Geocaching 102: More fun with Geocaching!
I've found a couple geocaches. What else is there to do in Geocaching?
There
are many different kinds of geocaches. You've probably found a few
traditional
geocaches, and perhaps you've found a multi-cache.
What's a Multi-cache?
It's a cache where the lat/long in the cache description leads you to the first
stage, and there you find a hint for the next stage. Sometimes
multi-caches are only 2 stages; other times they may be many stages taking you
all over a park or town.
Puzzle
(Unknown)
caches involve solving some kind of puzzle to find the exact location of the
geocache. Puzzle caches can be as simple as "site caches," visiting the
location and observing the site. Sometimes there's math involved... count
the number of rungs in the fence at Ground Zero (GZ) and subtract the number of
lightening rods on top of the historic building in front of you. But that's only
the beginning of puzzle caches... and puzzle caches are probably the most
gifted-friendly aspect of geocaching, because they're all about problem solving.
More about Puzzle Caches below...
Event
caches come in three flavors: Events, Mega Events, and CITO Events. An
event is any gathering of geocachers... a dinner, a picnic, or a special event
like a zip-lining picnic, and that's just in my area in the last year. Mega
events are events with more than 500 people... the annual
GeoWoodstock event is the prime
example in the U.S., but there are more and more of these super-sized events
popping up. CITO events have a specific purpose: Cache In, Trash Out.
A CITO event is a great way to help clean out a local park or other caching
area!
Earth
caches are geocaches with a purpose: to teach us something about the geology
of the earth in the location of the cache. Did you know there were
Stromatolites formed in the stone millions of years ago, as in Valley Forge Park
in Pennsylvania
VFEC2:
Parking Lot Stromatolites? And there's
Quite a
bit of gold in them hills in California? An Earth caches is defined "A
special place that people can visit to learn about a unique geoscience feature
or aspect of our Earth" by Earthcache.org.
Learn about all the earth caches near you!
A
Letterbox Hybrid cache is simply a Letterbox and Regular (or Multi-)
cache in the same container. Visit
Letterboxing North America to learn more about this "intriguing pastime
combining navigational skills and rubber stamp artistry in a charming "treasure
hunt" style outdoor quest." And if you'd like to, bring your own rubber
stamp and logbook along when you find Letterbox Hybrid caches, so that you can
stamp your stamp in the Letterbox's logbook, and the Letterbox's stamp in your
logbook, the signs that you've visited a Letterbox!
Wherigo
caches require a Wherigo-enabled GPS device or a Whereigo app on your
Android smartphone, to play a Whereigo "cartridge." A Whereigo cartridge
is a set of locations or interactions that you must accomplish in sequence to
get to the final location, in order to log the cache. For more on Whereigo,
visit Whereigo.com.
There are a few other special cache types:
is the
Geocaching.com Headquarters near Seattle, Washington. Cachers must
schedule their appointment to visit this very special cache, which is not
located at the lat/long in the cache description.
GPS
Adventure Maze caches represent attendance at a GPS Adventure Maze exhibit,
designed to teach folks of all ages about GPS technology and geocaching.
A
Virtual cache is about discovering a location rather than a container.
Proving you have visited a virtual cache usually involves answering a question
about the site you've visited, or provide a picture of yourself at the location
holding your GPS device. Virtual caches are no longer added to Geocaching.com,
however they are still accepted on other websites. And existing Virtual
caches are searchable on Geocaching.com, so you'll still find them. Virtual
caches can have the same variety of difficulty and terrain as traditional
caches, as
Mint Spring Bayou Falls in Mississippi certainly proves. Virtual
caches are now considered Waymarks, and are played through the
Waymarking.com website.
Webcam
caches are also no longer added to Geocaching.com; they too are a category
of location in Waymarking. There
are still a number of webcam caches in geocaching, and you'll find these fun
caches in nearly every state. And with portable computing devices including
smartphones and tablets, webcam caches are even easier to catch. Simply go
to the location of the webcam, visit the website where the camera image is
displayed, and capture the screen picture of yourself on camera! Upload your
image with your cache log, and Voila - you're on candid webcam-era!
Puzzle Caches
solved...
Puzzle caches may be the greatest challenge of geocaching. A puzzle
cache might require... well, just about anything! Simple "site puzzles"
have questions that can be answered by going to the location specified in the
geocache, and then adjusting the lat/long based on those answers. Easy
enough. But Puzzle Caches can be FAR more complicated. Read
Geocaching 103: Puzzle Caches to learn more and
find tools to help you solve Puzzle caches.
Let's go geocaching!
A friend's caches always remind us, "Caching is fun. If you're not having
fun, find another hobby." If you don't want to get get outdoors, get
muddy sometimes, think hard sometimes, encounter a few prickers and ticks
sometimes (at
least in my neck of the woods)... Geocaching is not for you. For the rest
of us, let's go have some fun!
Geocaching... a social activity!
While you can spend all your geocaching time alone, it is also fun to
geocache with others. Some caches really need a team; we did one that took
one person to pump air into a pipe to pop the cache to the surface of the lake,
and another to grab the cache while it was bobbing above the surface. It
can't be accomplished alone! But how can you find other geocachers in your area?
Geocaching Events! Some events have a geocaching goal. CITO Events
are specifically held to clean up an area: Cache In, Trash Out. CITO events may
be held in conjunction with a local park or property owner, where many hands can
make light work of a messy situation. If you're going to a CITO event,
remember to bring gloves, bags, and wear heavy pants and shoes.
Other events may be just for fun. We attended a picnic event at a
zip-line park. It wasn't required, but the geocachers got a special deal
on zip-lining that day. Turns out, it's a lot of fun! Many of our local
geocaching groups sponsor monthly get-togethers at local restaurants for dinner.
Here you can meet other cachers, exchange tips on difficult caches, arrange
group caching adventures, and trade trackables and pathtags. And don't
worry about being the oldest, youngest, beginner, unemployed or the out-of-shape
geocacher at the event... there's always someone else just like you, or more so.
If you're on Facebook, search for and join local geocaching groups. Around
here, there's SEPAG (SouthEastern
PA Geocachers),
B.E.S.T (the Berks Explorers Seeking Tupperware),
L.O.S.T. (Lancaster
Organization for Seeking Tupperware), or
S.T.R.A.N.G.E.
(Second Thursday Royersford Area Neighborly Geocaching Events). Each has a
Facebook group, and three of four have monthly or bi-monthly events. You
can attend caching events on the third Wednesday, first Tuesday, or second
Thursday each month or two, or you can Storm the Castle, Picnic on the
Brandywine, and attend other annual events!
Challenge yourself...
Geocachers love to challenge themselves and
each other. One
popular challenge is to log a large number of caches in a single day; a
century - 100 caches in a single 24-hour period - is a common goal. To meet
the "Jasmer challenge" you must log at least one cache that was placed in every
month back to the start of Geocaching (May 2000).
Other caching goals include logging at least one cache from every state in
the U.S. or every province in Canada, or logging one or more caches on every
calendar day of the year... including February 29th! Once you've completed
your caching calendar, there's another calendar challenge: be the First to Find
(FTF) on a new geocache on every day of the calendar. This is a much
harder challenge, since you not only have to compete with other local geocachers
for the FTF honors, you need geocachers near where you live or work to place
new caches that are approved on all 365 for you to try and find first! In some
areas, it's easy to be First to Find even a day or two after a new cache is
placed; around my house, even a 1/2 hour delay from when the cache is published
often puts you into second or third place.
The Difficulty / Terrain (D/T) ratings of caches lend themselves to another popular
challenge: log at least one cache of every one of the 81 different D/T
combinations. Finding a difficulty 1, terrain 1 cache is easy enough, but
where can you find a cache with difficulty 5, terrain 5... and what "specialized
equipment" will it take
to retrieve it? Climbing gear? Snorkel? Boat? Terrain 5 caches are never
boring! One of ours required a paddleboat from a local picnic park.
Yup, that's specialized equipment too.
Caching streaks are another challenge... can you log at least one cache each
day for 30 days? 90 days? 365 days? We've managed a caching
streak of 182 days... and then there was a snow-delayed flight, and the end of
our caching streak. Streaks are much easier to do when you're a new
geocacher with plenty of caches around your home, than later when you've found
many of the caches in your local area.
U.S. county challenges and Delorme state map challenges are popular
challenges. Find a geocache in each of the counties in a state, or a
geocache in each of the squares that make up the Delorme map of your state.
It's harder than it sounds, unless you live in Delaware or Rhode Island!
The Delaware state county challenge is the only one of these we've completed; there's
only 3 counties in Delaware. For more on Challenge caches, visit
Geocaching 103: Puzzle
Caches | Challenge Caches.
Statistics
Now that you're becoming a hard-cord geocacher, chances are you are going to want to
see your results. Statistics. Tables, charts and graphs. A new
project offers statistics both for you as an individual, and on geocaching in
general. There are 887,547 caches enabled in the United States and 139,063
in the United Kingdom as of March 20, 2013. Vacationing to Bermuda?
There are 240 caches enabled there, and 201 unique caches have been found since
New Year's Day, and 26 new caches hidden.
Looking for your own statistics or the top geocachers in your country?
These facts and lots more can be yours, free, using the
Project-GC website. Sign in with your
Geocaching.com nickname (and a unique password), and you'll have access to more
data and statistics than you can imagine.
How Geocaching saved a town!
Yes, the hobby of Geocaching saved a town... the town of Rachel, Nevada,
along the E.T. Highway... and home of the E.T. Highway Geocaching Power Trail.
Geocaches were set up along this highway, because it seemed like a neat place to
have a geocaching power trail, but after a few run-ins with geocachers and other
travelers, geocachers and snow plows, the Nevada D.O.T. disagreed. The E.T.
Power Trail was removed. And the newly flourishing town of Rachel, Nevada
nearly died. Soon after, through agreements with all parties, the E.T.
Highway Power Trail was replaced, this time with each cache safely at least 50
feet off the highway. The town of Rachel was restored, fed by hungry,
thirsty, tired geocachers looking for a place to spend the night and recharge
for another day of geocaching on the power trail.
Don't believe me? Read all about it in
Nevada UFO town cashes in on 'geocaching' game. And read about the
E.T. Highway Power Trail, and plan a trip to the Geocaching Power Trail of
the Gods!
What's next?
Looking for more challenge? Try your hand at Puzzle Caches! Read
Geocaching 103: Puzzle Caches and check out the
puzzle caches in an instructional series, or puzzle caches near your home or
travels.
Learn how to use the advanced features of a Geocaching Premium Membership.
Read Geocaching 105: Using Geocaching Premium
membership features...
Updated
December 01, 2020
Thanks!
