I’ve found myself a new hobby - Geocaching!
A year or so ago, I briefly skimmed over an article about geocaching. It seemed interesting at the time, but I didn’t follow up and eventually forgot about it. A couple weeks ago, there was an article in Kentucky Living about geocaching which again sparked my interest, and this time I jumped on it.

What is geocaching, you ask? In a nutshell, it’s high-tech hide & seek or similar to treasure hunting.

Geocaching is an outdoor sport that involves the use of a Global Positioning System (”GPS”) receiver to find a “geocache” (or “cache”) placed anywhere in the world. A typical cache is a small, waterproof container containing a logbook and “treasure”.

For the traditional geocache, a geocacher will place a waterproof container, containing a log book (with pen or pencil) and treasures, then note the cache coordinates [latitude and longitude]. These coordinates, along with other details of the location are posted online. Other geocachers obtain the coordinates from the Internet and, using handheld GPS receivers, seek out the cache. The finding geocachers record their exploits in a logbook contained therein. Geocachers are free to take objects from the cache, in exchange for leaving something of similar or higher value, so hopefully there’s always treasure for the next person to find.
–Wikipedia

Two of the things I enjoy most are the great outdoors and technology, and this “sport” combines the two. I use the Internet to get the location of a cache, download it to my GPS and then head outdoors to find it. Some caches are easy to find, hidden a few feet off a paved trail or a virtual or drive-by cache (like finding a historical marker). Others can be very difficult to get to, like those up a tree, on cliffs, on mountain peaks, or on the Antarctic continent! Most of the ones that I’ve found so far have been fairly easy in terms of hiking distance and terrain. For many of the caches, though, the challenge comes in finding the container. GPS units are limited in how accurate they can be. With an unobstructed view of the sky, with no clouds, most GPS units are accurate to within three meters. However, once you get under tree cover, where the GPS unit has a harder time “seeing” the satellites, it becomes less accurate. So, while you have the coordinates to the exact location of the cache, you still have to do some searching. And some of these caches are really hidden well! None of them are buried in the ground, but they are camouflaged and covered with sticks, bark, leaves, etc. Another catch is that usually you won’t know what container to look for. It could be a old military ammo box or simply a small tube, a Tide bottle or water bottle. Sometimes the geocache page that contains the coordinates lists the type of container and gives a hint to the location; other times, you’re on your own. Sometimes, the hint just makes it harder to find, as you can be so focused on it that you wander far from where the GPS led you initially.

After several days of research and reading reviews, I decided to get the Garmin GPSMap 60C GPS receiver. It’s a nice unit and I got a really, really good deal on it. You can get a very simple and basic GPS receiver for under $100, but they obviously don’t have all the features as the more expensive ones. Since I like to travel and hike, I wanted to get a GPS that would go beyond just geocaching. This one meets those needs, displaying maps of destinations and roads/trails as well as having a special geocache mode. It’s also got a built in compass, trip computer, calendar and many other features as well as a good battery life and fairly large amount of memory. Even with the way that technology changes, this should last me for several years.

Towards the bottom of my sidebar, you’ll see a Geocaching section. This will display how many caches I’ve found and is updated automatically as I log my finds. As of the writing of this post, I’ve found 9 caches. Clicking the image will take you to my geocaching.com profile page, where you can see which caches I’ve found and my notes on them. Unfortunately, you have to sign up for an account to view my profile, but at least it’s free.

I’ve also got a section in the gallery devoted to pictures of my geocache finds. At every cache I find, I’ll take a picture of me next to the cache and post it, both as proof that I’ve found the cache and to show the variety of caches and hiding places that are out there. Check out the Geocache Gallery.

To find out more about geocaching, check out the following sites:

Wikipedia
Geocaching.com
Geocachers of Kentucky
Geocacher University