Carl's Blog

I just discovered geocaching this past week and just spent 3 hours driving and walking around where I live to discover some these awesome caches.

Above are some pictures of me with some of the caches I found.  Notice some can be very small.
Think real life meets exploration in any MMO except by the end of your hunt you are very tired and have almost walked 5+ miles.  I so wish I knew about this 3 years ago when I really started traveling.  Guess I will just have to retrace all my steps over the last 3 years… 🙂

Oh, you are asking your self what is geocaching? Sorry, I got excited and if you don’t play MMOs I’m not even speaking your language… Geocaching is when someone hides a container with a sheet of paper or a log book so that when it is discovered by others they can write their name and date.  Some of these containers are large enough for people to place items inside and retrieve items.  There are even special coins and tags that are designed to be taken by the finder and placed into one of the next caches they find so the original owner can track the items journey.  This is all accomplished through the website Geocaching

So how do you get started…

Well you need to get a GPS device, either a stand alone or your cell phone with a geocaching app downloaded or directly copy the GPS coordinates from the website and then head out for your adventure.  The GPS coordinates are just to get you to the destination, say within 20 feet.  It is now your job to look around and try to find the hiding place.  Seeing as this was my first time, I made use of all the logged information on the website about each of the caches.  Most people try to be careful and not reveal the exact location or even what the object looks like.  People tracking down the caches can upload pictures and make comments on the geocache apps that you can choose to open or ignore depending on the level of difficulty you want on your quest.

I’m looking forward to the next time I can go questing.  It might even be tomorrow. 🙂