After you’ve found your first geocaches, you soon want to start putting out your own. The fun of geocaching is discovering hidden treasures, so why not place some secret treasure yourself? You can start doing this by purchasing a simple watertight container from any grocery store. You can also do what I did and try to build your own camouflaged containers. But regardless of how you enter this phase of the geocaching pursuit, you must be responsible for what you place.

My first four geocaches were done with the help of a local park ranger. In this part of Pennsylvania, the local park service takes any strange object very seriously. I was forced to sign several sheets of paper and promise to look after my caches. The county park service is aware of geocaching, but wants to make sure you obey their rules.

The rest of the 11 geocaches I’ve placed have been in or around my little borough. I have this fantasy of creating a geocaching “bubble” where a map of geocaches will show a strange cluster of them in this town. If you do the math, one geocache per 0.1 mile leaves plenty of room in a town such as mine with a five-mile square perimeter. I’m sure I’m not the only person to have had this thought.

Anyway, I spent the last few days checking up on the caches I’ve placed. Most of them considered “small” with only one “micro”. My first observation is that all of them are in good condition and not a single one has been compromised ( I refuse to use Harry Potter terminology). The one which was visited the least is at the half-way point on a two-mile hiking/bike trail, which would require someone to make the trek in and out. The ones which have been found the most are near parking lots. I’ve had to remove some Happy Meal toys (lack of room) but most of what was left has been of quality. The logs are filling up with nice comments. This gives me hope for the future of geocaching.

My latest geocache was placed in an area which had been the town dump. I didn’t even know it existed before venturing into the wooded lot to deploy the cache. Based on the log comments, this has been the most difficult to find.

Good thing there’s still plenty of room for geocaching.