What a let down :(

[sdarwkcabemanmy]

DH has had a Garmin Nuvi for his car for awhile now and I'd heard so many wonderful things about Geocaching that we decided to go this afternoon. I looked up several caches near our house (I thought!), we picked one and off we went.

Twenty minutes (driving time) later, we arrived near where we thought it would be. We hiked for another 20 min or so and got closer..we thought..to where the cache was SUPPOSED to be. But with DH and I being completely new to this and this being our first attempt at finding a cache, we made several critical mistakes. I wrote down the coordinates, but I failed to write down exactly WHERE the cache was supposed to be, what it was supposed to be attached, etc. I wrote down what the cache was supposed to look like, but neglected to look at the difficulty rating. So we hiked..and hiked..and hiked. And never found anything. The cache was supposed to be a 'camoed pillbox'. Which kind of boggled me..we were in the woods. How on earth were we supposed to find it if it was camoflauged?

Needless to say, DH got kind of annoyed because the Garmin couldn't pinpoint the coordinates exactly. It kept jumping around and after an hour of trying to find exactly where we were supposed to go, we gave up and spent another half hour or so hiking back to the car. He was NOT happy and I was kind of feeling let down. It wasn't as much as I thought it would be.

So tonight, after we got home from dinner and everything else we had to do, I went back to the Geocaching website. It turns out the one I'd picked was a 3-3.5, which is pretty hard and not recommended for beginners. I think I also read that a Garmin Nuvi is also not recommended for Geocaching.

I wish I'd read more about this before we set out. I thought it would be so easy..that the item we were searching for would be a snap to find. But all that happened was we got hot, scratched (from some branches) and terribly miserable. I don't think we'll ever try this again. We're obviously not cut out to be pathfinders or waymakers or whatever people who do this are called.

 

[drivencrazy]

Sorry to hear that it was not a good time for you. My hubby was just telling me about this and wanting to get one... when we do, I will make sure we do some easy ones first!

 

[sdarwkcabemanmy]

Well, after I'd poked around on the website a bit there was something I noticed that bothered me. There is NO way to sort the caches by distance from home location and/or difficulty. If there were some way to sort them, at least by difficulty, then it would be easier for city people like us who have no business wandering around in the wilderness to find caches that are more out in the open or at least not in the middle of a forest.

I wish I'd also known that a Garmin Nuvi is not recommended for this. We'd get within five feet or so of where the coordinates were, then the Garmin would say we were fifteen or twenty feet away so we could never tell exactly where we were supposed to be looking.

 

[Pomlover2586]

Maybe a dumb question.......but what's a Cache? I know what a Garmin is.....

 

[sdarwkcabemanmy]

A cache is the thing you are looking for..a camoflauged pillbox or a box hanging from a tree or whatever.

 

[suprgrlx]

Maybe a dumb question.......but what's a Cache? I know what a Garmin is.....

http://www.geocaching.com/

It's basically a giant scavenger hunt. From the above website: "Geocaching is a high-tech treasure hunting game played throughout the world by adventure seekers equipped with GPS devices. The basic idea is to locate hidden containers, called geocaches, outdoors and then share your experiences online. Geocaching is enjoyed by people from all age groups, with a strong sense of community and support for the environment."

 

[sdarwkcabemanmy]

We did learn one very valuable lesson from all this. Geocaching is serious business. If you're not prepared to take it seriously (we weren't!) then don't bother going.

We made so many stupid rookie mistakes that it has burned us on ever doing this again. We are city folk. We have NO BUSINESS wandering around and getting potentially seriously lost in the woods.

 

[Pin Wizard]

I'm so sorry your first experience with Geocaching pretty much stunk. For someone just starting out, I'd say look for a "large" cache for your first few. And I remember when I was new and someone told me to use the "tink-tink" method. Poke around with a long stick or hiking stick.

Did you enter your zip code in the box part way down the home page? It should bring up those close to you. There are ways to set filters so it only pulls up large size, type of cache (traditional, multi, etc.,) but they may be one of the features for premium members. I can't remember if they are or not. As a premium member, you will also see the other caches close to the one you're searching at the time. It's worth the money to me. Especially when I'm planning a trip to a park and it shows me all of them on a map and a listing of ALL the caches in the park.

I've heard from others in our area that the Nuvi isn't good to use for Geocaching. Others have chimed in on our message boards that they use the hand held models for Geocaching and mount them in their car for driving with success. There's the little yellow Garmin e-trex that many of us have started with. Right now I use a Garmin 60Csx and love it! And I just use the Nuvi in the car.

I hope you'll try it again at another time! Maybe look for a large or medium sized cache. Yup, check the terrain and difficulty levels. I STILL hate micros in the woods! And we have a number of devious cachers in our area placing them. LOL!

 

[Liberty Belle]

Geocaching can be fun, but if you don't like to hike, it's probably not for you (unless they have some city caches, but I don't know about that). If you want to make it easy, plug the coordinates into google maps and you can even get a picture of the general area.

They can be hard to find, but if it were easy, I don't think it would be much fun. You should try again with the google method. It's very exciting when you find a cache. Remember to bring some small trinket to exchange, and/or a pen and paper.

 

[Pin Wizard]

We did learn one very valuable lesson from all this. Geocaching is serious business. If you're not prepared to take it seriously (we weren't!) then don't bother going.

We made so many stupid rookie mistakes that it has burned us on ever doing this again. We are city folk. We have NO BUSINESS wandering around and getting potentially seriously lost in the woods.

There are plenty of urban caches! My favorites! We took a mini Geocaching trip up to Northern VA and DC in December. We pretty much stuck to the Tidal Basin area of DC and the White House. Lots of Virtual caches there! Wooo hooo! Basically, we were looking for some sort of information at a monument to send back to the owner as verification we were actually there. A couple of our favorites were at the FDR memorial and the Korean memorial. Lots of fun!

Personally, I'd like to skip the caches in the woods. I'm tired of the ticks in the summer and getting rid of those buggers. In the winter it's nice the snakes are in hibernation, but it's cold and windy out there now! I actually used to like it in winter. LOL! A couple years ago we were in Woodbridge, VA in 13 degree weather. LOLOL! Now? No way.

Also, check on any events being held in your area. They are a ton of fun, and you get to meet other people with this hobby...who are more than happy to share what they know and have experienced! At one event, we even came across someone who had a scrapbook with pictures of evil containers they have found. LOL! Amazing what some people with put out there. For fun, go to craig's list or similar site and type in geocaching or geocaching containers. Amazing what's out there. Artificial flowers, nails for railroad ties, etc.

 

[Shutterbug]

I actually use two Garmin GPS devices for geocaching.
The auto one to give me street directions.
Then the Etrex Legend hiking gps for the actual hiking around in the woods.

The GPS's that are made for auto's arent really the best to use for hiking and geocaching.

My Etrex does a really good job on narrowing down the geocache.

 

[Pin Wizard]

Oh, something else someone told me when we first started...where you GPS gets you is the general area. Search all over. We usually start where we are and work our way out in a circle until we hopefully find it. First we'll take a glance around and check any spots that are obvious or where we would hide something. If we don't find it, then we work our way out in a circle.

I would skip any multi in the beginning since you will have to a look for two or three containers if not more until you actually get the cache. I still dislike those, too! I want a smiley right away, not four stages later.

GPS bounce...tough in the woods! Especially in summer. Another reason I don't like hunting there. We were at one at a cemetary yesterday. The GPS was all over the place. Strange since there weren't that many trees aound, just a few.

 

[sdarwkcabemanmy]

Did you enter your zip code in the box part way down the home page? It should bring up those close to you. There are ways to set filters so it only pulls up large size, type of cache (traditional, multi, etc.,) but they may be one of the features for premium members. I can't remember if they are or not. As a premium member, you will also see the other caches close to the one you're searching at the time. It's worth the money to me. Especially when I'm planning a trip to a park and it shows me all of them on a map and a listing of ALL the caches in the park.

I only figured that part out last night AFTER we got back. I did find some that are supposed to be fairly easy that are a heckuva lot closer..including one that looks like it's near DS's school.

I also figured out after we got back last night that the thing I was looking for was a pillbottle about the size of the keychain pillbottle DH takes to work every day. Camoed. On the ground. In the woods. So little to NO chance of finding it.

On our way in, as we were parking, we ran into a motley group (a couple of youngish adults, two middle-aged adults and one pregnant woman) who were coming out of the area we were going into. They asked if we were going Geocaching and we said we were, it was our first time, yadda yadda. They said it was probably not the easiest one to find for beginners, but didn't offer any other tips. We should have asked but by the time we thought about asking it was too late.

 

[Pin Wizard]

Something like this and probably wrapped in camo tape...

They're really small. The group you passed probably couldn't even think of a way to help describe what you were searching for. Sometimes it's easier to go back with someone and let them search, tell them when they're hot or cold.

We found something just like that yesterday. Instead of the chain it had brown twine attached to it. It was tucked into the bark of a tree covered in ivy. I only saw part of a tiny chain sticking out at the edge of the bark. We never would have found it if it weren't for that!

Try the larger caches closer to home/school/work.

 

[Justanopinion]

You could always start out with letterboxing and move up to geocaching. That's what we did. Much easier for us.

letterboxing.org

atlasquest.com

 

[moburg]

This is interesting. Can't really say what made me click in here. I've never heard of geocaching or letterboxing, but I'm intrigued. I'll have to try it, at least letterboxing until I get a GPS of some kind.


Oh, and I looked up geocaches in my town, and there is one within sight of my back yard.

Very cool!

 

[JimB.]

getting potentially seriously lost in the woods.

With a Garmin in your hand??

 

[Planogirl]

I did a little minor geocaching and it's not easy! I only tried the simpler ones too and I think you have to work your way up to the hard stuff.

As for woods, I wish that we had such woods around here. I can only think of a few parks in Arlington that might have such woods.

 

[Vijoge]

There is NO way to sort the caches by distance from home location and/or difficulty. .

I wish I'd also known that a Garmin Nuvi is not recommended for this.

Caches can be sorted by location , difficulty, or both.

As for the problem with the Nuvi-the Nuvi is for the car-handheld units are for the woods.

Geocaching is great but you need to do some homework before you just run off down the trail.

 

[LisaNJ25]

You could always start out with letterboxing and move up to geocaching. That's what we did. Much easier for us.

letterboxing.org

atlasquest.com

You should of seen my daughter and I letter boxing in the fall. We must of been an interesting site. She is doing it to earn girl scout badge. We have to try again in the spring.