GPS & Geo Caching: anyone here into it ?

[petek]

Up until last week I knew nothing about GPS etc in cars and the like other than having heard about them and seen pictures on tv ads etc. Didn't interest me. BUT then a friend from out of town dropped in and he had just bought one for his car and was showing it to me and I was intrigued. Enough that last week I went out and got one for myself when I saw it on sale cheap. A Garmin Nuvi 250W. I really liked it and then I found out about this geo-caching stuff using your GPS, checked the website and found there was stuff hidden only a block from my house in the cemetery so I put on my sandals and walked over to hunt down this item amongst the gravestones. It was fun and I think I'm hooked. In two days I've found 4 caches all within a mile of my house. There's dozens in town and thousands upon thousands of them all over.
Just interested to know if anyone else here is big into it?

 

[mattl]

My Brother...

My brother and sister-in-law got into it this year. They said they found things located in areas with fantastic views around Travers City and St. Ignace. They had been through the area many times but if they weren't Geo Chahcing they said they would have never found some views that were stunning.

They are in the process of relocating an item they found up there, it's hoping it will find itself in Fl at some point.

 

[petek]

I forgot to mention the website is geocaching.com
From there you click on hide & seek in the left column and call up hiding places any place using your address or zip/postal code etc. You can narrow it down to just your own neighborhood etc by choosing how many miles from your home. A listing appears and so do google maps etc, descriptions, instructions etc. If you have a Garmin GPS you can automatically download them into your GPS which saves having to write down all the co ordinates etc. It's all very slick how it works.

I was trying to explain it all to my 84 y.o. mother yesterday and instead we just headed out looking for a couple of treasures hidden in a nearby park and up at the beach. She quite enjoyed it and the concensus was that it does get you out there doing stuff, otherwise she'd have just been sitting in her house or garden.

 

[nurdlinger]

Some friends of mine were hooked...

...a few years ago. We live in southern Arizona, where there are hundreds of caches to find. Many are in wilderness areas, and that drove my friends to buy a 4-runner SUV with which to find them. When they were going to make driving trips back east, they investigated cache sites along the route. I went along on a couple of runs a few years ago, and although a pleasant outing with old friends, the fire did not ignite for me.

 

[mistereric]

Geocaching is awesome!

I've been a geocacher for about 5 years now and I think its great. It gives me the change to be a dork (the technology part) and get outdoors and see new and interesting places at the same time.

I have a Garmin Legend HCX, my second GPSr, and I love it. It was about $250, but very worth it. I'm a premium member on geocaching so I get data files emailed to me every week called Pocket Queries that I load into the GPSr (so I can find the caches), and into an old Palm Pilot (so I can see the descriptions and notes without printing things out).

The number one thing that people ask me is "What do you find in the caches?" and I usually explain that its more about actually finding the cache than it is about getting a trinket. The thrill of the hunt, so to speak. Sometimes people comment that it seems easy, like if you had coords you could just walk right up and find the cache - and so I ask them if they've ever accidentally stumbled across one. In reality, its a lot harder than just walking up to a box in the woods (most of the time).

In addition to geocaching.com, there are also some caches listed on navicache.com, and a more difficult to use and sometimes more physically challenging terracaching.com.

Here I am sitting on top of the "rock" in Secaucus NJ, logging my 100th cache find a few years ago.

http://www.ericdietrich.com/photos/index.php?album=geocaches

 

[mistereric]

stepping back...

 

[mihi]

I've done a little bit too.....

I've done a little bit too. Some have been easy to find, some have been very very hard, and some I've never found.
It is fun, if you have the time to do it.