Three years ago this coming April I attended my Step Father’s 60th birthday celebrations, it was a lovely day if a bit of an effort for me, I was 39 weeks pregnant at the time. Sitting at a table with my sisters, their partners and children I noticed my neice child was playing with a rather large plastic toy tiger which she gracefully allowed my daughter to play with too. It was her new “treasure”. “What do you mean treasure?” I asked “We found it in a geocache on the way here” “Geocache? Whats that?”
I’m sure this film explains it better that I can…
Well I was a bit busy for the next few weeks as I’m sure you can imagine but when things started to settle into a routine my curiosity got the better of me…
This is the point where I discovered a new hobby and a new pet hate too, I hate thinking something is out there and hidden and I don’t know where it is…
We signed on to geocaching.com The hardest bit of which is choosing a team name (once chosen you can’t change it!) and it is free to become a normal member, a few weeks later whilst in Devon on holiday we found our first cache using our Tomtom!
GC16ww1 St Swithens Launcells 🙂
668 finds later I am still a happy geocacher and now the Little Man is managing without the buggy I’m sure we will do many more this year.
Geocaches are placed and their location and logged using GPS technology so you need a GPS receiver to locate them, lots of gadgets have gps now, my husband uses his HTC mobile, there is an app for an iphone (of course) Tom Toms can often be programmed to find a location via northing and westing co ordinates and of course there are many GPSr’s on the market purpose built for the job, my first GPSr was a Garmin Etrex which is basic but does the job well enough 🙂
First timers may like to note that GPSr will take you in a direct line to the cache but please make sure you look up occasionally in case of cliff edges, rivers etc 😉
Once you are gadgeted up and signed on to www.geocaching.com click on to the Hide and seek a cache on the left hand side, then look for the search with google maps link, type in your town/city (if in the UK you will need to put this in like Bristol, UK or you will find somewhere in the USA!)
On the map you will see lots of different types of icons..
A Traditional Cache is a good place to start, the co-ordinates for it are listed, no working out co-ordinates like multi caches, no puzzles like (you got it) mystery caches and I suggest for your first attempt to go for a small or regular sized cache as listed on the cache description page, especially if you are caching with children, finding treasure ie: swaps is often the best part of the experience for them… So you have your gadget, you have decided where to go, have you found some swaps?
Caches can often take small swaps, we have found playdoh eggs, bouncy balls, keyrings, childrens beads – all sorts, it works on a take something leave something basis, you will often see on logs “TNLN” Took nothing left nothing, so it’s best to have a few items to swap before you go, old christmas cracker gifts work well.
Off you go then – don’t forget your pencil….
Let me know how you get on…
Please pop over to Thinly Spread for more Something for the Weekend…
Kailexness 