A great article about geocaching was published last Friday by the San Francisco Chronicle: Pleasure Hunt / ‘Geocaching’ buccaneers pursue hidden bounty throughout Bay Area as GPS-based game catches on. It reminded me that I forgot to log the caches we found up at Tahoe when we were there a few weeks ago. We found this and this but came up short on this.
For those of you who don’t know much about geocaching, go here.
After doing a lot of research on what GPSr to get for geocaching, we ended up with a Garmin Rhino 120. It’s a great little GPSr that combines a map based GPS with an FRS (Family Radio Service, a walkie-talkie like CB radio service) and GMRS (similar to FRS but longer range).
So far it’s been a great little GPS device. My only complaint is that it doesn’t work very well under dense tree cover, but that seems to be the weakness behind Garmin’s GPS receivers. Magellan’s receivers are apparently better under tree cover.
A few months ago, we heard this article on NPR about the growing popularity of a new adventure game called“geocaching.” After that, Cindy’s co-worker, Sandi, told us about it. She apparently has been “geocaching” for a few years when the adventure game started out.
The game is similar to that of a scavenger hunt. The difference is, this is done with the aid of a GPS device. We thought it sounded interesting and so we borrowed a GPS receiver from Sandi for a weekend and decided to go look for our first geocache — conveniently located near us at Redwood Regional Park. We had a great time, after completely missing a turn and hiking around an extra mile or two, we found our first geocache and logged our find. It’s a fun game and a great use for a GPS receiver.
More than anything, this adventure game is an excuse to get out and go hiking and discover new places you wouldn’t otherwise go to. It gives you an objective for your hike. We’re hooked… now we just need to find time amongst all the other things we like to do on weekends.