Geocaching

Cafe Society
1

Well, I finally went out Geocaching yesterday, and it was a lot of fun. Found two caches on my first day.

For those who don’t know, Geocaching is a hobby in which people hide caches all around the world and post the GPS coordinates to them on a web site. You, armed with a GPS device and some hints, go searching for it. As a side effect you get out in the great outdoors.

You can read more about my particular adventures here.

Or Geocaching in general here: http://www.geocaching.com

Anyone else do this? If enough do, we could set up an SMDB travel bug.

2

Hrm…DNS must be down for my site. Try this insetad for the link to my site:

http://slithytoves.sytes.net/~dave/geocaching/index.html

3

I have never done geocaching but I’ve been threatening to do it for about a year. What kind of GPS unit do you have? Are you just signing something at the cache or do you exchange it?

4

I have a Garmin eTrex GPS device. It ran me $100 at Amazon.com. It was the cheapest unit I saw.

Some caches only have a logbook to sign. Some have little trinkets in them, and the rule is that you take a trinket and leave a different trinket. Some trinkets are called “Travel Bugs” and are being tracked as they move from cache to cache.

5

We found a cache this weekend that had a disposable camera in it. Each finder takes a picture and the final picture taker will develop it and put the pictures back in the hidden ammo box. What a great idea. I like the idea of a traveling bug, too.
Jill

6

Just in case you’re curious, we went out again this weekend and found a nifty cache. Details are on my Geocaching page.

http://slithytoves.sytes.net/~dave/geocaching/index.html

7

I’m bumping this thread because I just discovered the Geocaching website today. I’m very interested in trying out this fun-sounding hobby, and I would like to hear about some Dopers’ experiences with Geocaching.

I think that having a “goal” would make me push further on my hikes, and make it more fun. There seem to be quite a number of cache sites here in New Mexico, but I guess some of them are on trails that are closed now because of the fire danger.

8

Yes, Spooky, there are lots out here! I’m taking a class at REI next week (in Alb.) to work on my GPS skills. A friend and I found some caches down by the Rio Grande a few months ago. Yesterday I climbed Cabezon Peak, that 2000 ft. volcanic plug (you can even see it from Sandia peak), NW of Albuquerque. Requires some short stretches of real climbing with exposure to reach the summit, but it’s easy enough to do without a rope. I was thinking it would be fun to put a cache up on the side of that peak somewhere.