This story begins with some high expectations. A chance meeting would lead to the statement, “Visiting HQ is something I’ve wanted to do for quite a long time, and as it turns out, the experience was crazier than I could have ever imagined.”

It all started on a typical Friday in the Seattle lobby of Geocaching HQ. We see the world come together in 500 square feet of solid, wall to wall, Geocaching . There’s a treasure chest, logbook and usually hundreds of Trackables coming and going. It’s Geocaching HQ after all. You hear languages like German and Portuguese spoken along side English and Spanish. People around the world find themselves visiting for an hour or so and meeting new friends. Rarely, extremely rarely- and let me not under sell this – maybe once or twice a decade, geocachers randomly stumble upon an old friend from another part of the world in our lobby.

And it just happened again. As most stories like this do, this one begins with a Puzzle Cache in Ireland. Larry, username APawInMyFace, and Lindsey, username Flossinmatoof visited Ireland in August. Larry contacted Ciaran, username GoldCircle, for help on a Puzzle Cache. Well, you know, so many email flew across the Atlantic between the America and Ireland that an Event Cache was planned.

More than a dozen people welcomed the out-of-town guests from America. Ciaran and the American couple went their separate ways. Most stories end there. They might never have seen each other again, except for an intervening photo booth in the Geocaching HQ lobby.

Larry and Lindsay were visiting Geocaching HQ from Miami. Larry and Lindsay were visiting friends in Seattle that Larry hasn’t seen in three years. They’d just finish taking pictures in the Geocaching HQ photo booth. Larry placed the strip of photos in our scrapbook. He noticed a familiar face. That guy looked like Cairan, aka GoldCircle. It was GoldCirle. But he wasn’t at HQ.

Carly at the Geocaching HQ front desk, told Larry Cairan would be back in a few minutes. If that one connection would be missed, if a page would have been flipped in our scrapebook, if Larry visited from Miami one week later…. well, you get the idea. It. Was. Close. It was also significant. Cairan just happened to be in Seattle for business.

Geocaching HQ was Cairan’s 1000th find. Can you guess what Larry gave Cairan as a thank you gift for hosting the Event Cache in Ireland? Yeah – a 1000th Find Geocoin.

Larry says they could have never planned this meeting if they tried. Wow right?

That word, “wow” gets said a lot in the Geocaching HQ lobby. People meeting friends they’ve connected with a world away. Some reacquainted themselves with long lost Travel Bugs that ended up in the Geocaching HQ Treasure chest.

Larry wrote in the Geocaching HQ log, ” The ways in which the geocaching community can make our enormous world feel so small are indescribable, yet somehow, rarely surprising. Thank you for the truly unforgettable day and for the wonderful memories that we formed both in and around HQ.” Lindsey wrote in her log, “The world is an incredible place.” She’s right.

That’s the thing about geocaching…  you’re always welcome. Whether that’s at a geocache, at an Event Cache or at Geocaching HQ, you never know who you might bump into.

The question now might be where in the world will Larry, Lindsey and Ciaran connect again?  We have a guess. The might randomly bump into each other while claiming the First to Find at this geocache.

What’s the strangest coincidence you’ve encountered geocaching? Tell us about it in comments below.

Meet Tony Linberg (Username: galdrin): IT guy, geocacher, and proud father. Meet Tony’s son: 13-year-old treasure hunter, adventurer, and explorer. They’re your everyday father-son geocaching duo. But dig a little deeper and like most geocachers you’ll uncover something remarkable about their relationship and why they geocache.

In 2006, Tony’s three-year-old son was diagnosed with severe autism, meaning that he is unable to use spoken language. He also suffers from asthma, light epilepsy, and hyperactivity. This diagnosis would change the Linberg family’s life. They moved away from their friends and family in the city to a quiet house in the countryside, an environment more suitable to their son’s needs. A year after the move, the Linberg’s daughter came into the world. She was also diagnosed with autism.

Then, in 2008, Tony happened across an article about geocaching.  After discovering that his son enjoyed being driven in a car, Tony had started the routine of taking long car rides with his son. They would just drive and drive for hours at a time. Tony says, “The article gave me an idea to create a goal for our next evening in the car so that the trip would have some meaning for me also and not just for my son. And this is where our life takes a new direction for me, my son, and in the end all our family. If the [autism diagnosis] started a downward spiral then the discovery of geocaching started an upward spiral that just keeps on going.”

On that first geocaching experience, Tony and his son both fell in love with geocaching – but in very different ways. Tony loved the way that finding the treasure at the end of the trail made him feel: excitement building, pulse racing, confidence growing. Tony says his son fell in love not with the find itself, but rather with the adventure of getting there: “My son has never cared about the box at the end of the trail, he only cares about the trail and what he got the day we found geocaching is the activity needed to feel good.”

Geocaching has not only changed Tony and his son’s life, but also the way in which the entire family lives, loves, and exists.  Through geocaching, Tony says, “I get small glimpses of the boy behind the handicap, small moments when his hyperactivity lets go of him and he can sit down and enjoy the situation, and short moments when he grabs my arm and laughs when we have successfully logged a geocache and are walking back to the car. He almost never laughs normally, but when we are geocaching I am blessed with the sound of his laugh… Geocaching is a water balloon full of  goodness that hit me, but it splashed everyone in our family.”

Tony and his son are now going on 1400  finds and currently own two geocache hides. Their geocaching adventures inspired a new level of physical activity for both Tony and his son. Tony’s son started sleeping more than four hours a night and improved his balance. Perhaps most importantly, geocaching showed the Linbergs that their children’s autism diagnoses were not the final chapter. At first, the Linbergs thought that autism spectrum disorder meant that their family would never get to explore the world together. Because of his disorder, Tony’s son cannot be left alone for even short periods of time. But through geocaching, they learned that they can still lead lives full of exploration and adventure and – like all parents hope to do – they can challenge their children to try new things and discover interesting places. Tony has started calling his son his “shadow cacher” because they get to have adventures together all the time.

Today, Tony’s son is beginning to learn to communicate using an iPad. For the most part, the language is very basic (e.g. “I’m hungry” or “I need to go to the toilet”). However, there is one phrase that Tony says his son uses more than any others: “I want to go geocaching.”

For Tony and his son, geocaching is not about the numbers. 1400 finds means 1400 adventures, 1400 memories, and 1400 reasons why any parent and child – of any ability – can find a common bond through geocaching.

You can follow shadowcacher’s adventures on Tony’s blog. If you have a story you would like to be considered for the next installment of “Geocachers Care,” please email pr@geocaching.com.