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

[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.