Geocaching milestone #1,000

Over the weekend, I achieved a geocaching milestone that has been looming for a while, finding my 1000th geocache. The find was special as it was located in a deer yard with many deer milling around in the background. I discovered geocaching by mistake a couple of years ago when doing some research about GPS satellites. I had bought a watch with GPS capabilities to help me train better for my road races. I discovered that there was a geocache close to where I lived and looked into buying a GPS handset. At this time, I thought they were very expensive and not within my reach and most likely very complex. I went to my local Mountain Equipment Co-op and found that I could get a starter GPS for a couple of hundred dollars. My first geocache was located underneath the rail bed of an abandoned railway bridge. The cache had been disguised to look like a piece of steel with the rivets sticking out. To a novice it would look like a steel plate attached to the underside of the bridge but hidden behind it was the geocache. After finding my first geocache I logged into geocaching.com and found that there were more caches near my place and I started to explore more the city with my GPS handset. One of my most memorable cache is still "Crusty the Clown." You have to climb to the top of a pine tree where you find a bird house. When you opened the door "Crusty the Clown" shoot out at you which scares the crap out of you. After signing the log book I climbed down the tree and cycled to another nearby cache. As I start my second 1000, one of my goals is to try and geocache in more Canadian provinces as well as US states.