Anyone here go geocaching?

[TrickyBob]

My Husband bought me a gps for it because I have been talking about it forever plus nagging him about going on hikes and getting out and seeing more of our area. 

I loaded some local ones onto my gps and later today after grocery shopping we are going to find a few. I'm stupidly excited!




For those that don't know, geocaching is basically a giant scavenger hunt using gps coordinates and a hand held gps (or your phone). You find the box/bag/whatever using hints and clues, you sign a log book, take a picture (if you want, some have cameras in them for you to take a photo to leave behind), and if you bring something with (of equal value) you can leave it behind and take something with you. A lot of them offer up historic facts about the area as well. And it isn't just a woodsy thing, you can find them on playgrounds, cities, buildings, etc. There are super easy ones to super hard ones and small ones to large ones. Some have geo coins in them that are traceable and it has goals, like say you pick it up in PA and it moves around PA to have a goal of getting to California. You can either plan a day doing it and going to different ones or if you are going on a trip, pick out a few along the way to find. 

[Deleted]

We did some letterboxing last year, which is similar but minus the GPS. My kids loved it.

[Deleted]

H and I have done some geocaching. It was fun trying to sneak around finding them, and some of them were really hard to find. I'd love to set my own sometime, but I'm not sure I'm that creative.

[MixedBerryJam]

I have always wanted to try this. How do you get started? Is it an app? I know geocaching started before smartphones, but I never really understood how you find out where to look.

[Deleted]

Jun 1, 2013 5:33:42 GMT -5 MixedBerryJam said:

I have always wanted to try this. How do you get started? Is it an app? I know geocaching started before smartphones, but I never really understood how you find out where to look.

try geocaching.com
You search by location for caches near you and then use your smartphone or GPS to locate them. We've used smartphones, hiking GPS type devices, and just a regular car Garmin gps device. It will be more difficult with less accurate devices, but that can just make it more fun. 
You can also do this with like a map and compass and such. I did it before in an orienteering class. It was hard work. 

[snickers]

I had to do it as a training thing for work, and we do it with the youth all of the time. I love it!

[TrickyBob]

We went this afternoon but I was a dummy and forgot to bring the clues. We kept circling one area and couldn't find it, but when I plugged my Husbands phone in and searched - we were right on top of it. Lol. Another day.

We just would like to find 1 so far so that we know what we are looking for. So far it's all the nano ones and not big obvious ones.

[heliocentric]

We do it, but mostly when we're on vacation. Since the caches are hidden by locals, you can see some great off-the-beaten-track sites that way. And moving travel bugs around is fun.
We don't really do it a home. For some reason that doesn't seem as interesting.

[Deleted]

We love it! We put a travel bug in a cache last year (a token or bobble with a trackable dog tag attached to it--when you find one you take it out, move it to another cache, and log it online.). It as gone from CA to Central America to England to Germany. It's pretty awesome!

[lilibet]

We've done it a couple of time. There doesn't seem to be a lot of activity around here though.

[RoxMonster]

A bunch of H's college friends got really into geocaching and some of their girlfriends do it with them, but we have never gotten into it. H isn't interested, and it's not something I would do by myself.

ETA: Can I tell a funny geocaching story? One of these college friends is like the nicest, most unassuming, nerdy guy you will ever meet. Not interested in women (not interested in guys, either, just not interested in dating period). Very bright, engineer, plays lots of video games, etc. Anyways, he went out on a trail by a rest stop to geocache one day then went home.

Later, the state police show up at his door! Apparently a woman had been sexually assaulted right near that trail earlier in the day (week?) and because he has a really long beard and looked kind of scruffy that day, I guess, a woman called the cops to report him as suspicious and gave his license plate number. He was questioned for 20 min. because the cop had never heard of geocaching and thought it sounded suspicious.

So lesson of the day: make sure you are not geocaching in an area where a crime was committed while looking suspicious, I guess.