A Return to Geocaching

July was a very busy month at my household, which is my excuse for the lack of blog entries. The principal event has been our yearly vacation, which this year was very special, as KC and I celebrate our tenth wedding anniversary. We ditched the kids :-; with my sister, and flew to the Big Island of Hawaii, and stayed there for a whole week. It was a beautiful place, and we both enjoyed our stay at a very posh resort on the northwest coast of the island. The most vigorous thing I did that week was to take a day out and go geocaching, romantic fool that I am.

Now geocaching is a very peculiar occupation. I have yet to decide if geocaching is a hobby, a past time, or a sport. Like many recreational activities, geocaching has aspects of all three categories. It is a hobby, in that there is a kind of craftsmanship that goes into 1) creating and placing the caches, and 2) searching for and finding all but the most trivial of caches. It certainly qualifies as a past time, as one can spend a great deal of time involved in it, just for the love of it. Geocaching certainly has a sport quality about it, as players keep statistics of their finds, and match statistics against other players. Regardless though of how geocaching is classified, for me it is an enjoyable time.

After a long hiatus, I have finally returned to geocaching. The sport has changed considerably since I was involved six years ago in 2002. The receivers were not as advanced, and the number of published caches was much smaller than today. It was the purchase of a new GPS receiver that prompted my return to the game. The receiver that I'd been using for six year was somewhat old, and in light of our upcoming trip to Hawaii I decided to go ahead and purchase a new instrument. I purchased a top of the line eTrex Vista HCX from Garmin, which more than meets my expectations for a GPSr. The sensitivity of the receiver is much improve from the models at the turn of the century; acquisition inside my house is now possible and likely, whereas my earlier models would only acquire in doors very infrequently. The amount of storage is limited by the amount of storage on your micro SDD card, and downloads over USB 2.0 are significantly faster that over RS-232. My particular model has a built-in digital compass and altimeter, which is an advantage when outdoors. Finally, the color maps are superior to the map display in my old eMap receiver.

But geocaching is more than the receiver. It is also the database of caches and associated information that is accessed through www.geocaching.com. That database is now integrated with Google Maps, integrated with a Garmin receiver driver, integrated with a number of third party software applications, all of which combine to allow a cacher to pinpoint one of thousands potential caches in a particular area for a find. The database allows hunters to log their finds through a web interface, so the status of a particular cache can be tracked through the years.

Over time there have appeared a number of variations on the traditional cache which typically consists of a container filled with various "treasure" hidden under a pile of rocks or brush. One variation has been on the size of the cache container. The classic container is an ammo box, and the variation is to use a smaller container. If an ammo box is a standard sized cache, then a sandwich box is a small container, and a 35 mm film canister is a micro container. There are smaller container that are known as "nanos" and are devilishly difficult to find. Another variation is dispense with the container altogether, creating a "virtual" cache. Since the virtual cache must also dispense with the log as well as the container, proof that the cache has been discovered must take some other form, such as requiring a photograph of some feature near the cache site, or by answering some questions that could only be answered with intement knowledge of the cache site. An earthcache is a variation on the virtual cache, which requires demonstrating some knowledge of a geological feature of the earth. A mystery cache requires the solution of a puzzle to reveal the location of the cache coordinates, and a multiple cache is similar in that the final cache of a multiple, which contains the log, can only be found through the discovery of a sequence of caches.

Finally there are the people. I attended a "cash in and trash out" or CITO event and met some of the more active local cachers. I think they are an intense and nice group of people. Some are quite competitive, while others are more interested in the adventure. There are as many approaches to caching as there are individual cachers. A future post on this subject will review my own personal goals and approaches to caching.