 2 cross stitch kits too. We would like to see other cachers leave their sig items too. We ask though that you trade 2 of your sig items for one in the cache. Hopefully this will keep the cache stocked with a good collection of examples of the varied signiture items that cachers use.
Also, this can be muggle cental, BE Stealthy
