Hello from rmlmbl

rklmbl aka Ron and Maribeth Laster live in Harmony, Arkansas, in the foothills of the Ozark Mountains. (Most of our hides are located in zip 72830.) We were first exposed to geocaching by our daughter, but after a computer search, we could not find any geocaches close to our home. In September, 2004, we went on a trip to Canada with nonnipoppy, and in Charlottetown, Prince Edward Island, poppy took us to our first geocache. We have been geocaching on our own since October, 2004, and now there are 300+ caches in our home county!

We enjoy all aspects of geocaching, but we especially like to geocache with our grown children and with our friends. Our majority of caches have been found in Arkansas, Oklahoma, and Texas (and surrounding states) but we have also had the opportunity to cache in Alaska, Germany, and Austria. We have been slowed down since May, 2008, because rkl suffered a stroke, but we're slowly getting back into the game.

We belong to the Arkansas Geocaching Association, and we frequently contribute to that forum. One of the best things about geocaching is the friendships we have made either on the trails or at events.

Eo orbis terrarum planto novus amicitia
Travel the world, make new friends.

Ron and Mary Beth

Hi to the group

Well, it only took me about a week to figure out what to do– actually I had a Gmail account but could not remember the password. Once I got past that the rest was easy. So where do I start? I guess at the beginning. I was a hiker and mountain climber and have had a love for the outdoors forever and came across a mention of geocaching in an online newsletter I was subscribed to. I looked it up online and saw there was a cache just a couple of miles from home. I had an old Garmin GPS III and loaded the coords in it and went for the hunt. It took me a while to figure out what I was doing but I did find it. ( It was later discovered by me that this was the First placed cache in NH.) That was June 23, 2002. I also found one other cache in the same park that evening. I WAS HOOKED. Let me now mention that I am married to a muggle!!- She tolerates my addiction for caching and travel but does not share the exact same passion. We have 4 children and 5 grandchildren some of whom enjoy caching on a limited basis. So basically I started caching as a loner. Soon I learned about events and met other cachers on the trail and discovered that there was a huge social aspect to this activity. I still cache mainly alone but love to hook up with my friends at the larger events and go out on multi day cache runs.
I met one local cacher early on– Bushwhack Bob– who was also a mountain climber and highpointer so we shared these activities. He was the one who got me into the GeoWoodstock events starting in Jacksonville, Fl and we have been to the last 4 rooming together. It was his fault ( along with Koneko) that it became ALL about the numbers. I used to just plug along but now have to keep looking at the stats. If the truth be told, I am a first born and that is an automatic passion for lists and numbers. I have JUST HAD to finish some lists that became an obsession for me. So I have found a cache in ALL 50 states, all the provinces of Canada ,Except for Nunavut where you can’t drive there ( I will fix that next summer when I FLY there). I have found the oldest cache hidden in all the 50 states except Virginia ( I will do that one in Oct-Nov) and have found caches in 8 other countries. I have visited over 60 countries but that was before I started geocaching.
My wife and I live in Hudson,NH and I have a business in the next door city of Nashua. We have a second home in York Beach, Maine where we spend most of our summer. We go to Florida for about 4-6 weeks each winter to visit her mother and my brother and to get out of the snow and cold. and geocache!!! We also try to get one international trip each year and I get to do one US-Canada road trip as well.
I am the baby of this group having just met the age requirement but would be happy to host and meet anyone traveling near us.. It is an honor for me to be asked to join this group and I thank Nashville Joe and AbbysGrammy for the invite. I am looking forward to meeting all the other people in this group.

PARKERPLUS

Looks like I'm in, now if I can get caught up on some of your blogs

What a great idea.

This is a great way for us OBW's to learn about each other. Thanks Nashville Joe and Abby's Grammy.
We have been caching now almost three years. We are full time RVer's and are in our 14th. year of traveling. Most places we have been there and done that. So we needed a new outlet to get us off our butts. We were in a RV resort in AZ, where they gave a seminar on geo-caching. They had hid a few caches around the resort and loaned us a yellow bananna gpsr. We were hooked and off and running. This added a whole new adventure to our travels. We started out with the Garmin(yellow bananna) now we have the Garmin 60CSx. We use Gsak and have a mobil office where we carry the laptop, using microsoft streets and trips with our caches loaded in. We have just recently passed our 2900th. cache. Have spent our summer near Roanoak, VA, just off the Blue Ridge Parkway. The plan is to leave here early September heading out west, TX, AZ and most of the winter in the Palm Springs, CA area. Of course by the time we do all our caching we won't arrive CA until end of the year.

Happy Hobos

OBW.....Well We Really Aren't Sure About That!!!!!!!

Hi to all you fellow OBW's we are Dori & Dick Faulkner (Tweety & Coach) and right now do not live anyplace as we are both retired and are full time RVer's traveling around the United States and geocaching as we go. Tweety was born in Auburn, NY and Coach in Syracuse, NY. We both had lived in that area all our lives. We have 4 sons Tim, Chris, Scott and Sean who are all married. We have 5 grandchildren Cody, Luke, Tyler, Alexis and Anna and 5 step grandchildren Rachel, Cory, Erica, Nikki, and Jasmine Rose (Rosie). Our children live in Camillus, NY, Binghamton, NY, Branchburg, NJ and Colchester, CT. Thet were all brought up in Camillus, NY and attended West Genesee HS and played hockey, lacrosse and baseball. The 3 oldest boys attended Clarkson College and are all civil engineers and the youngest went to Lafayette College and is a financial analyst. We moved to SC in Sept of 2004 because of the CNY weather as I drove snowplow for 20 years in Camillus and we were sick of the snowy winters(we averaged 180" of snow a year). Tweety had been a paralegal since she graduated from business school. We loved SC and got started in geocaching there after reading an article published in the Sun News and fell in love with caching because of the interesting and historical sites places it brought us to. In March of 2007 we had found just about all the caches within 50-60 miles of Myrtle Beach and we have always wanted to travel so we decided to sell our house and buy an RV and travel the U.S. and cache as we went. We finally did get the house sold and picked up our RV last October and we were off. We went back to SC for awhile to get use to RV living and then set out in January of 2008. We went down through SC and GA, into AL, down into the FL panhandle, back up into AL, over into MS and LA, then back into MS and up into TN and then back up into the northeast for the summer to visit our sons. We have been to Camillus and visited our son and his family there and saw all our old friends. We then went to Binghamton NY, then on to Colchester, CT, and lastly to Branchburg, NJ and saw the rest of our sons and their families. We are presently back in CT and are leaving to go back to NY for another short stay before we head back on the road again around September 3rd. We will be traveling down to the Outer Banks of NC for a 2 week stay there and then we are on to Myrtle Beach for 4 months, to visit our friends there, before we set off on the road again to who knows where. If anyone is interested we do have our own blog that we do for our friends and family and the web site is www.2lostsoulsotheroad.blogspot.com. We have had such a great time caching these last 9 months and it is amazing the number of great caches we have found and the wonderful places we have visited and seen had it not been for caching. We also do a column for the Grand Strand Geocachers monthly newsletter on our travels around the U.S. Well time to say goodbye to all you OBW's and it has been so nice meeting the ones that we have met so far and hope to meet many more of you in the future.

Dori & Dick........Tweety & Coach........ftjak

WOW just got the post and it looks great! Thanks for doing such a great job.. So sorry to hear your news but don't worry we all have a few screws loose but you will have your back in place and we all will still be running around with ours loose.. LOL
As a honorary member I feel proud to be a part of this OBW's group.. But you can bet I feel the age anyway..
Hope all goes well and you will be Smiling Being Happy :) soon. Safe trip May God Bless!
Will update my caching blog a little later. Tell then keep Smiling Being Happy:)

eagleyes and the bird dog

Hi every one- we have been caching since 2001, but didn't join as proper members until 2002. We first started as team eagleyes and then hubby decided he wanted his own name- so became bird dog. We still log under the original name- and yes, I know it should be two words, but I eliminated 1 e because it is more creative.

We started geocaching when an article appeared in a local newspaper extolling the virtues of this new activity. Hubby had been an orienteering coach, and we both enjoy getting out of the house. He does anything that has to do with the GPS outdoors and I do all the computer work and thinking up the caches we put out. It works for us.

Our retirement started in spring of 2003, after both of us had high school teaching careers. We spend 7 months of the year at our cabin/home in Ely,MN which is on the edge of the Boundary Water/Quetico Wilderness Area. We don't do much caching when we are here as we are too busy doing other things, mostly volunteering, but have a large social circle too. Out biggest job is the work we do volunteering for the USFS- Kawishiwi Ranger Dist. We clean campsites, and clear portages and do general trail work. We spent 3 years GPSing all the campsites, trails and portages in the district.

The rest of the year is spent between our other Minnesota home and traveling. We cache nowadays when we are traveling throughout the world. Our most memorable caching was in Mexico- trying to find caches in the pyramid sites avoiding the critters, and the beautiful cache located in Premantura, Croatia looking out to the sea from the hill.

Caching has taken us to places we never knew existed. When we are traveling now, we skip the tourist literature and go right to the cache page. We have learned that cachers know the hidden jewels of their town that are not on the regular tourist brochure. We are not into the cache number game- could care less how many caches we or others have found. We are caching to learn historical, scientific and educational things as well as see the beauty of an area.

Look up our cache hides @ ZIP 55731 and 55045. If you are ever in the Ely, MN area in April through October, email us and come and say hi.

Here is our OBW cache: GC1BRFD or OBW-MINNESOTA CONNECTION

Sometimes Things don't work too well! OR I'm Confused by this thing!

Although I'm trying to make this thing more user friendly, there may be times you just can't post what you've written. When that occurs, send me a copy of your post in email (nashvillejoe(at)bellsouth(dot)net) and I'll post it for you. Our goal is to make this easy for everyone, not an exercise in total frustration. On the address I just listed, most of you already know how to make it a "real" address by using the period key where it says (dot) and the ampersand key where it says (at). I don't mean to insult you, but want to protect that address from being picked up by a bot!

Cache on and bring on your posts!!

Joe

How we got into caching! The Happy2Wanderers

I've never done a Blog in my life, so this may all be in vain.We were dragged into caching kicking and screaming, May, 2004.One very warm spring evening our oldest son and family pull into the drive and said, "Let's go caching"! We knew nothing of this, we were computer iliterate, never saw a GPS in our lives and only understood the word from what we read or saw on the telly."What do you mean walk in the woods and hunt for what? We camp, but, I was getting older and was in no mood to tackle salty sweat that drew bugs and mosquitoes. We declined.The following weekend we were camping with family and friends and after we were set up, our son puts a GPS in Hubbys hands and says follow it to the cache in VOLO Bogs near where we were camping. We did and it was my first encounter with poison ivy....ever! Also downed, rusted, barb wire fencing. We were eaten alive. We were hot, sweaty and I really knew I needed a shower.For most people that would have finished it. Not us! We bought a Little Blue Garmin. Now, I found myself trailing Hubby and he was having all the fun finding caches. After much discussion, I inherited the Little Blue Garmin and he bought himself a Garmin Rhino. From there we realized his Rhino had a radio and if we had two, We could keep track of each other in the woods, etc., plus Co-ords could be sent from one to the other. We recently sent both in for repair and ended up with two reconditioned ones. Mine was in extreme need of repair as it has taken a dip in a river along with me (Not planned) rubber worn off and bare metal exposed. Both rhinos had tape holding pieces on. I even used glue on the aerial because the rubber guard had cracked in half.Are we Cache fanatics?? You decide.

Happy2Wanderers

Aloha from Hawaii

We're happy to see that the Older but Wiser (?) blog is up & running! Thank you, abbysgrammy, for inviting us to join this select group! Here's a quick introduction to the team of Ahuimanu Hui. El (the wahine part of Ahuimanu Hui) is a retired high school math teacher, and Dick (the kane part) is retired from Dole Pineapple. We've both lived in Hawaii for over 40 years and met in 1974 at (international) folk dancing, which we continue to do (as long as it doesn't interfere with geocaching!).

El heard about geocaching in 2004 and was interested, so Dick bought her a Garmin Etrex for Christmas that year. We found our first cache in Portland, Oregon a couple of days after Christmas and have been hooked ever since! Regarding our caching name, "Hui" is Hawaiian for a club, group or association (for example, the OBW group could also be called the OBW Hui), and we live in the "Ahuimanu" area of Oahu.

We love geocaching for several reasons--the thrill of the hunt (of course it's always nice if we find what we're looking for!), the discovery of interesting places we might never have gone to without geocaching (we've done more hiking in the last 3-1/2 years than in all of our pre-geocaching years), the puzzles (El is a puzzle nut), the physical challenges (Dick especially likes this aspect, as long as his body holds out), and finally, for the great people we have met while geocaching. We're convinced that most geocachers are pretty special people...

We're uploading three images: one of both of us at our 2000th find last month (we don't have many pictures of the two of us together!), one of El at a cache above the estate featured in the TV series "Magnum PI" (GCTZ4D), and one of Dick climbing Mt. Olomana (GCHAYG) for his 70th birthday.

Looking forward to reading about other OBW members!

Aloha,

Ahuimanu Hui

Dick & El

message

Well, it's up and running and we hope it will be a place for everyone to "meet and greet" via the internet. Many of us will never meet in person but we can visit here. Tell us about yourselves and please include pictures when possible. There are still numerous details that Joe is working on to make it a LOT more user friendly. One step in that is to send each of you an "Invitation to join" email so you can add your posts directly instead of as comments. Please accept the invitation by clicking on the link in the email. I have set the Blog NOT to show your email, so your privacy is assured. I will be the one who will see them all for list management purposes. Please email me if you are having a terrible time getting in to add your posts. Otherwise, I won't know I have something to fix. This multi-person posting is different from what I have set up before and it is proving to have a semi-steep learning curve. As I work through it, I'll try to add instructions to a post to simplify if for everyone.

OBW? Beginnings

As we have been attending Geocaching events over the last couple of years, AbbysGrammy noticed that we seemed to migrate to certain groups of fellow cachers. That started the wheels turning, (the wheels of progress sometimes turn slowly! [:D]) and she saw that a need existed for there to be a grouping within our widening community to recognize this relationship. Out of this friendship has grown a very loose non-organization affectionately known as the OBW(?)'s. This Older But Wiser(?) group have many things in common, but the two main ones are the advanced age (over 60) and an active interest in Geocaching.

The OBW with the ? is to indicate that not ALL of us have reached the pinnacle of that status but have met the other criteria for membership! Which brings us to the matter of membership and group rules! The first rule is, there are no rules, other than the criteria for membership! I'm sure that somewhere in there is a Catch22 (If you don't know what that means, you probably aren't qualified for membership!), but we aren't sure where it is!

Well, there is a matter of another little item - the OBW(?) Goal Statement! Summarized, it is that we should enjoy life and each other's company as friends whenever we possibly can! Since we are already a geographically dispersed group, you may have to enlist others who may be geographically closer to you to meet this goal!

Cheers and PartyOn!