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All About Geocaching?
It doesn't come easy wonders: "While surfing the net, I ran across this commentary on Geocaching by Erin Joyce. My wife is keen on trying Geocaching one of these days and I began to wonder if anyone on Slashdot participates in this pastime? If you do, what do you use (equipment-wise) and what's your opinion on the sport?"
I've been geocaching occasionally for almost 2 years now, and it is a blast! I use a Magellan Meridian Gold for my adventures, and even have a (very easy-to-find) cache of my own called Under Fire.
Ceci n'est pas un post.
Nifty little FAQ right here.
Personally, I think it's fun, except when I see a lot of people walking noisily to a location, with a handheld GPS out in the open, etc. The idea is to be circumspect and enjoy the environment or the weird urban places you visit, not how quickly you can cross a cache off your list as a hit. And when you're obvious about it, people who aren't geocachers might go looking for the cache and destroy it or walk off with it. It happens a lot.
My equipment: PocketPC with Bluetooth, NavMan GPS Bluetooth module, iGuidance mapping software for urban/vehicle Geocaching, Maptech Pocket Navigator for foot/bicycle. You want good hiking software; sometimes following coordinates alone can lead you through the bushes, when there was a perfectly good trail coming from the other direction! Depending on your target- boats and folding shovels are optional. Sometimes a calculator is good for finding that next waypoint in some of the more puzzle-style caches; I just keep a copy of DIV calculator on the PDA.
Of course, I'm into the tech- technically, all you need is one of those cheap $50 recievers that gives you your current coordinates, speed and direction. But that's doing it the hard way.
SJW: a person who perceives an injustice, and while correcting it, commits a greater injustice.
I've only done it a few times, but I've enjoyed it quite a bit. It's a decent excuse to get "out" and do something. I've actually learned a lot more about the area I live in so far by going to places I wouldn't think to. It's a good way to find those little 'out of the way' parks and such.
I use a Magellan Meridian Pro. Does a decent job for my purposes.
"Ignorance more frequently begets confidence than does knowledge"
- Charles Darwin
Geocaching is a marriage of technology and the real world.
It's treasure hunting. The idea that there are thousands upon thousands of hidden capsules with little pieces of plastic, burned cds full of pictures, half used disposable cameras hidden in urban and rural settings hints towards a magical realm which is only available to those who are willing to look.
The possiblities and types of caches are endless. It is an excuse to explore your outside world is terrific. It will not appeal to everyone, nor should it, but it is a way of exploring the world that does very little harm.
A closely related sport/pastime is Letterboxing.
Letterboxing is less tech, more puzzle solving.
Both get you out of the house looking for hidden "treasures".
Also see: Armchair Treasure Hunting, where you solve puzzles, usually in a book, to find REAL treasure buried or hidden somewhere.
Examples: Masquerade, David Blaine's Mysterious Stranger, etc.
I'd provide links, but given the topic, you should be able to find your own way with just some clues!
- For the complete works of Shakespeare: cat
My wife and 3.5 year old son go with me every tuesday to Geocache. It is our family night. We just moved and without Geocaching we would not have seen all the parks and trails in the area.
We use a Magellan SportTrak for our adventures.
I work for a defense contractor that makes GPS units for the military but I haven't taken one of the handheld units out for a test drive yet.
I personally was seriously turned off by the terms of service of the commercial "geocache.com"[1] (complete with the traditional "all your copyright are belong to us" provisions and "only premium subscribers can see this cache data" sections, and the proprietary fit (my potentially uninformed interpretation) they seem to have thrown about Their data being plotted for geocachers at Buxley's Maps site, but the sport itself is a huge amount of fun.
Although they don't yet have as many cache sites in their database as the "geocache.com" site, Navicache does have worldwide coverage and a much friendlier attitude (more of a "you are providing the cache data, it belongs to YOU" kind of attitude, and more like a "gift shop" business model than geocache.com's "tollbooth" one).
As far as equipment: A "Garmin Etrex Legend" (eventually to be replaced with something else - the Garmin's okay but I want one that I can more easily 'hack' to make it operate my own maps, etc.) and a laptop running Slackware with GPSDrive - the waypoint database of which is loaded with the entire Navicache.com set plus the USGS GNIS data for reference.
[1]They're not doing anything ILLEGAL or anything. It's just that I almost get the feeling that they feel they "own" the whole sport and the rights to it. They have every right to their "tollbooth-style" business model - it just feels like the wrong attitude to me when the sport is really maintained by the enthusiasts themselves, so I don't use them personally.
Hacker Public Radio is our Friend
There's also some details on finding your cache with your Palm + Plucker over here as well.
I may cook up a little mod_perl app that allows people to upload their .gpx file to convert to Plucker format at some point in the future if there is enough demand for it.
Any requests for something like that?
I personally love to go geocaching. I am not into a lot of outdoors-type activities, such as camping, etc., but I have a blast geocaching! Equipment-wise, I use a Garmin eTrex Vista, Palm Tungsten T3, and (on longer caching days) my Acer Aspire 1362LCi laptop.
In terms of software, I use GSAK (Geocaching Swiss Army Knife, http://gsak.net/) for the majority of data manipulation and transferal, and Garmin MapSource (with Topographical Maps) to do mapping and routing stuff. On my Palm I use CacheMate (http://www.smittyware.com/palm/cachemate/), which provides a cache-oriented interface, not just an html viewer, although some are satisfied with offline version of the cache description pages.
I do subscribe to the premium service at geocaching.com. The main benefit of this is that you can create specific search queries, and have them emailed to you (on a schedule) in GPX format (too lazy to look up acronym, but it is an XML file) that you can then import into GSAK/MapSource. I have also bought licences for GSAK and Cachemate; as much as the Slashdot community is against spending any money at all, I feel that it is the Right Thing to do. The authors provide wonderful programs, with free demos (fully functional indefinitely, IIRC in the case of GSAK). Also, these people are independent software authors trying to make a living, not $EvilCorporation. I think that nowadays, each of the software products runs $20-30, along with the $3/mo or $30/yr premium membership to GC.com.
I would like to note that you do not *have* to pay/buy anything (other than a GPS device) to have fun Geocaching (contrary to some implications by previous posters). As with most hobbies, you can spend as little ($400 for top of the line GPS, subscriptions, and more) as you want/are able to.
Geocaching is a fun activity for people of all age ranges: I know cachers of ages from 3 to their 70s. I know many families enjoy caching as a family activity; in a medium-sized city, there are bound to be caches that even kids can find.
Final words of advice: Get a good Silva-style compass and learn how to use it. In dense woods, your GPS may become useless within 100 feet of the cache (i.e. your accuracy is so low) that it is sometimes best to stop when the GPS says 100-150 feet, take a bearing on the compass, and use that to try to find the cache.
Oh, and, please please please DON'T leave McDonald's toys as trade items at a cache. Everyone hates them, and they are (mostly) worthless.
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Hunting caches takes me to interesting places that I would never have seen otherwise. Pocket parks, public art works, secret waterfalls, funky neighborhoods.
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It's a community. Many of my friends are people I've met through geocaching, often at "event caches." After three decades of working in high-tech, it's nice to hang with people who can converse about something other than Windows vs Linux.
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Once you have a GPS receiver, there are no expenses beyond the occasional tank of gas. Nobody's trying to sell you anything.
I used a $100 starter GPSr for a year, then moved up to a Garmin 60CS with the add-on map software. It's also useful for navigating in the car.Started geocaching with a Garmin GPS V and since upgraded to a Garmin GPSMap 76CS. Unless you're sure you'll like it, it doesn't really matter what GPS you get - they will all get you to a cache. GPS with mapping and auto routing can provide directions to the cache location like you'd get with Hertz Neverlost, but once you're out of the car, all GPS units will point you in the same direction. Depending on where you live, there are different types of caches. By me in Northern NJ you have some drive up micro caches with lots in local parks. But my favorite are the ones in County and State parks like Ramapo, Harriman and Bear Mountain among others where you can park and hike for 10-15 miles and log a few (to a dozen) caches. Geocaching has made me a huge fan of hiking.
Geocaching is lots of fun, and caches are everywhere! There's even a few on mt. kilomanjaro. :)
I just use my eyes and a fairly cheap (less than $400 CAD) handheld GPS. The sport is designed to be easy and not requiring a lot of equipment, yet still be entertaining..so what more help do you need? Go out there and do it
Death by snoo-snoo!
Well, I've only geocached a few times (I borrowed a friend's GPS, then lost access to it when I moved), but I have to say it's a blast. All you really need is a GPS and some comfortable hiking clothes, but it helps to a wireless internet connection device of some sort with you if you want to do more than one on a trip. Although printing my destinations out before a trip worked for me.
"Times have not become more violent. They have just become more televised."
-Marilyn Manson
I found plucker to be nearly useless for geocaching.. at best, it was way too much trouble to be worth it.
I found Geotoad and Cachemate are a much saner way to go.
Cachemate isn't free (or Free), but if you're dropping a couple hundred (at a minimum) for a GPS+PDA, the extra $10 is definitely worth it.
GPS equipment:
I've used a Garmin GPS 45 (OOOOLD!!!), Garmin eMap (very nice unit - too bad it's discontinued), and Lowrance iFinder (Looks great on paper - SD expansion, "hot" receiver, numerous other nifty features, but TBH it sucks. Their MapCreate software for uploading map data to the unit SUCKS. It can't even do turn-by-turn routing on your PC, at least Garmin MapSource can do routing on the PC and then upload a route that won't clutter the unit with lots of trash waypoints, even if the unit itself can't do onboard TBT routing.)
For a good hiking unit I'd stick with Garmin or Magellan. Garmin is the most evil with regards to proprietary add-ons, but honestly after my experiences with the Lowrance I'd stay with them anyway. The Garmin units are very polished and work very well. (Note: Magellans could be excellent too, I want to try one one of these days. Just do NOT buy Lowrance!)
Other equipment:
Kyocera 6035 PalmOS PDA-phone, replaced last March with a Treo 600. I use GPX Spinner to convert emailed GPX files to HTML, and then plucker-build to convert these to Plucker format. (Yes, I have a geocaching.com subscription - it's worth the money.) Spinner is Windows-only but works fine for me with WINE.
Dell Inspiron 8200 laptop with DeLorme Topo USA. TUSA is GREAT. I can see all nearby geocaches for miles around. Usually the way things work is that on family vacations, we pick a hiking trail for the day. As time permits, I use the laptop to view caches near our route to the trailhead (and also near/on the trail itself) and the Kyo or Treo to look up cache descriptions. The laptop stays in the car, of course.
retrorocket.o not found, launch anyway?
Not just the "geocache.com" listings either, in case it isn't obvious to anyone - "burying" a cache (partially or otherwise - basically anything that requires cutting into the ground) seems to be universally considered, at the very least, "bad etiquette" (and is quite probably illegal on a lot of public land). Cache placement should disturb the area as little as possible.
("Remember, you should not have to needlessly bush-whack into an area to place your cache, and others should not have to bush-whack to find it and burying a cache on public managed lands is forbidden and against geocaching etiquette (not to mention plain old common sense!)."
Hacker Public Radio is our Friend
When i was about 15 i stumbled apun one of these geocaching boxes when i was in my local woods with a friend.
It completly shocked us at first it was an ammobox with geocacache written on the side under a dead tree. We didnt know what to knink of it at first. I thought it was somthing to do with the GPS system so at first we were reluctant to open it. However after much debate we opened it and its like a treasurechest. People leave some really cool stuff in ther from time to time. As so we didnt ruin the game we signed the book explaining how we came about the box and swaped some stuff that was availible. From what i remember there were some small orniments, old train tickets, a bottle of liqor, some stickers, a copy of suse linux and some other goodies. It seemed like a really fun thing to do so i read the letter explaining what geocaching was all about and i was facinated. Since that day about 5 years ago i have wanted to get a GPS reciever but i havent been able to afford one as yet. I had actually forgotten about it since then and after seeing this article had reminded me what it was. Now that i have some money saved and a lot of student time on my hands i may get a GPS reciever to play along.
In summery Geocaching looks as if it could be great fun for either an individual, group of friends or even a family and it is also a great excuse to get some excercise and fresh air.
I live near Minneapolis MN, and last fall I drove up to Duluth MN to do some geocaching out of town. It was really just an excuse to go on a short road trip, but finding the caches was a fun time, and it took me to some parks and scenic views I probably would not have been to otherwise.
I have been geocaching with my husband and son now for over 4 years. I love it ! It is a puzzle, it can be very physically challenging, it is a great family pastime. We use a GPS - Garmin Etrex, our laptop and add in a Delorme mapping program. Finding the cache is heartwarming to do. We have seen all sorts of "trinkets" go all over the world. When we find it, we take a trinket and replace one with ours. It is interesting to see what all is out there!
Find a site, find a clue, and go hunt!
PS I always think it is neat to write the date, name and city/state you are in on the trinket if you can. that way, X amount of years when that trinket goes around the world or from cache to cache, if you happen to get it back again or if someone else does that knows you, it is so neat to see!!
What self respecting gizmo-nerd WOULDN'T be in to geocaching??? I run a Garmin Geko and a Navman PiN for my cahcing goodness It's kind of an obsession.. be prepared to have large chunks of your spare time taken up with chasing tupperware....
Burma?
geocacher 1: OMG!! i found something at this EXACT location!! WOW!
geocacher 2: ALRIGHT!! now let's go to 47274.12N, 534.363E and we'll find something else "hidden"!!!
--- widget evolution: enhanced, plus, super, ultra, extreme, exxxtreme, ultra-extreme,
You may be surprised, but I have found most of my recent geocaches without any GPS whatsoever. Just put the coords into Google Earth, and usually you can pick out something unique about it from the sky. It's a different approach, and keeps you from looking down during the hunt.
----- I hate sigs.
It's like I decided to call the act of watching television 'dressing myself'.
Geocaching is transparently caching an origin server so that the content is being served from somewhere close to the person seeking it. It's what Akamai do for Microsoft and Yahoo and Apple etc. with their Linux boxes.
Geocaching is not wandering around with a GPS.
Pick another word.
Why would you tell me to pick another word?
The name's been used for this since 2000. Even the whois for the domain name reports it was registered July 3rd of that year.
Put "akamai geocaching" into Google. There's nothing about geographically-based content delivery, there, at least not on the front page. Put "geocaching" into the search engine at akamai.com: nothing there, either. And to answer your follow-up post, try "bind geocaching" and "squid geocaching," also. Guess what Webster's says?
If I sound slightly annoyed, it's because I expected someone to do a little more thinking and research before telling me that hundreds of thousands of people are misusing the term. You're a little early for Troll Tuesday.
I use the same handle on the Geocaching site I use here. I have a cache hidden that has been in place since July 2001. Most caches don't last that long.
I started with a Magellan GPS315. It doesn't have a base street map, so it's the one I now use with my laptop and TOPO maps. For laptop free use, I use the Magellan MAP330. It has the advantage of taking advantage of the WAAS signal that the 315 didn't. I like the sport because it gets you to some very interesting spots that you would never find on your own. It's like fishing and discovering all the great little known fishing holes.
I was in Hawaii and the geocaching site had the best listing of fantastic hiking trails complete with photos. It was up to date and better than the typical tourist books. Virtual caches are some of the best ones to find.
The truth shall set you free!
I didn't hear about it until a year ago when a lady came to our garage sale looking for stuff to buy, hide, and add to the site. She bought a bunch of stuff and said she had been doing it for a very long time, sounded like something she really loved to do.
Mike http://www.kanutervalve.com/
Hey, that reminds me (although I didnt care to look up the Letterboxing URL) of something we used to do as kids, we called it a "treasure hunt".
:)
Make 10 to 20 slips of paper, and arrange them in sequence such that the second points to the place where the third is hidden, the third points to the fourth, and so on, The first clue is given by hand. The last is usually some kind of novelty item that's the "treasure"! Or maybe even a voucher, or an invitation for dinner (get the idea).
Spend the morning planning and planting the slips, and have a ball in the evening!!
In 2003 I got into geocaching bigtime. I was nearly at 100 by the end of last summer. Using a Garmin Legend, I became a fanatic. I went to the Indiana Geocachers picnics and had a blast. I think it is a very fun hobby, great for families and singles/couples alike. It truly gets you places you never would have thought to go.
My one problem lately is the number of caches around. In my city, Bloomington, Indiana, the cache numbers within about 6-7 miles went from maybe 50-60 a year ago to over 120. That is just insane. There is a rails-to-trails project here and there are over 15 along a 3-4 mile series of trails.
I think the point of caching, like several have indicated here, is to go out to neat areas, find a couple caches, and witness some place you have never been. But with the popularity growing, it seems that more people are just about the numbers. This causes more demand, and makes cache-hiders put more out, inundating a region.
This phenomenon is perhaps great for kids and families - "Hey mom, I just found my 537th in 3 weeks!" But I think it ruins the sport if it gets to crazy and too frequent of caches.
I have not done much caching this summer due to this growth. And actually, one thing I find truly fun is Benchmarking. The National Geodetic Survey has benchmarks (usually metallic disks) all throughout the country for surveying purposes. And the Geocaching.som site has links to all recorded objects. It is an alternative hobby to go find them, log your find/no-find on geocaching.com, and if you want, report it to NGS.
This hobby seems much more fulfilling to me, and you can be assured that the number of these things will not grow exponentially like rabbits.
Anyways, just my two cents. I think it is a fun activity none-the-less, so have at it!
Z
PS: Other equipment to consider: bug spray, whistle (especially if alone), walkie-talkies for spreading out with your friend/fam, flashlight for cave/rock caches, pocket knife, calamine lotion, and I always wear pants, even if it is hot, to avoid bugs/plants.
2+2=5 for extremely large values of 2
I've been Geocaching for just over a year. I started out with a Garmin eTrex Legend (cheap $125, durable and simple) and just recently upgraded to a Garmin GPS Map 60CS. I absolutely love this thing!! For suggestions on what to buy to fit your needs and what to avoid I would suggest looking at the Groundspeak forums. http://forums.groundspeak.com/ Hope this helps.
Regards, Mike
I wish I had mod points this week!
Does anybody know any similar sources of information for the UK?
I once managed to download a list of speed camera lat/long co-ords, but street map data would be amazing.
http://blog.grcm.net/
this might sound odd... you could use this idea w/ trade..
...that a company which offers a free service - completely free to both retrieve and list caches - has a TOS that prevents you from using their data outside of your personal and non-distributed use and plasters their name all over the place?
It's free. The only features you get if you pay are convenience features, like the ability to generate cache lists to move into mobile devices and GPSr's. The most restrictive parts of their TOS refer to two parts - the site engine/layout/content itself with the exception of the third-party submissions, and the method of access (no spidering).
Seriously, if that's such a draconian TOS for you, you probably need to cancel your Yahoo!, GMail, LiveJournal, MSN, and internet accounts, and any of thos other "free" services that use your web habits as trade.
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