Geocaching: First Blood

Geocaching is a sport that is gaining in popularity; there are currently an amazing 137,000 active caches in 200 countries.

A friend and I decided to hunt for our first set of caches this weekend. Overall, it was great fun, and we learnt quite a bit about how to improve for next time.

The first step was to buy a GPS receiver and a few trinkets to leave in the caches. The next step was to select some caches from the Geocaching web site. You can do this by going to the home page and entering your zip code. We selected five caches in Maryland, and ended up searching for three of them.

The first cache we selected was Matthew's Baltimore Begal. We entered the GPS coordinate into my car's guidance system and drove as close as we could to the cache, then entered the GPS coordinate into the handheld GPS receiver and walked by foot to the vicinity of the cache. The site itself was covered with prickly bushes, and we rummaged around the area until we found the cache, which in this case was a tupperware container containing a log book and several trinkets. It sounds easy, but we couldn't find the cache for quite a while and almost gave up. Fortunately, many of the cache descriptions include a hint that is in a simple code, and the hint helped us persevere until we found it. We signed the book and exchanged one of the trinkets for one of our own. Also, for fun, we took a digital photo of us finding the cache using my friend's camera. It was a great feeling! Lessons learnt: read the hints before walking from the car to the cache, and wear tough, all-weather gear and hiking shoes.

The second cache we selected was Montgomery Village Cache. After arriving there by car, we noticed that the handheld GPS receiver was telling us the cache was still 1/4 mile away. After some thought, we figured that perhaps the car GPS system was using a slightly different coordinate format than the handheld, which I recently confirmed by searching on the web. We ended up walking quite a bit from the car to the cache, which was good exercise but a little chilly. The cache was hidden in a dark place, which was hard to search. Lessons learnt: carry a flashlight at all times, and convert all GPS coordinates into NAD-83 format, which is used by the Mercedes guidance system and is also accepted by the handheld. You can get the converted coordinates automatically via the geocaching web site.

The third cache we selected was It's not easy being Green, and it stumped us, partly because it was hidden in a dense forest, and partly because it was getting dark. The frustrating part was that when I got home, I went to the web site and saw a hint that I hadn't noticed before that would have guided us to success. Lesson learnt: always read all hints.

The next step of course is to create some caches, hide them, and register them on the Geocaching site. Should be great fun!

Comments

[SBG]

The Geocaching experience is indeed a blast. Highly recommended for those whose inner child needs to be freed. :-) Growing up I used to love doing scavenger hunts, and Geocaching is a more sophisticated version of the primitive scavenger hunts. One tip of advice for future Geocachers, "check the weather" before you head out. Definitely wear 'heavy duty' shoes. I was wearing high heeled Manolo Blahnik boots , not the most conducive for hunting down these caches. Nonetheless, the excitement of finding the hidden caches overcame the heel issue. I encourage potential Geocachers to head out, and cache away. :-)