I like to hunt up the caches and while I have a gps I don’t use it for this. I read the general area from the website and use my dog to zero in on the location. I feel like I’m cheating so while I might sign the log I won’t take any trinkets from the cache.
I should haul my eTrek out of mothballs now that the weather’s turned for the warmer… when I first got it, I didn’t have a car. Now I do. 
Thanks for reminding me that the thing exists as more than a blue paperweight!
I’ve been caching for a few months now on the weekends. It’s mainly hiking with a purpose. Thanks to cachers who put their hides in nifty places, I’ve seen dozens of cool little spots near my home that I never would have known about. When I travel, I take my GPS along and try to get a little caching in.
I’ve never gotten anything SUPER cool out of a cache. It’s mostly McToys but some of them are pretty interesting. For instance, there’s a cache here that’s full of CDs and a CD player. The idea is you bring a CD in, listen to what’s there, and take one home with you. Another one specializes in nearby magnets. I’m thinking of putting together a cache for trading playing cards.
Puzzle caches are also fun, and they fall into the thrill of the hunt category. It’s rewarding to figure out a series of clues to find a hidden treasure, even if it does consist of golf balls, toy soldiers and keychains.
EZ
There was one around Metro Atlanta that had a poker theme, you took one card from each of 5 caches, to make your best poker hand. The guy set it up with Business cards. You emailed him and told him which card you took. The person with the highest poker hand won something. The Caches where archived when I found them at GC.com
We’ve (Shopper, Soccer, Dancer and I) been Goecaching for 9 months, we have 65 logged caches and 6 that we found yesterday that I haven’t logged yet. We try to get out a least once a week and try to do a least one that requires hiking a mile or more. On geocaching.com we’re known as GeerWerkz. The youngest daughter(Dancer) enjoys it a lot, she looks up the caches is usually the one to make the find. 
I think I’ll get her a GPS for her birthday!
I use a Magellan SporTrack. I have 90 cache finds and 36 benchmarks. I also have hidden 10 caches. It’s a great way to get outdoors and go to places you’ve never been. My user name at geocaching.com is Oat if you want to check out the caches I’ve hidden.
There’s a woman in my area that has, at last count, over 5,000 finds.
I’ve just started Geocaching myself. I’ve found two local caches, have a list of soon-to-be finds, and I’ve picked out two locations to hide my first caches!
I had heard about Geocaching for some time and really wanted to try it. I finally bought myself a Magellan Meridian Gold handheld, and hit the woods!
I take my dog with me for a nice long hike somewhere and find treasure. What’s not to love?
I am known as caughtatwork on gc.com and over the last 10 months have found over 400 caches in Victoria, Australia.
You can also see more about us on our own home page at http://www.caughtatwork.net then head off to the geocaching page.
My 4YO loves to go Treasure Hunting and nags me whenever it’s a nice day to go out. We found 4 today including 3 First To Finds.
The treasures we see / swap are generally items from the $2 shop, unless there’s a specific theme for a particular cache. Then the swaps get a little different.
We’ve done a couple of difficulty 5 caches and the hardest terrain was a 4.5 which involved a 2 kilometer walk uphill (both ways :p) to get to the final location of a 12 part mystery cache.
It gets us out of the house on the weekends and away to different places around the city and state, generally to areas we’ve never been before. It’s very nice to have a purpose to a walk rather than just wander through the bush.
We have a basic Garmin etrex unit, along with a copy of OziExplorer which we use for plotting the waypoints on a map. The kids don’t like walking for 30 minutes only to find we’re on the wrong side of the river, so when caching with the kids, we plot first and make sure we arrive as close as possible to the location.
One thing that we tend to take a little bit seriously is the concept of trade even, trade up or don’t trade at all. It’s very frustrating (for the kids) to find a cache that has used tram tickets or a marble and nothing worthwhile to swap. In these cases we Take Nothing, Leave Nothing (TNLN) and leave a line in the online log about the quality of swaps remaning.
On April 1, the Victorian Dash for Cache will be on. I’m setting up a puzzle cache that will require someone solving the same puzzle in three different ways in order to find the final point. This is known as a multi-cache where there are multiple points to visit before coming upon the final cache with the log book and swaps.
I’m hoping to get it to a difficulty 5, but I may settle on a 4 or 4.5. The terrain has been set (by the organiser) at no greater than 3 or 3.5 so it’s within a 2 kilometer walk from the closeast car park along well made paths.
It’s a fun game and even though the probabilty of meeting another cacher at a cache site is pretty small, I’ve run into quite a few other cachers at cache sites. I’ve run into the same guy 3 times. The last one being over 100km from home. The mind boggle at those odds.
If you have a GPS, go and do some. You may find you get hooked. You may find that you get fed up with all of the ‘tupperware under a bush’ caches. Perservere and you should find caches that are worth the effort to decipher the clues and work out where the box is. You get excerise and time to be with the family too.
Mrs. tgkk suprised me with a Garmin Etrex Vista for Christmas. I’ve found about a dozen or so caches, but winter weather has slowed the process somewhat. My family and I are heading to Florida next week, and I’ve a list of caches that I’ll be looking for down there.
Geocaching is a form of orienteering using GPS units. You don’t need to use GPS units if you don’t want to or if you don’t have one. All it takes is a map (ideally a topographic map) and a compass.
As far as learning to find your way, you would cut yourself short if you took up using a GPS without ever learning basic map and compass work.
Here be free maps: http://worldwind.arc.nasa.gov/
I love geocaching. I talked DH into letting me buy a GPS a couple of years ago, and since he’s a HAM radio operator, he thought it was kind of cool, too.
I also thought that our kids (now 13yo girl and 10yo boy) would really get into geocaching too, but I was very wrong. Our daughter winces at the thought of turning on the GPS, and our son isn’t terribly cooperative either. We did bring a set of under-10yo cousins on a couple of caches last Thanksgiving when we were visiting in-laws, and they were VERY excited about going treasure hunting.
Since the kids don’t really like it, it’s been hard for me to get in more than a couple of caches every few months, but I do try to throw the GPS in the suitcase whenever we go anywhere unusual.
As someone else said, my nick on geocaching.com is the same as the one I use here. I’ve registered most of my finds there.
bump
My doctor wants me to start exercising before I go in for bariatric surgery. I was whining to my therapist about it, when she brightened up and said “Geocaching!” Yes, she’s a geek too.
Damn her (in a good way) 'cause I’m hooked now. But what really blew my mind is that my partner is completely into it, too. She’s the kind of person that you’d have use a crowbar with in order to get her from in front of the 2,476 Stargate shows she’s got on TiVo. Vive le Geocaching!
BTW, we’re newbies over there, known as “Dust Diablos.”
My SO’s dad is really into Geocaching. Very much so. He takes us along on day-long trips he does just to find as many as possible. The last trip we went on, we found 30. He’s now found over 2,000 and holds some records in Arizona. Woohoo!!
We just did some caches in Show Low and Payson on Saturday. Lots of fun!
The family dog is even a travel bug–she has the dogtag on her collar. At the last event cache we went to, tons of people came up to get their pictures with her and take down her number.
What I love most about Geocaching is the scenery I get to see, and the treasure-hunt aspect of it. I normally don’t like hiking just for the sake of it, but this adds a sense of purpose to it and it’s great.
I got into geocaching several years ago, and have a number of caches in the Las Vegas area. All my caches are known as SWAG #. I have 9 that I’ve hidden so far, most of them in very remote places. I’m planning a big multi-stage cache for #10, just waiting for the fall to arrive so I won’t die hiding them all. If anyone wants to look me up on www.geocaching.com, just look for Bo Swagger.
Cache on!
Foible, there’s quite a few people who go caching without a GPSr. It’s not cheating at all - in fact, the ones who do it without the GPSr are rather highly regarded on the Groundspeak Geo-Forums, usually. So if you want to trade SWAG (Stuff We All Get; i.e.: trinkets), feel free. You found it, you signed the log, you’re welcome to trade.
In fact, there’s at least one of our caches that the GPSr will get you in the right area (say, within a couple hundred ft.), but you need the clue and use of The Caching Force to get you the cache most times. Leaf cover plays merry hell with the GPSr in the hide spot.
Just remember, everybody: Trade even, Trade Up, or Please Don’t Trade!
-"Paws"itraction (caching name)
My brother is real into it. In fact, that’s how he proposed to his now-wife. Put the ring in a cache. 
Awwww!
I actually attended a Geocaching wedding a few months ago. A guy and a gal (very nice people) who met while Geocaching and decided to get married at the spot they had put their very first cache together. It was absolutely breathtaking–up in the mountains, a lot of hiking to get to the spot, but an amazing view. The pastor and all the attendees were cachers… it was great.
I’ve heard about it before, and thought about it for quite awhile. So, when I read this thread last night [sub]sounds like a country song, don’t it?[/sub], I hauled off and signed up. Unfortunately, both “Tripler” (presumably as ‘TripleR’) and my IRL nickname were taken, so I had to compromise.
But, I’m there. And as soon as I get some free time, I’m hitting some trails. Methinks I should upgrade from a 1995 Garmin 12 reciever, though.
Tripler
Aaah, the heck with upgrading! I’ve got a compass!
Besides, most of the time, people rely far too much on getting to “exactly where the GPSr zeroes out” instead of getting close and then using the Caching Force to find caches.
Considering that even the BEST of them, on the BEST day, with the BEST reception is accurate to 10 feet or so (and I’ve only seen it get that close once, out of over 150 finds, and it was a fluke), and therefore if yours is off by 10 ft. one way, and the hider’s was off by 10 ft. the other way, you’re STILL only going to get within 20 feet if you’re lucky. (Usual rule: get to within 20 - 50 ft and start looking for a likely location).