If you have never heard of Geocaching and you need a bit of adventure in your life, you might want to try this sport. It is very easy and really quite fun and exciting. You can do this with a group of friends or as a family outing. Geocaching is sort of modern day treasure hunting or a GPS Treasure hunt.
To begin in Geocaching, you need to be connected or a member of a Geocaching site online. You will need to sign up for a free membership at least to be able to access the membership in order to get the location of a Geocache near you. This type of site is aimed at people posting where they have planted their “treasures” for you to find. Now just to clarify, most Geocaches are not really treasures and they may only contain a log for you to date your find. There are some Geocaches that have coins or trinkets in them in which the rules of the game are that you must put in of equal or larger value if you take. In this case, you should always have something to put in the sealed container. These containers can be from the size of a Tylenol pill container to a small Tupperware containers.
In order to find these treasures, you must have a GPS tracking device of some kind. Your cell phone service may have a plan for as low as $10.00 a month that can be programmed into your phone. This is a good idea to start with instead of spending the money on a GPS tracking system in case you’re not sure you may want to continue this new hobby.
If you are just beginning your Geocaching adventure, try starting with the least hard hunt. On the Geocaching sites, you will find exactly the information you need to decide which particular treasures to hunt for. They should each have such information as difficulty of location, what Geocache contains (if it is log only or contains coins etc), information on users who have found it, with comments, if it’s a tick or bug infested areas as well as the exact latitude and longitude of the site.
You should always plan an outing with someone or a group of people together. You may be hiking into secluded woods, but not in all cases. Be prepared in case you have to wade through some streams but usually your instructions will signify this.
There are three basic rules while doing GPS treasure hunting. The first one is put the Cache back exacting where you found it for the next person to find. The second rule is you are allowed to take one item from it unless it is a “log only” Geocache, but you must replace it with an item of equal or greater value. Make sure if it’s a log only cache that you write in the log book before you leave the site.
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