Thanks, Dave!

Yes, I attended a rare Monday CITO.  Unlike last time, it was much less demanding.  After rain and high wind the previous week, I surmise that much of the trash we might have picked up was long gone.  I had to go pretty far afield to manage a third of a bag, and I ended up on the higher end of collection for attendees.  Afterwards, I took a few minutes to CITO my car before going home to bask in the glow of the Blue Switch Day souvenir I received for my minimal labor, but that’s not what I came here to tell you…

Twenty-three years ago, on the day after the allegedly (though certainly not) blue switch was flipped and selective availability ended, Dave Ulmer parked on a hillside road near Oregon City, about an hour outside of Portland.  There he placed a five-gallon bucket containing some books, VHS tapes, software CDs, and a can of beans, among other things.  Then he made a Usenet post to a GPS enthusiast group, announcing that he had left something at certain coordinates for other people to find.  The next day, the bucket was found and the first geocache had been discovered!  Other hides soon followed: that month, Mingo and Arikaree; the month after, Gorilla Stash; soon, Tarryall, Tombstone, Iron Horse, Un-Original Stash, and so many others that have passed into the archives.  Even the original now resides in that filing cabinet now, having been destroyed by a road crew and now commemorated with a plaque.  But this is how it all began.  So happy anniversary!  Dave knew it would all happen! And remember: no matter how far you’ve gone or how remote your cache is, you’re following in the someone else’s footsteps.  We’re all in this together, and we’re never alone. And, hopefully, we’ll keep doing this for another twenty-three years!