A friend of mine is an occassional geocacher and the whole thing intrigues me: getting out doors, finding treasure, leaving treasure. Good wholesome fun!
What I am looking for is GPS info, as I know zero about them.
I had/have a passing interest in this. I bought a Garmin eTrex and tried to find a cache near my home. I gave up when it started raining heavy.
Etrex is a pretty good starter model, if all you’re looking to do is geocache.
geocaching.com – for all your geocaching needs!
The “getting started” section on the page has a link to a GPS buyer’s guide or try gpsinformation.com).
Oh hell yeah… I highly recommend it! It is very fun for team building, spousal abuse, and all around family fun! 
I guess I should explain the spousal abuse thingy… I took my wife on a 4 hour cache hunt in a large arizona state park. We got lost, didn’t find the cache and she recieved a severe sun burn! She called it spousal abuse… I called it fun! Oh and we found out that the cache was only 30 yards off the parking lot gates! :eek: I was in the dog house for a week!
After we moved back to New England we have been going a lot more… the caches are wonderful and much easier to find once we got our new Garmen!
Oh, absolutely! It rocks! We’ve been caching since 2003. So far I’ve managed to shed 40 lbs. thanks to geocaching.
It’s something we can do together, and the dog loves it.
We’re introducing some friends to it, too. Muahahahhaahahahahahaha…
Odd this should come up - I’m actually writing a magazine article on geocaching as we speak. It’s something I could definitely see myself getting into in the future.
Ooo, what magazine?
I’ve done it several times, it’s really fun!
There’s a hike we go on near my house. Along the trail is a huge old oak tree with a swing hanging from a branch that must be 30 feet up. We are not allowed to pass by without stopping and letting the kids have a turn. (The adults take a turn too – its a bitchin’ swing!)
About a month ago we noticed that there was a little brass plaque attached to the bottom of the swing, engraved with a longitude and latitude. I had heard of geocaching, and guessed that it was a geocache clue.
Cooincidentally, we recently got a small, relatively inexpensive gps device (the smallest, cheapest garmin, I think), and last weekend we made a point to use the gps to find the longitude and latitude shown on the plaque. The secret spot turned out to be about a mile up the trail – a well hidden tupperware container filled with cool little plastic toys, and a printed card explaining that we had just found a geocache! I later found that it has its own special web site.
My 10 year old daughter is thrilled, and can’t wait to find another.
Yep. I’m THespos on Geocaching.com, too.
Love it, haven’t been out in a while, but I’m going to Florida this coming week and I want to do some 'caching while I’m down there.
I’ve had a couple GPS units. I like my Magellan Sportrak Color, but I get better accuracy from my Garmin III+ or my eTrex Legend. Wish I could give you some tips on which GPS is best, but I don’t think it matters much. I’ve found caches with a cheap-o model (Geko 101) that a vendor once gave to me at an industry event.
We have a Magellan Meridian–a few years old, but it works fine for geocaching.
We don’t do the geocaching thing as often as I would like to, though. Our 11yo son loves the treasure hunt aspect, and often brings his metal detector to help, but even without it, he’s the best one at actually finding the caches when we get close to them. However, the weather here is really ucky on weekends, and our 14yo daughter hates the Great Outdoors.
When we go out of town, I typically find a few caches that we can hunt for while we’re there, if only to give some purpose for hiking through the wilderness (which is my favorite pasttime).
Here are a couple of threads that might help:
Handheld GPS units in the woods
I’ve been geocaching since 2004, and I love it. Gets me and my family up off our butts and out into nature. We’ve also incorporated it into our vacations and found some cool spots we wouldn’t have found otherwise.
Hope you try it and like it!
I’ve taken a few books out of the library on this subject and have been boning up on it all.
I am hooked through both lips.
www.Geocaching.com has a discussion board with all sorts of topics to help newbie cachers, including discussions on various GPSr units. My preference is the Garmin Etrex Legend.
www.Terracaching.com is another caching site with a slightly different point of view. The caches there tend more toward quality over quantity, with puzzle caches, offsets, etc. prevailing.
Shirley, you’re in for a hoot if you get started. I have been to places I would never, ever have even dreamed existed in pursuit of caches. And if you want to sign up on Terracaching, e-mail me and let me know. I’ll be happy to sponsor you.
I geocache occasionally, and recently placed my own cache. I find it a lot of fun and sometimes if taking a road trip I’ll load a few caches local to my destination in case I get bored.
I also use the Etrex Legend and recommend it highly!
I just started about a month ago. I love it. We use a Garmin eTrex Legend as well. I hear that in summer there can be quite aot of canopy problems, but you’ll get close enough.
Once you find a few, you’re hooked.
Stop reading those books. Go out caching a few times, then read up. There is far too much info out there, and alot of it will discourage newbies.
If you want to spend $1000, just get the best one they have at the store, it’ll have more features than you could ever want to use.
If you want to be more economical, go to your local hunting/sporting mecca i.e. Dicks, Galeans, Caberas etc, and look for a Garmin eTrex Legend package. It has the software, and most of the accessories that you might ever need for under $200. This is a very reasonable price considering.
Once you’re in, you’re pretty much hooked. You now have a fun, adventurous way to get physical exercise, use your brain, locate seldom seen scenic views, and learn about your surroundings.
I live less than a mile from a waterfall and I didn’t even know. Once I knew, I found many more people who didn’t.
Great caches lead you to not just a piece of tupperware in the woods, but rather a great location to see some of the world’s best scenery.
Get cheap stuff at first (eTrex by Garmin), if you like it invest more. I’m sure you’ll like it.
Nothing particularly well-known, unless you happen to live in Southwestern Ontario (and even then, it’s probably not that widely read). But, if you want to check it out, this is it. I wrote the cover story from that issue.
If we have enough time next weekend, while in the Chicago Area, my friend who peaked my interest in this and myself might go off on a wander for a cache.
He has a couple GPS’s and I am hoping he will bring two along so I can fiddle around with one on the 5-6 hour drive.
(Plus, we can use the GPS as a walkie talkie from the back seat to the front seat. Nifty!)
A friend at work told me he wanted to get into it so I loaned him my gps. It is a base model e-trex (about 100.00). He was able to locate a cache on his first time out. After a couple of times he invested in a lawrence unit ( about 260.00) .It is really nice, color screen etc. He really seems to like it and says it works great – even indoors .
Shirley, I just wanted to thank you for starting this thread, as it was a subject I knew nothing about; hell, I didn’t even know it existed. The subject has fascinated my husband and I, and we just went out tonight and picked up a Garmin eTrex Legend. We haven’t used it, but we’re quite excited about getting started on our first treasure hunt.
YAY! 