The first thing you need to do is create an account at geocaching.com. This site is home to over a million geocache locations. Once you create your account, you can search for geocaches near where you live. After you find them, you come back to the website and log your find. The log on the website is a good place to share your story of what happened while finding the geocache!
In order to find the geocaches, you will need a GPS unit! There are a bunch of different types on the market, including some that are ready for geocaching right out of the box! Garmin are usually the best for the money, but as long as you can type in coordinates, you should be fine!
If you don’t want to buy a brand new GPS, and you have an iPhone, Android, or Windows Mobile device, there is an app you can use to locate nearby Geocaches. When I go geocaching, I use my iPhone 4 with the paid version of the Geocaching app. It works incredibly well, and allows me to log my visit right from the app.
Geocaching is like a pirate finding buried treasure on a deserted island, except that geocaches can be anywhere from deep in a forest to right in the middle of a huge city. You could be passing by a geocache every day and not even know it’s there! The sizes of geocaches range from large ammo cans to tiny magnetic containers smaller than a quarter. It really depends on what you are looking for in geocaching to determine which size you will want to search for more often.
The smaller geocaches usually only have a log book to sign your name, but the bigger goecaches usually have toys or other dollar-store type things that you can trade for when you find the cache. In some geocaches, you might find a “Geocoin” or “Travel Bug” that travel from geocache to geocache, usually on some sort of goal. If you want to take a “trackable item,” be sure to move it to another geocache location as soon as possible so it can keep moving on it’s journey.
Finding geocaches isn’t the only part of geocaching though. I have actually hidden a geoache in my town, and it’s really fun reading the logs of people finding your very own geocache. Visiting your geocache and making sure it’s still OK is a big part of owning a geocache, but seeing all the names of the people who found your cache on then log book is an amazing feeling. If you get the chance, hiding a cache is as fun as finding one!
Geocaching is definitely a fun hobby! The first time you try it, you will be hooked. Going with friends makes it even more fun. If one of you can’t seem to find it, you can bet the other will! Don’t get frustrated if you can’t find the geocache. The fun is in the searching, and thinking like the geocacher who hid the container. After finding your first few geocaches, you will develop the ability to go straight straight where an easy cache is at. You instantly know exactly where a cache will be hidden given the surroundings.
Geocaching has grown into an incredible phenomenon that regularly appears in the news. Sometimes it can even save lives! In this story, two women are saved by geocachers in the desert! And that’s not even close to the amount of news from the past few years!
So, go out and give geocaching a try! You will enjoy it :P
