Three years later.....

Finding the geocaching site by accident on the evening of February 16, 2005, I created an account the next day with the intent of finding a few benchmarks, in our hometown of Dresden, Tennessee, for my daughter's 4th grade Science project. Being that there was only one cache within 20 miles I didn't have any intention of being a geocacher. Finding benchmarks proved to a difficult challenge and we struck out. On Sunday, February 21, 2005, my daughter (who later became cacherstalker94) set out for the Big Cypress State Park outside of Greenfield and using an old Garmin GPS 12 found the Big Cypress Cache and our new hobby was born.

Since then I have logged 1,601 finds in 11 states, finding caches in 60 of Tennessee's 95 counties. I have learned much of the history of the Land Between the Lakes region finding about 1/2 of the caches located in that National Forest. I have been to the graves of notable people such as: Legendary Sheriff Buford Pusser, Chicken George (of Roots), Country Music Entertainer Minnie Pearl, Confederate General Nathan Bedford Forrest, a man claiming to be the sole survivor of Custer's Last Stand, and also important to mention the graves of three Congressional Medal of Honor recipients. Geocaching has taken me to many towns in Tennessee that I have never visited before, such as Pulaski where I visited the monument of Confederate hero Sam Davis and the building of significant history that occurred after the Civil War.

Geocaching has also given me the opportunity to find friends that normally would have never met. Meeting cachers along the trail, through email contact, phone contact and notable groups: GOWT, JAG, KTAG, RVG, and MTGC. I have had the honor and privilege of attending many of the events hosted by these groups.