The plan was a simple one: Take off a week from work and just like they did in the 1960’s, drive a Volkswagen on a cool, far-out pilgrimage to meet others with the same compulsion for a hobby that can’t be understood unless experienced.

It just so happens that I have a small Volkswagen, so I filled it up with my cooler, and some clothes but unlike 1960s, my vehicle was filled with high-tech gear as well. A Magellan Explorist 600, a Dell laptop, a Sirius radio and a Treo 600 cell phone/PDA, all invaluable companions on my 500 mile sojourn.

I started out from Cape Coral, Fla., and headed north to Lakeland. On my way there I visited my first Earthcache - Digging Phosphate in Bone Valley Earthcache by Mac. Before my trip would be over, I would have found 4 of the 5 Earthcaches listed in Florida. Once in Lakeland, I met up with Eagle Dad, Macdonr and Isonzo Karst. IK had cached the area before and agreed to be tour guide. Eagle Dad and Macdonr joined us during their lunch hour from work. Together we toured some of the best caches Lakeland has to offer. Unfortunately our time was short and we soon went our own ways. Later that evening, I met up with Doombot. This married couple have been geocaching since December 2001 and are probably among the first geocachers in the state. They are also well known for their high quality and difficult hides. They were hiding tough micros long before micros were cool. One of their caches, Emptor Paradiso is legendary in Florida.

The next day I started out on the road again. It was a short hop to Dade City which is the classic archetype of old Florida charm. Downtown was no bigger than 3 blocks and filled with quaint stores and beautiful parks. On my arrival I pulled into the nearest park. I had neglected to download the caches in Dade City into my PDA so I called in a life-line and Goofybutterfly came to my rescue, reading off all the caches and coordinates in town. I entered the coordinates into my GPSr and my suspicion was verified. I was sitting 63 feet from a cache. There was only a handful of caches in this town and I quickly found them. One in particular - Peek-A-Boo, I See You by Eagle Dad has special instructions requiring you to “Give a hearty parade wave to the 3rd window from the left on the 2nd Floor.” That is the office of none other than Mrs. Eagle Dad (aka Xenia), so I followed the instructions and much to my surprise I saw someone wave back. Xenia came downstairs and greeted me and we chatted for awhile.

Soon I was back on the road. I had planned to visit Zephyrhills which had a large concentration of caches but in the interest of time, I drove straight to Gainesville. That’s not completely accurate as I stopped several times to pick up some rest stop caches and a few Off Your Rocker caches. Florida has dozens of the Cracker Barrel restaurants at many exits from the Interstates (I-95, I-75 & I-10). Chances are there is an Off Your Rocker hidden there. A search on Geocaching.com shows there are 82 Off Your Rocker caches in more than 10 states.

Once I arrived in Gainesville around 1 pm, I was eager to get hunting. I graduated from the University of Florida long before Geocaching so the thought of finding caches on my old campus was very exciting. I started my tour near where my old dormitory was located. Sure enough there was a cache within 0.1 miles. Fount of Learning by Suemac. The afternoon was very hot and located next to a children’s fountain, I was very tempted to jump in except for the hundreds of dollars of electronics I would ruin. I called Suemac to let her know I was in town and hunting one of her caches. She told me she’d be right down. Three minutes later there she was! Who would have guessed she works in the building almost next door. She took me on a tour of her office and introduced me to some of her co-workers and then accompanied me on a couple of caches around her area. I would love a job where I could take a break and go geocaching in the middle of the day! The afternoon continued to heat up and it wasn’t long before I had to give in and find some shade (and a large fruit smoothie).

That evening, I attended the Calling all Gators event held at TGI Fridays. It was a large meet-and-greet and I met some old friends and met many new ones. Many caching stories were traded. After the dinner, I went night caching with Suemac and XJ2000. I learned much about the caching style of the Gainesville cachers. They love tough, challenging but fun caches. We did many of these such as Painted Fiction, Way 2LUKNF8 and Sign Post Micro Cheater. There are great stories behind all these caches. For instance – Painted Fiction is a micro hidden along a wall that is regularly painted (aka graffiti) over and over by university students. This is a old tradition that is allowed by the city. There is only one section of the wall that goes untouched. It is the memorial with the names of all the students that died in 1990 when a murderer terrorized the town. Called the Gainesville Ripper, he murdered 4 women and 2 men in one weekend.

Feeling a bit tired of micros, the next morning I set out for the NW area of Gainesville where I had planned a day of hiking caches. I started with the That Old Sinking Feeling Earthcache. It was at a place I was very familiar with from my days of living in town and it was a perfect place for an Earthcache. It is a very old sinkhole called Devil’s Millhopper. It got the name from its funnel-like shape and because fossilized bones and teeth from ancient life forms were found at the bottom of the sink, this was said to be the mill hopper that fed bodies to the devil hence the Devil’s Millhopper. While walking through the park, I stopped and spoke to an elderly woman in her 80s. She wore one well-worn glove on her right hand. I inquired about the purpose of the glove and she explained to me that she walks up and down the 232 step stairway leading to the bottom of the sinkhole five times each day and the glove prevents her from getting splinters from the handrail. There is a nature trail around the rim of the sinkhole which was a nice shady walk and contained a multi-cache called The Grinder which was fun to find.

The next morning I drove east out of Gainesville and with bearings for Palatka. Along the way I discovered the Gainesville Hawthorne trail which contains several caches mainly hidden by The Ospreys. The trail is a 16-mile rails-to-trails path perfect for biking or hiking. This is one place I will definitely return to explore another time. Palatka is another small Florida town but has the distinction of being the residence of two prolific cachers. Legna&Soulbait and The Federation are both very well known for their numerous high quality and challenging hides. I hooked up with Soulbait and he was my guide on a tour of Palatka and the surrounding areas on my way to an 8 hour/83 cache finds day. I saw everything from urban micros to deep woods caches and some very particularly devious ones as well. I found myself laughing continuously with Soulbait all day as we traded stories and experiences. I think I would have been just as satisfied with the day if I had found only 8 caches. Some highlights include Cant Hole by IceCreamMan – one of those devious caches where Soulbait showed me how he used equipment to get the cache. Others such as Lightpole and Something New/Somewhere Old by The Federation should certainly be experienced by anyone passing through the area.

As the day grew old, it was time to move along. The time had come for the final leg, Jacksonville – the Mecca for this year’s Geowoodstock lay a mere 30 miles to my northeast. Since it was fairly late, and I really needed to get to my hotel. As I approached Jacksonville, I was forced to turn off the waypoints on my GPS. There were two reasons for this; I needed to get to my hotel and it was very tempting to stop at every cache I passed and also because the cache density is so thick, I couldn’t see the roads on my GPSr’s screen. I arrived at my hotel exhausted. I could not even stay awake long enough to log all my finds for the day. It would have to wait until I got some sleep …

The next morning, it hit me. I am here, in Jacksonville and Geowoodstock starts tonight!! Mind-blowing! So what shall I do until the opening event – Friday Night Meet and Greet? Um … go geocaching of course! I drove over to Hanna Park to scope out the park and see where it will all happen. Of course I couldn’t resist stopping and grabbing three caches between me and the park. At each cache I met out of state cachers already hunting. How surreal! I met cachers from California and Wisconsin. In fact, the whole weekend was filled with these sights of seeing people at the side of the road or pulled into a parking lot wandering around grabbing caches. I wanted to stop and talk to them all. It was very bizarre but in a fun way.

I met up with Eagle Dad and we decided to go look for the caches already placed in Hanna Park long before Geowoodstock 3. Our rational for this was so that we would not feel pressure to go find caches during the event and could spend more time socializing with everyone. We quickly found ourselves with 4 DNFs! We were unaware that all the caches in the park had been moved in preparation for the event. Oh, well … I went off on my own to go find my friends from south Florida and we made plans to meet up at a particularly devious cache called Jetty Man at low tide. This cache can only be done safely (and without getting wet) at low tide. I hopped onto the car ferry in Mayport and crossed to the north side. It was a short but pleasant ferry ride. And a cache in the park just on the other side too! My friends were just a few minutes before me so I figured I would find the cache in the park (Jean Ribault Micro by IceCreamMan ) and just relax and enjoy the sun and breeze until they came over on the ferry. The cache was easily found but as soon as I sat down with it, I was jumped (literally) by a caravan of cachers from Georgia and Tennessee (BackBrakeBilly, MommaDirtClod, FawverFamily and Lil' Fawver, Better Half, Thorny1, and TeamPez). We had a great laugh and I eventually gave them the cache to sign.

Soon my buddies arrived. Calling themselves TheYuzaDaddyGoofyButFlyC4ch3M3EnSendMeTheBill, which after I joined them became TheYuzaDaddyGoofyButFlyC4ch3M3EnSendMeTheBillDoc. The members of this supercalifragilisticexpialidocious team consisted of Yuzawa Kat, Burgi Dad, GoofyButterfly, C4ch3m3ifuc4n, EncompassBill, and myself. They were on a quest to get the Florida Scavenger Hunt Cache which was hijacked for Geowoodstock 3. To claim the special cache you had to find 10 of Jacksonville’s best, infamous, notorious and downright devious caches. This quest was a strong focal point for many people visiting Jacksonville for Geowoodstock 3. Our caravan now 3 cars, worked our way around the area doing several caches until it was time to rendezvous with others at Jetty Man. We met up with The Federation, Paintfiction, Suemac, Florida Flamingo, 2LuknF8 and all of Team CHB. While I don’t think I can name all of Team CHB (I hope they forgive me) they were traveling in the coolest white van filled with high-tech electronics. In fact, I think they hijacked the space shuttle and spray painted Team CHB all over it as their cover. It totally makes sense in retrospect, when one looks at how they manage to be everywhere at once.

After this elite confluence of caches cleaned up the park, we all headed over to the Friday Night Meet and Greet. I thought I had seen a lot of cachers in one place at once before, but it was quickly eclipsed by this event (only to be broken again the next day at Geowoodstock itself). Actually, technically this was a “non-event” event. The event was archived to appease the white-robed cachers and whiners (none of whom actually attended any of the festivities). It was felt that this event should be incorporated into the Saturday Geowoodstock 3 event. Well, I think at least 200 people showed up for this “non-event” and it was one of the best events or non-events I’ve ever attended. I met many legendary cachers and saw many old friends as well. The energy and aura around the restaurant was truly something to behold.

Early registration for Geowoodstock was done at the dinner and everyone received their T-shirts, registration materials and Geowoodstock coins! The coins looked awesome. The T-shirts also came out looking excellent. The Geowoodstock 3 staff members got T-shirts with the word Staff on the sleeve except for myself and GatorRx and his wife, Medowmuffin – our shirts said “Staph”. What a riot! Great job on the T-shirts by OB Jets! There were even a few caches to be found. A commemorative cache was set up and will be hidden after the event. This is a long-standing NEFGA tradition and was well received by all. The restaurant was reserved just for Geowoodstock and we quickly filled it up. The food was good as was the service, I don’t know if the restaurant staff got the recognition they deserved but they did a fabulous job!

After the event I headed back into town to my hotel and of course there were several caches to stop and grab along the way. Apparently everyone else at the event thought along the same line. It was hilarious to see dozens of cars pulled over on the side of the road. Mayport road had become the Long Island Expressway of Geocaching. The rest of the night was quiet and like my electronics, I had to force myself to rest and recharge for Geowoodstock the next morning.

I awoke at about 6A.M. the next morning and was raring to go. I got to Hanna Park by 7A.M. and set up my medical tent – complete with my pocket cache for the event. This “pocket cache” was really a large ammo can painted white with red crosses on it and called Doc’s M*A*S*H cache. As of this writing, it had over 150 entries in its logbook.

As the official Geowoodstock 3 physician, I was prepared for many types of emergencies and injuries. I was even prepared to deliver a baby if needed, but thankfully CacheCrashers had a beautiful baby girl (aka Lil’ Sunshine) about 6 days before the event. I have delivered many babies in the past but truthfully, the only baby delivering procedure I was planning to do was to dial 911 for her. My biggest concern was dehydration. Florida can get very hot this time of year and the week leading up to Geowoodstock 3 had been in the upper 80s all week with the mid-afternoon being the most oppressive. NEFGA was well prepared and had dozens of cases of water available. I was very happy that no one needed medical attention for dehydration.

As the event began, scores of people began showing up and looking over the event’s setup. There was a Groundspeak table filled with items for sale manned by JoGPS. JoGPS also has his moun10bike coin available for people to ohh and ahh at. If you asked, he would allow you to log it. Actually this turns out to be a great way to keep track of all the geocachers one has met. Since I had traded GeoPirat for one of his German geocoins, I also allowed everyone to copy the number and log it so that I could look back and remember all the great people I met. Under the pavilion was also the Today’s Cacher table which was manned by Geoworms and later El Diablo himself. They were promoting the website and the upcoming print version of the magazine. Also, they had T-shirts for sale and gave away many different goodies for free. There was a table set up with some very unusual looking ammo cans. One was all burnt up, this was the remains of a cache after a controlled burn. Another 2 were regular ammo can followed by ammo cans of black, silver and gold colors. These were the honor series of caches. You could sign the log if you had over 100 finds, 500 finds, 1000 finds, 2000 finds, and 3000 finds. Well, I only qualify to sign for the first 2 but I signed the log books of the others and post dated them. I predict I’ll reach 2000 by May 2006 and 3000 by May of 2007! Even though I won’t log them, it was fun to pretend. Who knows, maybe my predictions will come true and I can come back and log them after those heady milestones have been achieved.

Once the event was well underway, Greg Smith aka The Federation aka Florida Cacher got up and officially welcomed everyone to Geowoodstock 3. Then he introduced a special surprise guest, Nate Irish, aka Nate the Great from Groundspeak. He spoke to us about how impressed he was with the number of people that he was meeting and how nice everyone has been. He thanked everyone for supporting geocaching.com and helping the incredible growth that geocaching has realized. Then our surprise guest announced a surprise gift to all of us – he had brought with him 400 “brand new” White Jeep Travel bugs. This is part of the Jeep promotion that was scheduled to start June 6th. We were all not only getting a sneak preview of the Jeeps, but we all were able to get one or two to take home with us and would also be able to enter the contest right away since the rest the White Jeeps would take awhile to get distributed throughout the world. As another special treat, the White Jeeps were handed out by some of the legends of Geocaching – Dave aka The Leprechauns aka Keystone Approver, Carleen aka CarleenP, and Greg aka Mtn-Man. Of course, Nate was there as well to shake everyone’s hands. The level of support shown by Groundspeak was unprecedented and I believe everyone was really impressed.

Personally, for me, it was fantastic to meet the Groundspeak folks since I had been communicating with them on the forums for over 3 years. The chance to meet them face to face was incredible. It was only exceeded by meeting up with them later for dinner and a night caching excursion.

No event is complete without the obligatory Travel Bug trading, there were boxes and boxes of them. After the volunteers recorded the bugs, they were put into the back of a pickup truck where they filled the entire bed. I’ve never seen anything like it before. I don’t know what the record for most TB’s logged into an event was but it looked like the record would fall this day. It was determined there were over 800 TBs logged in to the event and with the 600 Geowoodstock 3 coins and the 400 White Jeep TBs that totaled 1800 Travel bugs!! Certainly a new world record!

Meanwhile, a crack team of chefs were busily preparing lunch. There had 3 large grills set up and were BBQ’ing hundreds of pounds of chicken. Also hot dogs, coleslaw, cakes, pies, and even geocaching.com logo cookies (I wonder if they got pre-approval to use the logo??) were on the menu. Of course there were not left out of the festivities and took it upon themselves to create a Grill Masters Cache hidden nearby. Once the call went out, several lines formed and everyone got to chow down. While I hear that people liked the food, I don’t remember eating since I was having too much fun socializing. Anyway big kudos to the Grill Masters: Perky182, GatoRx, The Us's, SwampKing, Marine Biologist.

After lunch a modified poker run was held and people had the opportunity to go hunt the multitude of caches in the park. The park was quite large and was able to support a lot of caches, and I don’t mean all 0.1mi from each other. They were well spread out over the park. The park had multitudes of hiking and biking trails and I saw several caches, such as the CacheMonkeez clan biking through the park. I choose to stay behind to continue socializing since I was really enjoying meeting and talking with people. I would estimate that roughly half the people at the event shared this idea.

It was fascinating to see all the different ideas for travel bugs that were present. People were travel bugs, dogs had travel bug tags on. Walking staffs had travel bugs. One cacher, Thorny had his TB # sown into his hat! Another cacher wore a T-shirt that said “Log Me” and had room for people to sign her shirt.

After a few hours, everyone was back together and prizes and gifts were given out. Goodies from the Groundspeak store, Jeep, Magellan, Garmin, Today’s Cacher, GSAK, were among some of the 300 gifts raffled off.

Following this was the “group picture”. Imagine trying to get 500+ people in one shot. It was challenging and when I look at the pictures, I think I can see one or two pixels that might be me! Also pictures were taken of everyone that attended last year’s Geowoodstock 2 (31 people) and an even small group that had attended all three Geowoodstocks (12 people).

As the Geowoodstock event drew to a close, people started drifting home or back to their hotel rooms for some rest. For those with the energy the day was still ripe for hitting the town and more caches.

The staff of Today’s Cacher all got together for our traditional Geowoodstock dinner out. Being this was the first Geowoodstock any of us had attended, it seemed like a good tradition to start. We were honored to have as our guests, the Groundspeak staff. We downed many beers and shared tales of past geocaching conquests. After dinner some went home, but the rest wanted to do some caching.

Rather than just hunt the nearby micros, I explained to everyone that there is one cache in all of Jacksonville that they must not miss. In fact, it may be the most famous cache in Florida. Despite it being all the way across town, everyone agreed and I led a convoy to the infamous The Federation Must Pay. There were large crowds at the restaurants and bars across from the site and there is no way that this cache was going to be done stealthily and without other noticing. That did not slow us down in the least. The Leprechauns was up to the task and enthusiastically dove in elbow deep to perform the necessary extraction. Needless to say, the crowd went wild! A lone voice in the crowd was heard to call out, “Ewwww! What are you doing to that lion’s butt??” The obligatory embarrassing photographs were taken and the cache was replaced (or re-inserted) without difficulty. Everyone left this cache with a smile on their face and a new geocaching story to take home. The Federation Must Pay certainly got us all pumped up and we continued caching until 2 AM.

The day finally done, I went back to my hotel for some well deserved rest. I only had to be up in a few hours to do the St. Augustine cache run later that morning. Needless to say I overslept but joined the cache run around 10 AM. In the 2 hours they had been going, they had already visited almost 40 caches. Amazing! The tour was led by The Federation and our caravan consisted of about 23 vehicles. This is the first time I’ve found my FRS radio to be indispensable. If there was a kink in the perfect job done on GW3 this was it. It’s hard to really run such a large cache run when people have found the cache and are standing in line to sign it and you are still pulling up and parking. This happened with several caches but not all. This problem quickly went away when we reached St. Augustine and split up into smaller groups and each went different ways. Each group was then 5-8 people, which is more manageable for group caching.

After the day of caching around St. Augustine, we all got together again for dinner at The Number Ho Celebration Dinner by The Federation. It was a more laid back dinner event with a degree of melancholy as everyone was saying their goodbyes. There were even tears seen in some people’s eyes. “Next year” were the words on many lips. It’s clear to me that this event affected more than just myself in a special way.

As I bring this chapter of my journal to a close, I realize I learned something unexpected on this trip. Perhaps the slogan “It’s all about the numbers” refers to the number of new friends made and old friendships reaffirmed. It’s not about what’s over the next rise or behind the next tree. Geowoodstock is the fabric that binds us all together in friendship.