Two Million and Counting

This article was originally published on Cache Up NB. It has been mirrored here for archive purposes only.

Published on February 26th, the two millionth geocache was released and a new era was born. Ok, maybe not a new era, but definitely something to ponder.

It seems that not all that long ago we were celebrating the release of the first million geocaches and now here we are again a million later and it seems not much has changed save for one fact: a lot more geocachers.

The days of this hobby being something that only a few are aware of are long gone. With the release of apps for smartphones, geocaching has really taken off and become a lot more visible and public. This is both good and bad for our beloved hobby.

Let’s start with the good. The more individuals involved with this hobby means that a wider variety of geocaches out there can be found. Odds are that aside from the stock film canisters and key holders we see so often, newer cachers bring newer ideas and thusly make the sport more interesting. Plus, let’s face it, it’s always nice meeting new folks who are interested and can go out on a hike with you, or help you to hide a new cache somewhere. It’s nice seeing that this once secretive hobby is becoming more visible.

The downside to this is that with so many people participating, we do see less and less of the traditional style geocaches many of us like. It seems that micros have really taken over the world of geocaching and that by far and large, that’s pretty much what you find today. Cableguy noted in the Scribbles recently about how he couldn’t find a cache to drop some bugs in because everything was a micro. Since it seems that micros are so easy to obtain, easy to hide, and easily archived when they go missing, it makes it far easier for the new cacher to hide them.

Not that I am anti-micro as I have found and hidden many of them myself, but the proliferation of geocaching has tended to lean towards the spread of more micro caches and less full sized containers because of the ease in which they can be obtained and hidden.

Either way, the hobby continues to grow and change as the years go by and it’s interesting to wonder how it will change between now and the 3 millionth geocache hide. Personally, I would love to see Groundspeak do some real innovation on the geocaching front and bring us something new. Personally, I’d like to see a new geocache type introduced. No idea what it could be, but I think the introduction of a new REAL geocache type, something that folks can jump on, would help to keep the sport fresh.

Here’s to hoping that within the next few years, we see some new and exciting things come out of geocaching, as opposed to more of the same.