It's difficult to pick a single story from my geocachin' days; however, I would have to say the most inspiring geocacher to me over the years has been Utah Jean. She hasn't been able to do much caching the last couple of years. But, she has inspired most all geocachers along the way over the last 10 years. I remember placing a rather difficult cache and she was the FTF the cache. I didn't know her but thought she must be some awesome physical specimen or something to do the cache so quickly. So, I attended an EGO Cache event celebrating Utah Jean's and DHobby1's 400th cache find. I couldn't believe she was like 65 years old and full of so much energy and life. Over the years we have cached together many times, enjoying the beauty of nature that surrounded us on all our hikes.
She told me stories of finding a portable meth lab in the mtns in a backpack and actually picked it up and started running down the mtn with it--afterwards she said that probably wasn't the smartest thing she's done. She also found the remains of a dead person on one of her hikes; fell of the trail and cut her face up pretty good. The list goes on and on of amazing stories.
I loved reading Jean's log entries. She writes beautifully and back between 2000-2005 all the cachers seemed to write the story of how they got to the cache and what happened along the journey. She was so eloquent in her writing and shared so vividly her experience that you would think you were right there with her. Over the last few years log entries have turned in to TFTC, SLTN, etc. I guess some caches aren't worthy of anything more than that but when you know that a person has gone through a tough hike (maybe upwards of 12 hrs round trip) and log TFTC, SL, no trades--I hate those log entries.
Utah Jean is my inspiration and has always been my idol for cachin' here in the great state of UTAH! Hope she's able to get back out there hikin' again with us someday. Thanks Jean!!!!
Aim High!