Anyone Geocaching?

Carol K

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Anybody tried this? We're thinking about doing it for a change of pace, and we might even find some new spots to detect.

We just signed up at geocaching.com and couldn't believe how many caches are hidden in our area. :wow:
 
I was thinkin about trying it to. I went on there a couple days ago and checked my area. 7 pages of geocaches :wow: . I dont know much about it though.
 
I had heard about geocaching couple of years ago, but we didn't have a gps then, but now we do.

Seems they only put caches in parks and hiking trails and such. I found out last night that someone hid a cache at the park I was at yesterday! I could have found it easy! I think being a detectorist gives us an advantage because we already know how to hunt. :yes:

I also read up on the "benchmarking" I found it rather interesting. The government has been planting benchmarkers for years, and some benchmarks are in historical locations.

Anyway I find this interesting, and certainly puts a new angle on things.
 
I got into geocaching back in September, I've found 110 caches and hidden 9 now. It gets addicting quickly. I found a lot of places to look for shed antlers and also metal detect thanks to this sport.

Start out with easy traditionals, you may be disappointed if you go after difficult ones, especially micros starting out. You won't belive how close you've been to some of them at times and never knew they were there.
 
I've been researching geocaching a bit myself and found I've got 23 just in my zip alone. Seems that some would be easy enough to find without a GPS too. Found out were a bunch are along my usual road trip routes too. Would be a great activity to break up an otherwise monotonous 18 hour ride with 2-5 children.
How hard does anyone think it would be to find 'em without a GPS and plugging the coordinates into, say, google earth or similar and zooming into the location for a visual and using the clues to find it. Seems simple enough in theory to me. Gotta try it out with some local ones and see. Good luck to everyone. HH
 
some people don't use a GPS for the hobby, but it's a lot easier with one. Also caches can take on all kinds of forms, for instance...I've seen fake bolts in posts, a fake outdoor pipe, it looked like you could attach a hose to it, but instead you unscrewed part to get to the log. Fake rocks, fake acorns, etc.... my most evil hide was a magnet attached to an electrical box with the log on the back. The front of the magnet was just random letters, it didn't look out of place at all. A few other cachers had to return 3 times to find it.

Ones like that would be a real pain to find without a GPS, but some like ammo cans or decon containers can be easy enough to find once you get within a 100 ft or so.

By the way TC, if you get into it, you'll find you'll go through that 23 in your zip code in the blink of an eye. I'm starting to have to go 20 miles or more just to find caches. It's been a very rewarding hobby for me. My username there is the same as here,

This hobby is great for finding new areas you never knew existed, you'll find areas in your own town you never knew about before.

Here's a link to my profile in case you wanted to read some of my logs, a few mention metal detecting: http://www.geocaching.com/profile/?guid=6b02fee7-63a0-4c55-9cf9-91e9ce156af7

It's not the hobby for everyone, some people make an account and find a few caches then never log on again, but if you really get into it you'll find it very rewarding.
 
you have to find a few geocaches before you really get the whole concept and the fun of it. I tried to explain the sport to my mom and she was confused so I said, just go with me on a hunt and you'll understand. I did, she really enjoyed it.
 
Don't own one, but it sure sounds like fun. A friend of mine at work does it all the time. Good way to really learn the GPS eh. :yes:
 
I did a small one for fun with freinds. There was just a little bucket of keychains- take something, leave another thing. We turned out to be the only ones to find it, so we recieved a GPS unit as a reward.
 
I have also been thinking of taking this up as I have found many caches in my scouting for MDing and hunting. I have a good eye for things that don't belong or disturbed area's. GPScity.com has many cheap handhelds on sale. Some for under $70.00 with maps. :shock: I was thinking of getting one just to record all the cellar holes and wells I find instead of relying on my memory. :roll:I gave my last hand held to my son in law for his boat. Cladius.
 
I find them pretty frequently Jeff. I stopped on the way to work today at Dicks Sporting and bought an eTrex legend GPS by Garmin. Comes with quite a bit of stuff including topo maps. I will start playing with it and load the software into my home puter tomorrow. hopefully I will have it figured out soon. I plan on doing some geocaching along with hunting. Cladius.
 
Found our First!

We decided to try this out today. We have 2 GPS units, one is a garmin i2 which is for car navigation, and the other one is a palm pilot.

We downloaded a software for the PDA from Beelinegps.com and it's a great little addition. We loaded the coordinates and off we went to the closest geocache in our area. We have been to this spot millions of times because it's one of our detecting spots, but never knew we were walking around a cache.

Well, it was a micro cache to start with, and it was our first one. It took 20 minutes to find it.

Geocaching and metal detecting could go hand in hand together. You could find many spots you never thought existed where possible good finds could be found with your metal detector.

If you're into actual cache hunting, this would really sharpen your "eye" for hiding spots. We plan on continuing to do this, it was fun.

Maybe we should plant one and throw our metal detecting finds in it. :yes:
 

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The thing about it was. I was detecting while Vlad looked for the cache. Apparently searching for a geocache is sort of a secretive thing. Nobody is suppose to see you looking for it or finding it.

There were other people there fishing, so I told Vlad, How about I detect, and you search, then they won't wonder what we're doing. So it worked out pretty well. I found 16 cents in the 20 min it took him to find it.

I am not really interested in geocaching, it drives me crazy going to these spots without a detector. lol
 
take the detector with you, it's a good cover especially for caches in open spots. Since I got my detector back, I've been taking it with me to caches. People are less likely to look at you suspciously if you have a metal detector with you.
 
Hi Tsmola, I agree it is a good cover. I did alot of studying last night, most geocaches seem to be in parks or hiking trails around here. I read plenty of posts about people having to sit in their car and wait for "muggles" to leave :grin:

The first 2 caches we went looking for, we couldn't find, and had to step back and punt.

In the meantime I thought it looked really strange watching Vlad walk around with a PDA and me a notebook and camera :lol:

Today it is raining though. Hope to do some more hunting this weekend.
 
I went out today and found my first cache. Also found an old cellar hole I'm gonna MD. This is gonna work out great. Cladius.
 
I've been geocaching for a little more than a year. I've logged 682 finds as "Schrecky" (check my profile on geocaching.com. The only problem with it is that as you find all the caches in your area you have to drive further and further to find more. Because I live in a small town and have found all the ones in my area I have to drive around 30 miles to start finding more. This more or less means I have to devote most of a day to a geocaching trip. Still, it's a lot of fun, especially if you have kids to take along. It is really neat when you go on a vacation to find some along the way. You'll see things you wouldn't have seen other wise. When we went to Orlando last year I stopped to find a geocache at "Big Tree Little Tree Park" north of Orlando. It was amazing, largest cypress tree in North America. For me, that was more fun than a day at a big theme park (and free).

I started MD'ing last September and this should keep me busy for quite some time because I won't have to travel far to do the hobby. The ideal hobby related trip for me is to go to Erie and hunt down some geocaches and then go to Presque Isle and search the beach's with my DFX.
 
Where's George?

Cool all, thanks for posting. I have a question about the George Caches with the dollars. How do we get started with that? Just register at Where's George and submit a serial number?

Can we go back to a George cache and exchange dollars even though the first cache we found was a George cache? The instructions said, "Don't exchange nothing but Georges. So we just signed the log.
 
Never ran across a Where's George cache, I know they are common trade items, but I've never been to the site either.
 
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