Geocaching

[SnorkelLA]

I feel kind of out of the loop here. Can someone explain what geocaching is? From what I gather do people lay these caches underwater, in the ground, and then give others the coordinates to find it? Sounds fun, especially doing it underwater!

 

[dfx]

I feel kind of out of the loop here. Can someone explain what geocaching is? From what I gather do people lay these caches underwater, in the ground, and then give others the coordinates to find it? Sounds fun, especially doing it underwater!

The basics are this: You take an outdoor-proof container, put some sort of log book/sheet in, and optionally some other "treasure". You then hide that container somewhere and take the GPS coordinates of that location. Then you post those coordinates online. Voila, you got yourself a geocache! Other people can then use those coordinates to try and find the treasure.

And those geocaches can be hidden anywhere, in the woods, in the city, and yes also underwater! We've recently placed our first scuba geocache: GC3616V Welland Scuba Park (Traditional Cache) in Ontario, Canada created by dfx + t4e + Mike P.

 

[TravelingGeek]

Howdy,

Just joined the board and am brand new to diving (10 open water dives) and my first search was "geocaching", so I guess I qualify

Its a great sport and I'm really looking forward to combining it with diving.... actually, that is why I joined to do research on what kind of writing devices (if any) survive well underwater for long periods of time (many months/years).

Of course, you should always BYOP (bring your own pencil) when caching, but I still forget on occasion or leave it at the last cache... I would hate for someone to get to a dive cache I put out and not have anything to sign the log with.

-TravelingGeek

 

[boulderjohn]

I used to be an enthusiastic and active geocacher, but we had some glitches. Where we live there is a huge amount of open space land that is technically a part of the park system. It was an ideal geocaching environment. Then the Park rangers decided that having people actually use these areas for recreation was contrary to their ideal of no human activity there. They then took it upon themselves to remove every blessed one of the them, returning them to their original owners when possible. That created quite a furor. It also meant we had no truly local sites to find.

At just about the same time, some physical injuries curtailed all our hiking for a year or so. And out beloved canine hiking companion grew ill and slowly died.

So when the city council finally ripped the parks department a well deserved new one and put the official blessing on geocaching in the park system, we had lost the habit. We still get the email newsletter, but we haven't done it in years. Who knows? Maybe we will start it all again.

 

[TravelingGeek]

Bummer it took the parks department so long to come around. I hope you get out there again... but there are a whole lot more in the fore country then ever before as well... some done well and others not so much. Happy caching!

 

[sibermike7]

Love Geocaching (Geocache and Scubaboard names are the same)! Our kids love it when we travel. When my wife and I went to Ireland on our 25th anniversary, Geocaching made the trip. There were so many places that we would not have known about without Geocaching. We found all of those little "holes in the wall."
Now, combining it with SCUBA?? Hmm, sounds great, but I am a little confused since my Garmin can't get a signal at 100 feet!

 

[BLoaf]

I'm going to Geocache your world!

 

[TXreefer]

I'm a cacher, still somewhat a noob, but I hunt. Coolest thing I did was visit a cache in remote Northern Scotland, signed and left a US $1 Bill, and took a geocoin that wanted to travel the world. I dropped it off at an active state park here in TX. I need to go hunt somemore, but my wife went on a virtual cache and when she found out there wasn't anything to "really" find, she lost interest. I go with a friend when we meet up to camp. It's a better winter time sport in Texas- it was 106* yesterday!

 

[ScubaSteve]

I have gone out Geo-caching a couple of times and enjoyed myself. Now I am waiting for my son to grow up a bit so he and I can go out and do it.

 

[dfx]

I need to go hunt somemore, but my wife went on a virtual cache and when she found out there wasn't anything to "really" find, she lost interest.

Virtuals are few and far between. They're a dying breed since you can't make any new ones (at least on gc.com). "Earthcaches" are another type of virtual with no real cache to find. Just ignore those and hunt for "real" caches instead, it's easy to do.