Geocaching Adventures: My Hometown

Today I met a mini milestone of sorts in my geocaching adventures.  

Park in Mons Belgium where I found my first cache.

To give a little scope to this let me step back and tell you how I started caching.  It was July 25, 2008.  I was in Belgium on a 4.5 month work assignment, and my wife came along (cause its summer in Europe, why the heck not? :)  I met another co-worker from the US there, and we needed something to do on the weekend.  He suggested we try caching.  I had never done it before but his description sounded cool so we went along.  Our first cache was a small park in Mons, Belgium.  On our second hunt that day we accidently ended up in France.  That hooked me. Before he left a week later we had found our first 5 caches.

Found, accidentally, in France.

When we returned back to Canada we immediately relocated to Lenoir NC for work.  It took about 8 months before I cached again, and made a find at a grocery store parking lot near my house.  That cache was my 6th find, my first North American find, and the first find in my new home town. Ever since that find I have been caching like a mad man.

Over the last 2.5 years that I have been into caching my tastes in caches has changed.  I started out only preferring larger caches that were easier to find, and enjoyed the adventure getting to ground zero more than making the find itself.  Since then, as I gained experience, my tastes have changed slightly and I now am starting to enjoy finding some of the smaller urban caches as well.  Lenoir is almost exclusively smaller urban caches, which is why it has taken me a while to get to this little milestone.

So what is this milestone?  I am glad you asked.

I have now found every active cache in Lenoir.  Despite only being 44 caches in town (8 of which I have hidden), and my having 618 finds in total,  it took me a while. Mainly because I wasn't trying to hit it.  Now that I have it feels like an accomplishment, and you all, my faithful readers, get to celebrate with me.  I suggest cake.  I like chocolate. Thanks!

So the only question now is:  Who's gonna place the next cache in Lenoir? :)

My geocaching map for Lenoir now looks like this... cool eh?