It all started with a thought to help. About a year ago a geocacher named Roger Dillard (rldill) was on a cache hunt in nearby Raleigh, NC. When he saw a man in a wheelchair trying to go up and over a small wood bridge. Roger offered to help the man, but his assistance was politely turned down. The man noticed the GPS unit in Roger’s hand and made inquiries as to what it was. After Roger explained Geocaching to him, the man asked if it was something he could do in a wheelchair. It was a question that Roger couldn’t answer, but he decided make it a personal quest to find out.

That’s how the website he started that identifies wheelchair accessible caches was born. Even though Roger has never met a handicapped cacher he has worked hard over the past year trying to identify caches that they can hunt and to make that list public knowledge. Relying solely on the Geocaching.com message boards and word of mouth he has compiled a list that contains scores of caches that are wheelchair accessible. The list is searchable by state, and continually grows.

Roger depends on other cachers to submit caches that are handicapped accessible.Roger depends on other cachers to submit caches that are handicapped accessible. He realizes that not all handicaps are the same. What may be reachable by wheelchair may not be reachable by someone that can only walk a short distance or have other handicaps. For this reason he relies heavily upon the cachers that submit the caches to his website to provide detailed descriptions.

He really has no idea as to what impact he has had on the handicapped caching community. At this time there are 269 caches in 34 states listed on his website. California has 84. Illinois has 18 and Iowa has 17. Sixteen states have no caches listed at this time.

He has received some emails from handicapped cachers thanking him for his efforts. Those emails are enough to encourage Roger to continue his seeming insurmountable quest to identify every handicap accessible cache. All of this from one humble man that looked at a fellow human being and had a thought to help.

If you would like to help Roger in his quest, you may do so by going to his website.