A Different New Hobby

[floridamcmarion1]

Has anyone ever tried geocacheing? I got a new GPS for Father's Day and have been geocacheing since. If you don't know what it is, I can best describe it as a family treasure hunt. There are over 100,000 caches logged onto a site on the web with the coordinates to find them. You use your GPS to go find the cache and then trade your trinkets for some that are already in the box. Most of the trinkets are small toys. Then you go online and log your visit to the cache. My kids love it, and I also really like to do it. I have already found 2 parks in my area that I had no idea about before. The hunts range from you being able to drive right to them to having to do overnight hiking trips. There are even things called travel bugs. You can tie a travel bug to something and then track it's travels around the world as people move it from cache to cache. I saw one online that has traveled over 14,000 miles. I may try to find one in a few days that was in Germany last week. Everything is really easy to track online, so you even know if the cache you are going to has a travel bug in it. My 3 year old begs me to take him treasure hunting now.

[Don-Dad]

Neat, that sounds like fun, might have to give it a try.

[mjknapp]

I watched a show on that on discovery channel or something, I honestly forgot all about it, it sounded like a really neat idea, but I was living in Iowa at the time, and nobody there did it, It is a really neat hobbie, and great for the kids. You have to replace whatever you find with something else right. Some of them from what I remember you have to add to the box, not take the contents.

[underfoot]

That is a really cool idea. I think kids and kids-at-heart would both like it.

[floridamcmarion1]

The website to look for information is www.geocaching.com

The ones I take the kids to are where they can trade treasure for treasure. I want to do some that are called virtual caches. On these you simply find a historical site or interesting spot and report back to the person who started the "cache" by e-mail the answers to their questions as posted on the cache information page. You can then log your find on the website. I think these would be fun and educational, but my kids would get bored by most of them. It will depend on the description in the website which virtual caches I take the kids to. Every cache has a web page telling what kind of cache it is, as well as hints to find it and the log made by all of those who have visited it so far.

You can go to the website and find out how many caches there are in your area. You will be amazed by how many are close to you. I live in a fairly small area, but we are buried in caches around here. It probably helps that we are near a prime tourist spot, but it still surprised me how many there are around here. I even checked the VERY small rural area I grew up in and there were quite a few there. You can pretty much assume there are caches everywhere.

[tt3]

Wow, thats awesome! A world wide treasure hunt, very cool.

[fondestpie]

does anyone still do this. It sounds like a lot of fun i am going to get a gps unit on thursday

[MADDOX626]

does anyone still do this. It sounds like a lot of fun i am going to get a gps unit on thursday

Dude you have way too much time on your hands. You found a thread that was over 4 years old.

[fondestpie]

i am actually at work right. I am just in between ventilator checks

[Bjorn74]

Has anyone ever tried geocaching?

I keep thinking that I'd get back into it but it seems like the burnout is permanent. I started a local and a regional organization with friends, started the Midwest GeoBash, started a Geocoin company and became a volunteer reviewer for Geocaching.com. Then a friend died and some of the aftermath took the wind out of my sails. (What could possibly be wrong with donating a substantial amount of money and effort to help people establish a memorial for a dear friend with no strings attached?) Anyway, our participation is mostly passive now. We have a cache on the porch and I probably have five caches remaining from a peak of close to 50.

It's certainly a different activity from when I started. That doesn't make it a bad thing for everyone but it does take a different type of person, I'm afraid. There are times that I wish I could forget about it and start over again.

But have fun. There's a lot to see and do. If you get a chance to experience some good WHERiGO activities that are not Geocaches you might find them to be even more fun.

[Electriclime]

I ran across a cache in the woods by one of the back trails in nature park near my house a year or so ago and looked into geocaching. I've been interested, but never managed to scape together some extra money for a GPS. I got excited last Christmas when my parents bought me a Garmin GPS, but it was the car map type and wouldn't display the GPS coordinates (pretty stupid). I wish I could have traded that one in for something more useful.

I'll keep it in mind, and WHERiGO too, for when my daughter gets a bit older. Seems like a good family activity since I like to hike already.

[goingrey]

The old lady got me a Garmin Nuvi 200 for Christmas for the car for $100. I'm going hunting tomorrow in pedestrian mode!:icon_wink:. I think it will be fun for the kids too. Interesting to note how long GPS has been in use, just not to the public.

[chuck]

I've taken my scouts out on a few, great way to intorduce them to compass work and mixing it with the modern GPS usage, makes it fun!

[fondestpie]

we got a compass and a topgrqaphical of Turkey mountian map yesterday and went looking we were in the spot it was suppose to be but there was only an empty box the boys put a yoda and a stormtrooper in it for someone elese to find we had a lot of fun I think we could have found it with out the map and compass however we spend alot of time up there

Ash kept asking what i was going to do with my share of the gold.