Geocaching!

[cjsmith]

Public Service Announcement:

If you haven't been geocaching before, and you get a chance to go with cyan_blue, take it. Thank you, end of announcement. Journal entry follows.

I went geocaching yesterday! cyan_blue had prepared beforehand by selecting a list of caches we could do together. She chose a variety of cache types, ranging in size from a film canister to a Nalgene bottle and ranging in difficulty from "we found it instantly" to "we almost gave up". All of the caches she chose were within a very short distance from parking, although there are many that are tougher to reach, too, for the able-bodied hiker types. One cache she included was an easy flavor of a puzzle cache, and one cache contained a travel bug. I'm sure this level of thoughtfulness ahead of time contributed greatly to my enjoyment of the day.

All told, we found eight caches, consumed lots of drinks, dropped off a digital fish, took custody of a travel bug, and ate at Sneha twice. One wonderful side benefit was seeing interesting little bits of Sunnyvale I had never seen before. (There's an arboretum and rose garden WHERE? And a sports complex in the middle of WHAT?)

Geocaching also turned out to be a good way for me to get outdoors a little without overdoing it. The walking can be short and is punctuated by breaks: sit down with the cache contents and sign the log, enter GPS coordinates, drive.

I had a bunch of little trinkets collected together to make a cache of my own. cyan_blue gave me some important things I needed: a) a little information sheet to staple to the cache log, to explain it to the uninitiated who may find it accidentally; b) a pencil to add; c) good advice on where it should or should not be hidden. Unfortunately, I didn't check out my location idea ahead of time, so when we got there we quickly realized there was not enough cover at all. I will think of another place. If I think of one quickly enough, it would be nifty to put the travel bug in that cache.

I could get hooked on this *really* quickly. :) I could imagine getting even more hooked if I ever get to hike again. :) :)

Comments

[cyan-blue.livejournal.com]

I really enjoyed reading this - it was soooo sweet! :-) Thank you!

I enjoyed 'caching lots with you too - you're a natural at it, and I'll look forward to going 'caching with you again soon.

[cjsmith.livejournal.com]

You're welcome, and thank you again! That was great fun. I confess I have already looked at REI's GPS units to see what I might eventually want. :)

[cyan-blue.livejournal.com]

Before you buy, check out the special deals that amazon.com sometimes has on GPS's. I got my e-trex at $100 below retail that way. (If you are looking for inexpensive used ones, Craigslist often has some of those too).

[cjsmith.livejournal.com]

Hadn't thought of amazon - thanks. I'll definitely play my "frugal" card when purchasing, but I think I'll take some time first just figuring out what would be good to own. I tend to get picky about UI, for example.

[buzzy-mcbuzzer.livejournal.com]

Digital Fishy?

Does that taste as good as the regular kind? :E

[jackiecat.livejournal.com]

They're all crunchy and they hurt my mouth. I like the regular kind much better.

[platypus]

The cool thing about geocaching is that (in most sub/urban areas, at least) there is a great variety of caches, and you can pick ones that are appropriate for however much hiking you do or don't want to do. Sometimes we fill a day with quick drive-bys and never walk more than a few hundred feet at a time; others, we do massive multi-caches and hike for miles, or find a long trail with lots of caches along the way. There will always be caches in our area that are beyond our capabilities, but there are plenty within our reach as well.

[cjsmith.livejournal.com]

Exactly. I like the way the geocaching site separates the ideas of "difficult due to terrain" and "difficult due to clever hiding". I can tell I'm going to enjoy finding the very-well-hidden ones.

[cyan-blue.livejournal.com]

Yes - I think you'll have fun with the clever puzzle caches, too :-)

BTW, there are some geocaching LJ communities that might be of interest to you:

geocaching
geocaching_sf
first_caches

[cjsmith.livejournal.com]

Thanks! I'm sure I'll have questions for first_caches.

[cjsmith.livejournal.com]

Speaking of puzzles, would you enjoy doing "Do not fold, spindle, or mutilate" next time we're out in this area? I've done the puzzle portion and would be happy either to give you the coordinates or to compare notes after you do the puzzle too.

[cyan-blue.livejournal.com]

Giggle - I knew you'd enjoy the clever local puzzles lots!

I looked at it, and can't figure out where to start - perhaps I need to know something about punchcard language? I bet ri_whittlesey, who uses old punchcards as note paper, could tell me what the decoding heuristic is. Or I could look it up on LJ.

Let's see if I do it by the next time we go 'caching together... if not, I'll just accompany you there.

[cyan-blue.livejournal.com]

Ok, ri_whittlesey was indeed of help, and pointed me to EBCDIC keypunch code. Here's what I got:

N 37'24.826
W 122'04.661

Sound right?

[cjsmith.livejournal.com]

Yep, that's what I got too. Sadly, I started out with a web page that gave me every key punch code ever used, and I had to narrow it down from there -- quite a job! :)

[apparentparadox]

Mark's been geocaching for years. If I go along, it's only to see the interesting spot, as I'm not very interested in actually finding the little container.

There are "virtual caches" in places where you couldn't hide a container (or it's against the rules to put a "real" cache). This is great in big cities -- find some statue you never would have found & get some info from the base, for example.

There are also nifty computer-based tools to help with the whole process. He's got one that lets you basically define a route (like when we drive up to Ashland), and then it will report on the caches that are within X miles of the route.

[cjsmith.livejournal.com]

Hi Tim!

I think I'm almost the exact target audience: I like seeing the interesting spot, I like looking for things, and I like solving little puzzles. I even like little trinkets.

The tool to find caches close to a route sounds very nifty. When I got home last night, Rob had me display all the caches close to his favorite airports. Now I wonder if pilots tend to be folks who would enjoy geocaching.

[apparentparadox]

Well, pilots are a bit more familiar with GPS units than the general public.

I'm pretty sure that Mark has thrown his bike in the Tiger & flown off to someplace to find a cache. I'm not sure the bike idea would work for you, though! (Have you thought about a hand-powered bike?)

[cjsmith.livejournal.com]

I can just imagine Mark doing that, too. :-)

I keep thinking I'm going to get better someday -- maybe I should clue in, huh?

[cyan-blue.livejournal.com]

Ooh, what tool is that?

Disclaimer

[apparentparadox]

I am not a geocacher. I just happen to live with one.

Mark's out of town right now, but I'll ask him. I know that he mentions something like "swiss army knife", but I'm not sure if that's the tool or just one piece of his arsenal. In addition to the one that deals with caches along routes, he's got some tool that will convert from various formats (so that he can plot things on his Delorme street atlas or download to his GPS), and also one that I think he wrote himself that will plot the cache locations on a page from LostOutdoors.com

Re: Disclaimer

[cyan-blue.livejournal.com]

Thanks!

geocaching tools

[(Anonymous)]

Mark here... Tim did a pretty good job of describing some of the tools I've accumulated to use with geocaching. The most powerful one is GSAK (Geocaching Swiss Army Knife) at gsak.net. This does all sorts of great munging and filtering (including the route filters Tim mentioned), and is WELL worth the $20 shareware fee.

If you have a palm device (and who doesn't?) then the next tool you should look at is cachemate (www.smittyware.com/palm/cachemate/) -- this is also worth the very small shareware fee. This app allows you to load lists of caches from the pocket queries created on geocaching.com (you are a member there, right?), allowing paperless caching. You can enter log info for a find to use when you log it online. There are also ways to automate this.
And GSAK knows how to create cachemate databases.

Included with GSAK is a tool called gpsbabel, which allows translation between multiple file formats. I use Delorme Street Atlas on the PC, and GSAK allows me to display the waypoints on the map in this format. Very useful to visualize all the caches in an area (or along a route).

The topo map interface on LostOutdoors.com is very nice. You can take coordinates of the cache and display on a top, and switch to satellite image at the same scale.

Jeff Boulter has developed some useful tools which are available at boulter.com/geocaching/ (see the tools section).

I guess that should keep you going for a little while... :-) Have fun!

--Mark

Re: geocaching tools

[cyan-blue.livejournal.com]

WOW! thank you SO much! I appreciate all this info.

[yoak.livejournal.com]

Geocaching is tons of fun. I've done things from hiking many miles through beautiful countryside to just barely away from parking.

One of my favorite close-by-parking ones is the Zzyzx Road cache. From the name, probably everyone reading this who lives in southern California will know almost exactly where it is located. :-)

One of the ideas that I've found interesting but haven't yet had the chance to explore is underwater caches. I was an avid scuba diver when I lived in Florida and Bermuda, but have mostly given it up since moving to California. (The water is just too durned cold for it to be fun.) but I can easily imagine that the extra challenge of only being able to take readings at the surface might add to the fun.

[cjsmith.livejournal.com]

I'm not a diver myself, but I can imagine that such a thing would be very fun for those who are! :) cyan_blue's partner emmett_the_sane enjoys caches on islands, she said, so there is sometimes canoeing or swimming involved.

[quasigeostrophy.livejournal.com]

*adds to already-too-long-list of things to do with CJ* ;-)

[mactavish.livejournal.com]

Yay! cyan_blue is rather convincing indeed.

[cyan-blue.livejournal.com]

*does happy dance*

[portia.livejournal.com]

Geocaching is a blast and it's a great way to get out for a hike or a quick little jaunt to see interesting places, which you obviously discovered. :o) I look forward to more of your geocaching adventures.

[cjsmith.livejournal.com]

Is that usericon a picture of you at a cache? I keep hearing about more and more people I know who do this! Guess I was always the slow one to pick up on things, eh? :)

[portia.livejournal.com]

Yes, that is a picture of me (and Amos the loser beagle) finding a cache next to an old gravestone. The cache was actually hidden inside a plastic "rock." You can see better picture of it here (http://www.livejournal.com/users/portia/482505.html) during a geocaching adventure we had last year.

[jupiter29.livejournal.com]

I've read so much about geocaching that I've wanted to try it for awhile now. The one thing holding me back was that I wasn't sure I would enjoy all the hiking and stuff that people seemed to do. Oh, I'd try it, but I didn't want to invest in the GPS and find out I didn't like it.

So the thought that there are cache's nearby to parking is quite appealing. And now I want to try it even more!

[cjsmith.livejournal.com]

I bumped into another geocacher this morning. The little caches are everywhere!

I'm going to borrow a GPS for a little while. Maybe you could find one to borrow, and thus try it out without much capital outlay.

[jupiter29.livejournal.com]

Yeah, I thought about that. Offhand, I don't know anybody that has one, but I suppose I could ask around. At Christmas, I almost brought one for a couple I know, but that was mostly to set up the chance that I could borrow it. ;)

I look forward to hearing about your adventures!

[cyan-blue.livejournal.com]

You needn't hike if you don't want to... some caches are pretty close to parking.

[jupiter29.livejournal.com]

That's pretty cool. I'm definitely thinking about looking more into this. :)