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Is geocaching still a thing? A lot of people were doing it a few years ago but I don't hear much about it anymore. I've been thinking it might be a good activity giving me something to do outdoors during this pandemic winter.

Do any of you do it?

I've never done it but I saw a segment of it on Michigan Out Of Doors. I'm not sure if it looked fun or was kind of like searching for your car keys?

I have been geocaching since 2002. I still enjoy getting out and finding caches. I also maintain one myself that is still visited several times a year. It does seem to me that activity is lower than it was a few years ago. It is a good reason to get outside and go for a walk. Please remember to mark your parking spot on your GPS before going off after the cache. When caches are back in the woods a bit, and you are paying more attention to what your GPS is telling you it is pretty easy to get turned around. Finding caches in a city setting may not need this warning, but around me there are a few that are a mile or better walk from your parking spot. Have fun.

Old Engineer wrote: ↑

Sun Nov 29, 2020 6:29 am

I have been geocaching since 2002. I still enjoy getting out and finding caches. I also maintain one myself that is still visited several times a year. It does seem to me that activity is lower than it was a few years ago. It is a good reason to get outside and go for a walk. Please remember to mark your parking spot on your GPS before going off after the cache. When caches are back in the woods a bit, and you are paying more attention to what your GPS is telling you it is pretty easy to get turned around. Finding caches in a city setting may not need this warning, but around me there are a few that are a mile or better walk from your parking spot. Have fun.

So am I being naive in thinking I can do it on foot, from home, in an urban setting?

Trudging through Knee deep snow in the back country isn't my idea of a fun day out.

No, not at all. There are all kinds of caches in all kinds of areas. There are many that you can almost drive right up to. If you go to www.geocaching.com you will be able to search for caches near any location you chose to use. I would look first for what is close to your home. You will see that there are different size caches also. Some are into small or micro caches that can be placed most anywhere. I prefer not to look for the tiny ones and tend more to looking for the "regular" sized ones. This size is often in a medium Tupperware container or the old standby a .30 or .50 caliber ammo can. Caches will almost always be on public land so access is not an issue. I have seen a few where it was listed that they were on private land but with the landowners permission.

Almost all caches will contain a logbook for you to sign when you find it and most will contain some items that you can trade for. See something you want, take it and replace it with something else. Usually there will be nothing of any real value in a cache.

Really the only thing you need to get started is a way to read GPS coordinates and give you a bearing and distance to the coordinates of the cache. I am still using a Garmin GPS12 that is well over 20 years old.

Find a few potential caches near you on the website and post back and let me know when you have found your first one.

Does this log book have to be some kind of official log book, or can it be something as simple as a Dollar Store notebook?



http://london.marknmel.com/albums/misc/ ... .sized.jpg

To the best of my knowledge there is no "official" log book for geocaching. Most every one I have ever seen is just a standard notebook or something it. I have found a couple of "micro" sized caches, that were in a 35mm film canister and the log was simply a rolled up piece of paper. The logbook I was talking about belongs to the cache and stays there. It is there for finders to log that they were there. When I find a cache I enjoy looking back at the log to see who was here before me and the comments that they have left. One of the last caches I found (last month), the logbook was completely filled, and I had to sign it on the back cover. Lots of visits to that cache over the years it has been there. This one was also and easy walk to it, probably less than 200 ft. from a paved parking lot. Try it and have fun.

Garmin's entry level Etrex 10. Would it be suitable for geocaching?

https://www.gpscentral.ca/products/garmin/etrex10.html

I am not going to make any specific recommendations. There are only a couple of features that are really needed. The biggest one is to be able to put in a set of coordinates (geocaching.com uses degrees, minutes and decimal minutes. dd:mm.mmmm). The only other feature that is really handy is the ability to mark your current location to memory. This is handy for marking where you parked the car. I cannot imagine any even entry level gps unit that didnt have these features, other than one designed specifically for driving directions.

If you have a smartphone, you might want to do some research. I think there are apps that allow using just a smartphone for geocaching. I am not sure of this as I don't have a personal smartphone and have never looked into this option.

Old Engineer wrote: ↑

Wed Dec 02, 2020 9:43 pm

I am not going to make any specific recommendations. There are only a couple of features that are really needed. The biggest one is to be able to put in a set of coordinates (geocaching.com uses degrees, minutes and decimal minutes. dd:mm.mmmm). The only other feature that is really handy is the ability to mark your current location to memory. This is handy for marking where you parked the car. I cannot imagine any even entry level gps unit that didnt have these features, other than one designed specifically for driving directions.

If you have a smartphone, you might want to do some research. I think there are apps that allow using just a smartphone for geocaching. I am not sure of this as I don't have a personal smartphone and have never looked into this option.

My phone is on the kitchen wall. Not sure how smart it is.

My idea of geocaching is hunting for radio station towers. I get the coordinates from https://fccinfo.com/ and the format is in degrees, minutes (no decimal), and seconds. I have used various models of Garmins and they all are/were switchable between both formats mentioned.

If you want to keep low-budget, check out thrift stores. Almost all of my GPS's came from there. I have never bought a bad one, but a few had a battery that was shot and still worked using a power cord.

So, do any of you hide caches, or do you only search for them?

Guess I'll have to wait a while to take up the hobby. Went Christmas shopping for my wife today. Spent all the money I had set aside.. Maybe by next spring.

Somewhat related, on some forums where photo upload direct to the site is possible, and where pull CDN is not used through a service like cloudflare, I like to download photos and read the metadata. You can pinpoint a person's exact location when they took a photo when you do that.

Here is a tip: If you get someone to take a picture of an object around their house for you or even of themselves, and DM you with it, often, the metadata will be readable, even if the site uses pull CDN because the way that DMs and public messages are set up is different.

But if they are linking an image from services like imgur then it obviously will not work.