FEATURED CACHER

In December of 2000 I saw an article about geocaching in Outside magazine and it piqued my interest - at the time, I owned a Garmin GPS II Plus that was basically gathering dust.  I went to the website and looked it over and registered.  At the time, there was only a handful of caches in Minnesota (Alvin's Phone Line was one of them, and I think Rebecca's Garden at Lake Rebecca Regional Park, which has long since been archived, was the closest to my home coordinates).  I always had the best intentions of going out and looking for a couple, even when they started popping up closer to home, and even hiding a few, but didn't get around to it until 13 months later.

How did you end up getting into this wacky hobby?

My wife (girlfriend at the time) Perrine and I were looking for something to do for a date.  We normally would have gone bowling or to a movie or something, but it was an unseasonably warm January, so I suggested something outside and told her I've had this geocaching account for over a year but haven't looked for any yet.  That day we ended up finding three caches, and what kept my interest was that as I was finding a few more caches in the following weeks, I was starting to notice all these neat little parks and such that I wouldn't have found out about otherwise.  I also noticed it was a great excuse to just get out of the house and do something interesting.  At the time, there was kind of an "underground" quality to it (more so than today) and that also kept my interest.  By the time spring and summer came and it started to get muggy and buggy, I was already looking for milestones, so that kept me from calling it quits when I'd finish a day of geocaching itching all over, sweaty, dirty and picking off ticks.  

How did you come up with your geocaching handle?

I like cartography and land navigation, and I think maps are works of art, so I wanted to somehow include that in my geocaching handle.  "North 44 degrees by West 93 degrees" is too long, so I went with 15Tango since that is the grid zone designator for our area using UTM (Uniform Transverse Mercator) or MGRS (Military Grid Reference System) coordinates instead of Lat Lon.  My first handle was my initials followed by 15T (MWmM15T), but after only a couple months I changed it to the 15Tango everyone has come to know and love. 

How did you find your first Geocache, and which one was it?  

My first geocache was the original Camp Coldwater Spring (GC1F01) by King Boreas.  The evening before when I told Perrine about geocaching, she printed off a few cache pages that sounded interesting to her, and I hand jammed the coords into my GPS as we were driving from her place near the Ford Plant over to Coldwater Spring.  We got there about 1/2 hour before they closed the gates, and she found the cache while I was wandering around looking at the GPS.

Who usually goes with you when you go caching?

I mostly go by myself.  Perrine has lost interest, but she'll go with me a couple times in the spring or fall.  Every once in a while I'll bring Zoe the dog when it isn't too hot and humid.

What town/areas have you most enjoyed caching in?

Even though I do most of my caching in the East and South Metro, I enjoy caching in places I haven't been to in a while, or that I've never been to before.  I think caching is great on road trips because while it will take you to a lot of Wal-Mart parking lots, it will also take you to a lot of neat areas that nobody but the locals know about, and an out-of-towner wouldn't even know about them unless they were caching.  I grew up less than an hour from Yellowstone National Park, and when I was in Montana for my honeymoon in 2002 it was neat to plan a day in Yellowstone by going from one virtual cache to the next.

What kind of geocaching rig do you use? 

I went from the old GPS II Plus and paper printouts, to a Garmin Vista with cache descriptions loaded into a Pocket PC, to a Garmin GPSmap 60CSx with cache descriptions loaded into CacheMate on my Motorola Cliq phone.  I just found and logged a couple using the new official Droid app, but I'm probably still going to use my Garmin along with CacheMate.  I normally run a PQ of the nearest 500 traditionals I haven't found and run that through GSAK to load them into my GPS and phone before I head out the door.

What/how many states/countries have you geocached?  

I've found caches in 20 states, with the most finds in Minnesota.  Last March when I was on Spring Break, Perrine and I drove out to Michigan and back, and we would look up a few caches whenever we were ready to stop and take a break from driving.  I found a few in Montana and California when I've gone there to visit family (and in North Dakota and South Dakota on my way to Montana to visit family), and a few in Maine when we went there to visit people I was with on my first deployment.  Perrine and I went to a wedding in Alabama and I found a couple there.  I was at a military school at Norfolk for two weeks with the weekend in the middle off, so I spent one afternoon seeing how many states I could visit (Virginia, Maryland, Delaware and North Carolina).  I was at another military school for a few days outside of Vegas, and I went and found a cache on the parking ramp where we were staying.  I found a few in Washington State (including Groundspeak HQ) when I was on a four-day pass during my pre-deployment at Ft. Lewis. 

During my first deployment I found a few caches in Afghanistan where I was stationed, and a few more in Kyrgyzstan when we were there for a few days on the way home.  I looked up a few caches when I was on a four-day pass to Qatar, but never got a chance to get out and find them.  And during my second deployment I found a few in Iraq where I was stationed and a couple in Kuwait when I was on my way home. 

What was your first event ever attended?

The First Minnesota Cache Bash (GC969A) by GEM on 27 July 2002. 

How many caches have you found?  

3144 right now - I'm shooting for at least 3652 by 21 December 2010, so I'll probably have a few more when this article is posted.

Do you enjoy hiding or finding more as your part of the hobby?

Finding.   

What is your favorite type of cache hide?

A small or regular cache at least 0.1 miles from the nearest parking.  I like when I can go to a regional or state park and hike all afternoon finding caches.   

What do you do when you're not geocaching?

I'm in the National Guard and I've had two overseas deployments (hence my low find numbers in 2006 and 2009).  I've been skiing since I could walk, and even though I miss skiing big mountains, I still enjoy getting out to Afton and Welch a few times each winter.  I also enjoy riding my mountain bike, hiking and backpacking.  I'm currently pursuing an AAS in Land Surveying at Saint Paul College.

Personal Note from the cacher to end with. 

Geocaching has to be one of the best hobbies out there.  I enjoy getting outside and walking around - I was doing hikes around Big Sky and the Gallatin Canyon when I was 8 years old - now with geocaching, I can add something to my hikes.  And most of the time, I'll head out the door, even with a heat index of 106, just to go look for geocaches, instead of staying cooped up in the house watching TV. 

I feel like I got into this hobby on the ground floor and I've seen it evolve - some changes haven't been all that great, but overall they've been good and have added value to the sport.  I'm also one of the founding members of MnGCA, and I've seen this organization evolve as well.  We've grown from a few people gathering in the basement of Midwest Mountaineering into a legitimate organization.  I recall going to a Breakfast Buddies in Roseville when half a dozen people showed up, and now there's at least two dozen at those events.  I remember back when the DNR banned geocaching in all the State Parks, and now they have embraced geocaching and are on their second geocaching promotion.  I think I've also managed to pace myself, and thus I haven't burned out on geocaching like others have.