Family Fun with Geocaching!

Geocaching is a world-wide phenomenon. It is a treasure hunt and a family-fun activity for all ages! All you need is a GPS-device and an account on www.geocaching.com.

You begin by registering on the www.geocaching.com web site. You will need to create a special “geocaching name” for you or your team. For example, there’s the Cuddy Cache Crew, Team LegoTJL, and Noctivagan, the silvered hair bat. You can then look for coordinates and descriptions of geocaches near you. Next, you enter the coordinates of the caches that you want to find into your GPS and off you go to hunt and explore.

People all over the world hide water-proof containers and log the GPS coordinates on www.geocaching.com. The containers range in size from large to micro. The larger containers contain various “swag” such as Happy Meal® toys, key chains, company giveaways and so forth. The rule is that if you take something out, you need to put something back into the container. So you should always bring some items of swag along to leave behind in the caches.

Through geocaching, our family team of all ages is out together, hiking in fresh air and sunshine, learning how to use a GPS and best of all, hunting for buried treasure.

Caches are located all over the world – from parks to parking lots, from drive up, convenient “stop and go” to much more difficult ones that require SCUBA diving.

The locations can vary in terrain and difficulty so caches are rated on a scale of 1 to 5 for each with 5 being the toughest. These ratings help people pick the caches suitable for their abilities.  Terrain 5 generally means that special equipment is required such as climbing gear.  Difficulty describes how hard the item is to solve or find.  For example, you could have an item in the middle of a flat field with a terrain of 1, but it is so well hidden that there is a difficulty of 5.

The caches are also categorized in various ways such as dog-friendly so even the family pet can participate. Other categories include night caches with reflectors, caches that are wheelchair accessible and ones that require you to solve a puzzle first to determine the coordinates.

When we go geocaching with a group, our dear friends The Cuddy Cache Crew taught us the following protocol: The first one to find the cache saunters away and calls out “leprechaun” – meaning the cache has been spotted. Then in turn, as each member of the group spots the cache, he or she saunters away and calls “leprechaun”. This way everyone has a chance to find it before it is pulled out of its hiding spot. The only problem is that this requires a good deal of self-discipline. Many times the first person to spot the cache is just too excited and forgets to be coy before yelling “leprechaun”.

Geocaching.com also offers a mobile app so you can interact with the web site while you are hunting for caches, including asking for hints, logging finds, or reporting a lost cache, also known as a “muggled” cache.

You can also use your SMART Phone’s GPS functionality to find the coordinates. However, a regular GPS available from DeLorme®, Megellin® or Garmin® is more accurate in pin-pointing a cache. If you have children under the age of twelve, I highly recommend the GeoMate Jr®. It is designed for smaller hands, has bigger buttons, and is extremely accurate and very easy to use.

Geocaching.com has everything you need to get started but they also have lots of fun and interesting items for the more advanced cacher. There are collectible medallions called “path tags” and teams can design and mint their own coin to distribute into caches. My personal favorite items are the “Travel Bugs”. Each travel bug has a unique identification code that you can log with geocaching.com and the location where it was first found.  As fellow cachers find the travel bug, they move it to another cache. You can then watch the progress of the travel bug around the world. On a recent trip to Europe we took a travel bug from Frick Park and placed it in a cache in Ireland. It is now somewhere in The Netherlands.

There are also geocaching events where geocachers get together to swap stories, trade collectibles and offer tips and advice. Just last month, Team LegoTJL, sponsored an Easter Cache Hunt and Picnic in North Park and plans to make it an annual event.

I asked Tommy and Andy, the six and ten year old members of the Cuddy Cache Crew, why they like to geocache. The six year old simply said, “Cuz it’s good”. I think that pretty much says it all.

 

I hope any readers out there that are fellow geocachers will add an anecdote or two about their geo-caching adventures or share important fun facts about geocaching on the Northern Connection magazine’s Facebook page