Geocaching

A couple of weeks ago, my family and I decided we wanted to try out geocaching. We told the kids we would go "treasure hunting" and they immediately loved the idea.

What the heck, might as well try and put a little bit of that economic stimulus package toward something that can provide some long-lasting, good, clean, family fun - right?

...So we bought a GPS!

What a great activity for use with these things. A great way to increase sales on something that most people would otherwise never buy, too.

Ok, so we bought a Garmin GPSmap 60 Cx. ($269.00) I really like this GPS. I remember working with the PLGR, (Precision Lightweight GPS Receiver), we called them pluggers, in the military and loving those, but man, were those beastly to deal with compared to the latest on the civilian market.







Check out these huge things!
They did work well (for their time) if you knew how to use them.

Military PLGR







The Garmin is way smaller, but has way more features, better accuracy, better interface, maps, and it is even in color! What a deal!

We have been out hunting a few times now and have found 18 caches at the time of this post. This is really fun. It is like a big, global game of hide the thimble. You go out and find the hidden stash which varies in size, then you sign the log book to prove you have actually found it. Depending on the size of the container, (I have seen anything from a 35mm film canister to a shoebox size tupperware bowl) you might find some good treasures. The protocol is to take one thing from the cache and leave something different.

The kids really like looking through all the goodies and deciding what to take.

Just a tidbit of knowledge...

In French, the word 'cacher' means to hide and 'geo' refers to Earth so when you put them together you get a really cool activity to enjoy all over the world. I would encourage any of you to give it a try, but be sure to have a supply of bug dope on hand before you head out.