Just hunted down my first (two) geocaches this weekend. It was a blast! One led us to a beautiful abondoned railroad over a river in my boring old hometown that I don’t think I would ever know about otherwise…
From the website:
There wasn’t anything really cool in the cache to take home, but it the log-books were interesting reads.
Geocaching is enjoyable. I always cheat and decrypt those hints people give, and I rarely take anything from the cache, but they’re fun to find and usually good for the walk. So far it’s the best reason I’ve found to use my GPS.
The first ones I found (with all or some of my family) were in Hawaii when we were visiting there a couple summers ago. There was a really cool one on Oahu that was in what was called a “hidden gulch” that really lived up to its name. My dad and I had to slog our way through thick grass as tall as ourselves to get there, and there was a pool of water in there that was the lovely color of Hawaiian dirt (red) we so fondly remembered from our days living there (on the island, not in the gulch). We couldn’t find the cache, but it was great GPS fun!
Our geocaching has led us to a range of places, from interesting places like that which we’d never have found otherwise, to a wonderful geocache in a roadside tree surrounded by trash.
I want to steal the super high quality (expensive) GPS unit we use in my geography courses here at school and find geocaches with that. Or at least do something with it…
Yay! Other Geocaching Dopers! I got into this exciting misuse of technology in January, after having bought myself a GPSr for Christmas. I’m up to 20+ caches found (most on the way home after work…), and am about to plant one myself, as soon as I find a good hidin’ spot.
Any of you ever try to explain the fun and appeal of caching to a non-caching friend / family member? I’ve tried several times and I always get the “I’ll keep her occupied, you call the Guys In The White Jackets” look. I’ve resorted to just calling it “Hiking With Geek Gear” and that seems to make more sense to them than “well, you look for these caches which you locate with a GPSr, and then you write in the log book, and maybe exchange little trinkets, and it’s just really fun. Mostly it’s just the challenge of finding new ones. It’s really cool.”
Oh, jsgoddess it’s great. Cease resisting, come over to the Caching Side…
I notice you’re from Ohio, if you’re anywhere near the NW corner of OH, and don’t mind a bit of a travel for a Caching Event, there’s gonna be a picnic / Caching Event in Indiana at the Chain-O-Lakes State Park on May 22. You can get all the details here., if you’re interested.
Unfortunately, I’m in SE Ohio. I was shocked to go to the site Oat1957 linked to and find that there are geocachers in my area! The closest cache is less than 6 miles away. This is unheard of.
Would this be leaving an item in a cache with instructions to move the item to another cache, then to another cache, and so on? I heard that one such item made it all the way from the West coast to the East coast.
Yeah, geocachers are truely everywhere! In my small hometown alone it would take a lot of effort to check off the whole list of available caches.
I reccomend that you get in on the fun. I think that there are decent GPS’s available for $50 or slightly less.
I’ve never done geocaching, but it does sound like fun. I’m a huge GPS fan. I’ve got two units. I’ve got a Garmin GPS III+ that I use for hiking (kept me alive in Joshua Tree) for a couple of days, and a Garmin Street Pilot that I use on my motorcycle. It’s great for leading rides through all kinds of twisty back roads that would be impossible to find otherwise.
I swear I was just thinking “I should start a geocaching thread…”. I knew there would be other geocaching dopers out there. I just started two months ago, and am totally hooked.
So is it bad that I already have my eye on a fancier GPSr that I really don’t need?
There’s like, a whole page of caches within 10 miles of me. If money weren’t so tight right now, I’d go get a GPS tomorrow. Hm… surely someone I work with has a GPS…