My bf and I have been talking about giving geocaching a try for a long time now, but as is typical of us, we just never got around to it. This is partly because geocaching requires a GPS unit and as we rarely drive anywhere (we have lovely commutes!) an investment in a GPS unit seemed a little frivolous.
With the recent purchase of our (arguably unnecessary? :)) new phones however, we finally gained access to a GPS system and thought we'd give it a go. We were really surprised to find that the Nexus One has a really accurate system and that made our first adventure a lot of fun. Here are some pics of the first two caches we found - also taken with the Nexus One camera. (I have to say, after waiting ten years to buy a new phone... I think I'm going to love this!)
Geocachers typically take a lot of photos. The friends and family I've got that also geocache love to do so with a little buddy in tow. We thought it appropriate to bring along Scooby Doo...since his forte is solving mysteries! Here's Scooby with our first cache and the logbook. A great find (and just challenging enough for first timers.)
The second cache was pretty tricky. For one thing, it's outside of a subway (so I'm pretty sure we weirded out a lot of bystanders.) For another thing, there's a corridor of hydro electric lines pretty close by that obscures GPS readings. The person who placed this cache had to take several readings and average out the coordinates. Nexus One pulled through though! It was "off" by less than a metre!
As you can see, this one was nicely camouflaged! :)
For more info, check out the following:
Geocaching (wiki)
Geocaching.com (official)
My boyfriend and I have been wanting to try this too. How did you get it set up. Looks like alot of fun. Did you do it on foot?
ReplyDeleteTELL ME MORE :)
We started off with some pretty easy caches outside of our condo. Basically, you'll need to do the following:
ReplyDelete1) Create an account at geocaching.com (My bf and I each have one, but it isn't totally necessary for you to both have one since you'll probably be going together. My bf actually went to a cache without me the next day... and got an earful for it... LOL).
2) Ensure you have a GPS unit. I'm going to go out on a limb and assume that a turn by turn car based model isn't likely going to do the trick, so make sure you get one that is designed for greater degrees of accuracy. We had success with the GPS in our Nexus One phones. Other people have had luck with the iPhone GPS and GPS on their Blackberries, so if you have any of those, give them a try. Otherwise, you can probably invest in a GPS unit for about $150-$160. There are recs on the geocaching site. :)
So... The next thing to do would be to find some sites you'd like to go to. We used geocaching.com to input our postal code and find lists of caches in our area. Alternatively, we downloaded an app for the phone, c:geo, which lets you sign into the site directly. (I think that's just for Android phones but there might be something similar if you have an iPhone.)
If you don't have a phone that will do that, you can simply use the geocaching site to catalogue a list of caches you'd like to visit. You can either download the LOC or GPC files and use a GPS device that supports it to read the data. Alternatively, you can simply grab the coordinates from the geocaching site and input them into a GPS unit manually. Any/all of the above will work. :)
The geocaching.com site is pretty good at explaining the "rules" of the game, including respecting the site, respecting the cache and what to do when you find certain objects like geocoins or travel bugs. So my first recommendation is just to start there. I'll be happy to answer any questions as you go. Try to find caches that rank low on the difficulty scale. The ones we snagged were really low, but we found the general location of one in/near a mall in the city. It's ranked a 4.5/5 in terms of difficulty and we didn't bother looking for it with the thousands of people around. :)
(One thing.. you're supposed to be "stealthy" when caching so non-cachers don't see you. There's a bit of controversy over caching, so no going onto private property or looking suspicious when you treasure hunt!) :P