Hiking & GeoCaching - GeoCaching or GeoStashing?

[Barefoot TJ]

My family and I will be heading to one of the state parks, and we will be hiking to find some GeoCache. I found 5 possible geocaches. This is our first time, and I want it to be special and memorable for my kids. Does anyone have any helpful tips for us? What do we leave in the box, should we find it?

 

[Phil Hart]

Use the GPS as a guide - it

Use the GPS as a guide - it will not necessarily put you on the "dig here" "X-marks-the-spot" location of your geocache. Look around the area for clues (non-natural piles of brush, disturbed leaves, worn paths, etc.) once you get close.

Make sure you take a pen along with you to sign the cache log showing that you were there. The geocaching.com site has lots of great tips and sites to find also. It will also helpfully tell you what size cache you're looking for, and usually whether there's stuff to trade in it or not.

Always leave something as nice or nicer than anything you take out of a cache. With kids, it's great to have them find something they like and would like to share with others (but very small - say no bigger than a hot wheels car or a silver dollar for most caches).

Have fun geocaching, and have a great vacation!



Phil



ps - I am 100% stress fracture recovered and back in the saddle again. After running about 20 miles during the last week, I ran 5 miles barefoot in Savannah on grass and sandy, packed soil on Saturday; and I ran 4 miles with my newly found BFR neighbor back in McDonough yesterday on coarse grass (former cow pasture).

Nothing hurts as a result, and my soles don't feel like they need any recovery time, which they always certainly require after a hard surface run. Fort Bragg, NC (where we're moving this summer) has miles and miles of trails that I'm looking forward to running on.

I think I may be in danger of becoming a "trail snob" who only runs on concrete occasionally as a form of penance/required sole maintenance. Dirt just feels so much better and more sustainable to me than the hard surfaces.

 

[Barefoot TJ]

Trail snob!  Ha, that's

Trail snob! Ha, that's funny! I can't wait to run the trails on our trip. I'm drooling just thinking about it! I'm so glad you are finished with that setback, Phil. Let your bare feet be your guide from now on. They won't fail you like a pair of shoes. They won't silence your feet, and they won't deafen the ground. They will tell you exactly what you need to know, as you need to know it.

Thanks for all the advice. I spent quite a lot of time on the geocaching site last night. I found 5 geocaches in the area where we will be staying. We have to take the boat to one on a small island, so that will be cool. The boys can pretend to be pirates! They love pirates! My biggest concern is not knowing what to put in the box of the same value, since I don't know what's in the box now. I've read the others' statements on their journeys to their finds, but they don't specifically say what they found. Are we not supposed to say what we found in the box when documenting our trip on the site? If everyone would say something like, I found a shoe (oh no!), or I found a coin, or I found a DVD movie, I would know basically what to bring to swap it out. Any ideas?

 

[miker]

TJ, you might find this

TJ, you might find this helpful.

http://www.dummies.com/how-to/content/what-to-do-when-you-find-a-geocache.html#ixzz1IZNp3kFM

 

[Jennn]

I've done a ton of

I've done a ton of Geocaching; most of the items inside aren't much more than a happy meal toy, a little green army man or other plastic knicknack (for example little toys found in those gumball machine thingys), marbles, pins, trading cards etc. Occasionally there will be travel bugs (see the link posted above for a good description) Geocoins (similar to travel bugs, not meant to keep but to move on to other caches), Pathtags (similar to geocoins, but meant to keep and track).

Depending on the size of the cache, there may not be room for any goodies at all. The size of the cache can vary a lot, so take the Geocacing.com size description into consideration when deciding which caches to look for. Smaller caches are harder to find (and harder to hold goodies if you're looking for trading items). Small caches are generally no larger than a peanut butter jar; Micro about the size of a 35mm film canister or a magnetic key holder, nano - even smaller than that! I remember finding one that was literally a small ziploc bag that was covered in camoflauged duct tape. Inside was just a few sheets of paper to sign - it was wedged between the rocks of a stone wall. No room at all for trading items (I think it was classified as a "micro" size).

Pay attention to the difficulty levels as well - some caches are very well camoflauged! It can be lots of fun to discover that birdhouse is really a geocache, or that pinecone on the tree isn't really a pinecone after all (or that fake rock, or tree stump, etc.). 90% of the time you're just looking for camo'ed tupperware or an ammo can but every once in a while someone gets creative with the caches they hide (I think these are the most fun and challenging), and it's not always obvious by the cache description exactly what you're looking for, so the surprise is that much more fun too!

Something fun to do is to load your GPS with as many geocaches as possible in the area you'll be staying in, then when you find yourself with spare time, turn it on and go find whatever is closest to you. If you have an iPhone or Android, there's several Geocaching Apps available that will allow you to download the cache descriptions, hints, waypoints, etc on the fly as well (if your phone has gps it can also point you to the waypoint but it will eat the battery super fast.). Some apps are free and some are paid for but they all basically do the same thing.

 

[Barefoot TJ]

Thank you, Jenn, for the well

Thank you, Jenn, for the well explained information...and you too, Phil. Not so much Miker. He's just lazy and gives me a link. ;-) Ha! Teasing, Miker, teasing! The info about the size of the cache box and the difficulty level should be very helpful. I have found maps for 5 of them near where we will be staying. One of them I was just reading up on, and it sounds like that one was abandoned long ago, so we can cross that one off our list. Love the idea of a birdhouse being a cache box. That's clever. Makes me want to possibly host my own geocache when we get back.

 

[miker]

TJ, ya better watch it, or

TJ, ya better watch it, or next time I'll send TWO links. ;-)

 

[Phil Hart]

Miker's links

Miker's links notwithstanding, the coolest one I've found was a cast concrete rock, realistically colored, about 12 inches across, with a film canister set into the underside of it and then placed flat on the ground. The only thing different about it was that it was the largest rock around - it was about twice the size of the nearest natural rock.

 

[Barefoot TJ]

Nice, Phil.  That would have

Nice, Phil. That would have been really cool to see. But you won't believe what we found in one of the geocache locations. More later...when I have time.

 

[Barefoot TJ]

We had a wonderful time

We had a wonderful time geocaching. Our boys really loved finding stuff, although we only really found one true geocache, the one stored there by the Georgia State Parks. It took us a little while, but once we found it; rather, my hubby found it, and pretended to not have found it as he guided our boys to it, to let them think they found it first. It was basically just stuff, mostly kid's small toys. My son placed his wooden kit airplane he made and painted in there for the next guy. We moved onto the next cache the next day, and boy did we ever find the stash...LITERALLY!

We approached this small island by boat, no more than 200 feet wide in any direction. We saw that there were some small tents set up there, a really nice campsite, but no one was home at the moment, so we decided to make it a quick trip. I noticed there were ginormous eggs laying all about, some broken, some not, some in nests, some not. So very sad. We found a couple of nests, but stopped looking quickly when we found the SCORE! We didn't want to get caught, so we took some pictures of our "geocache" and high-tailed it out of there in a hurry. My 8-year old says, "What's wrong? What was it?" My hubby said, "It's grown-up stuff. We need to leave. Now!" I'm like, "No way! Get some pics first! This is to good to be true. Wait until we tell our new geocaching friends what we scored!"



Here's one of the two nests we saw. These eggs are about 4-5" long. It's sad to think that they were abandoned because of human interference.







Here's the container my hubby thought was the "blue 6" x 6" Tupperware container. Hello!" I think he was drawn to the little airplane on the front. He said it had a pipe inside the sock. It was placed outside any of the tents, so if a ranger asked who's it was they could say it "wasn't theirs, must have been there from before."







Here you can see a couple of packs of Zig-Zag rolling papers, another little container inside the other container (don't want to know what was in that!), and some reefer inside of a plastic baggie that's inside another plastic baggie.





We chose to leave it. Good call! Okay, so what would you have done if you found this "geostash?"

 

[Abide]

Haha awesome score.

Haha awesome score.

 

[Barefoot TJ]

Yes, but you didn't answer

Yes, but you didn't answer the question, Abide. What would you have done if you had found it?

 

[Abide]

I would have left it, I

I would have left it, I prefer alcohol as my drug of choice. If there was a bottle of beer it would have been gone.

 

[khyricat]

I would have gotten the kids

I would have gotten the kids out of there and left it too.. good call.. then again I'd have been potentially throwing up all over (I'm severely allergic to MJ and start throwing up about 10 ft before we SEE the plants if I'm around them in the wild normally, and forget being around someone who has been smoking it.)