As I was cleaning up our old geocaching blog and moving the posts over to this blog, I found a few posts that show how much geocaching has changed in this area over the years... I combined them here, in a sort of early geocaching diary -
Our 100th Cache - 12/25/06
We started geocaching the first week of September in this year, 2006. Our goal, once we knew how much we loved this, was to find 100 caches by the end of the year.
Saturday, December 23rd, we headed to the Berwick Boulevard to see the Christmas lights, but mapped out a route to geocache along the way. Bloomsburg has some of the most creative containers we've come across yet.
We found our 100th cache, launched our first coin, and our first travel bug, all in one day. :-)
Two FTF's, in the dark, tonight! 12/30/06
Yes, we are addicts. We got home tonight from a family gathering and saw that MrsPg had posted #2 of her three new caches in Milton. (We're so happy Milton finally has some caches on the map!) So we loaded the coordinates and grabbed a good flashlight, and off we went. VERY easy find. Datruck is taking bets on how long it takes for this one to be muggled, but it's not in the "main area" like you'd think, so it might be ok?
We come home from this FTF (First To Find) and I have a new email from geocaching.com that there is a NEW cache posted 4 miles from our house! That means we now officially have a geocache closer to us than any store or gas station. :-) We head back out, with the flashlights and new coords.. on the way there we are commenting that we SHOULD be FTF, how many others would be out in the dark, right after this is posted? To which datruck immediately said "Gr8dnz". Uh huh, we pulled in to see his jeep parked there. No surprise. He didn't think the coordinates were quite right though, and was looking off to the side. We checked our coords, and it ended with Datruck & Gr8dnz reaching for the cache, a micro, at the exact same time. I'm telling you, this sport is just plain fun!
The littlest truck got the FTF prize, lottery tickets. We let him rub them off - we didn't win, but we had fun standing outside catching up with a fellow
addict
cacher. He passed off two coins to ldtruck too, making his day. That boy LOVES coin icons almost as much as his mom.
When we came home (no, no more caches tonight!) we stopped and got our mail, and our unite for diabetes travel bug was here. What a good geocaching day!
The Anti Geocacher
In 2006 there was a woman on a mission to remove all geocaches - she would go out to find them, and destroy them. In 2015 her blog has moved, I don't know what ever happened to her - http://protectsensitiveecosystems.blogspot.com/
FTF - 1/1/2007
We weren't actually expecting this one to be a FTF, but it was. :-) This cache, and MrsPG#3 are on our way to my parents house, where we were having New Years dinner, so we did both caches along the way. I love Covered Bridges, and my kids don't mind stopping and posing with them if they get to look for a cache too.
We were hoping to leave a bug or coin here, but nothing we had fit. :-(
We did leave Poly http://www.geocaching.com/track/details.aspx?guid=bea7cf1d-fea1-418f-8e22-5844a02f7f12 at MrsPG3. That cache is literally right down the road from my parents house.
Tomorrow we are doing some shopping AND going to Middleburg for the livestock auction. We'll be kind of all over, and have several caches ready to load on the GPS. :-)
Caching With Droids
WEDNESDAY, MARCH 10, 2010
If you look at the iphone app on the geocaching.com site, at the very bottom of the page, it says
Whatever Happened To Ammo Boxes? May 11 2011
We were out caching today, for the first time in awhile. Some of the caches were fun. Some.. not so much.
Why does everyone think it's a great idea to hide a bison tube in the woods these days? What happened to hiding containers you wanted people to find? I'm not opposed to bison tubes, and I prefer my caches to be in the woods rather than on a stop sign.. but a bison tube in the woods is a tricky thing. It needs a good hint, or extremely precise coordinates. Here IS a hint - it's hard to get extremely precise coordinates in a dense patch of woods. And looking at 50 different sticks to see which one the cache is hidden in, just really isn't that much fun. It's NOT the same as a creative container. It's been done. Over done. Move on to something more unique, or go back to the basics, please.
Whatever happened to ammo boxes?
Odds & Ends - August 4, 2011
I realized when I logged in here this morning that I never finished posting about our week at geowoodstock, nor the pics.. and I haven't posted about finding our first Munzee. I don't think I've even posted the pics from this years ASP geobash...
It's been a very busy summer! Not a lot of geocaching the past year, for us. We find a few here and there.. but mainly when we go to events these days. It's actually harder with the kids older, and going in dozens of directions (all of which we have already cached pretty thoroughly) every day, to make time for geocaching. Maybe this fall will be better.
I know a lot of others are saying Munzees will never catch on because they do not take you to the awesome places geocaching does.. but for me, the smartphone addict, I LOVE the idea of them, and think I would prefer them to geocaching these days, if I could add pics and comments about the locations. I think they can take us to awesome places, just like geocaches do - and the simplicity of scanning them to log them.. I love that it eliminates the cheating, the log replacing, the logging.. I really love the idea. It does need some work in the application, it's still new.
Next up for us is the geobash in Bloom later this month. We love that event - Joe always has some great hides, and Datruck is hoping for some more night caches, those are his favorites.
Saturday, December 23rd, we headed to the Berwick Boulevard to see the Christmas lights, but mapped out a route to geocache along the way. Bloomsburg has some of the most creative containers we've come across yet.
We found our 100th cache, launched our first coin, and our first travel bug, all in one day. :-)
Two FTF's, in the dark, tonight! 12/30/06
Yes, we are addicts. We got home tonight from a family gathering and saw that MrsPg had posted #2 of her three new caches in Milton. (We're so happy Milton finally has some caches on the map!) So we loaded the coordinates and grabbed a good flashlight, and off we went. VERY easy find. Datruck is taking bets on how long it takes for this one to be muggled, but it's not in the "main area" like you'd think, so it might be ok?
We come home from this FTF (First To Find) and I have a new email from geocaching.com that there is a NEW cache posted 4 miles from our house! That means we now officially have a geocache closer to us than any store or gas station. :-) We head back out, with the flashlights and new coords.. on the way there we are commenting that we SHOULD be FTF, how many others would be out in the dark, right after this is posted? To which datruck immediately said "Gr8dnz". Uh huh, we pulled in to see his jeep parked there. No surprise. He didn't think the coordinates were quite right though, and was looking off to the side. We checked our coords, and it ended with Datruck & Gr8dnz reaching for the cache, a micro, at the exact same time. I'm telling you, this sport is just plain fun!
The littlest truck got the FTF prize, lottery tickets. We let him rub them off - we didn't win, but we had fun standing outside catching up with a fellow
cacher. He passed off two coins to ldtruck too, making his day. That boy LOVES coin icons almost as much as his mom.
When we came home (no, no more caches tonight!) we stopped and got our mail, and our unite for diabetes travel bug was here. What a good geocaching day!
FTF - 1/1/2007
We weren't actually expecting this one to be a FTF, but it was. :-) This cache, and MrsPG#3 are on our way to my parents house, where we were having New Years dinner, so we did both caches along the way. I love Covered Bridges, and my kids don't mind stopping and posing with them if they get to look for a cache too.
We were hoping to leave a bug or coin here, but nothing we had fit. :-(
We did leave Poly http://www.geocaching.com/track/details.aspx?guid=bea7cf1d-fea1-418f-8e22-5844a02f7f12 at MrsPG3. That cache is literally right down the road from my parents house.
Tomorrow we are doing some shopping AND going to Middleburg for the livestock auction. We'll be kind of all over, and have several caches ready to load on the GPS. :-)
Caching With Droids
WEDNESDAY, MARCH 10, 2010
Geocaching
If you look at the iphone app on the geocaching.com site, at the very bottom of the page, it says
"We will be introducing a version of the application for Android in Q1 of 2010." YAY!
Until then, we use geobeagle combined with Radar. We've been out twice this week, with two droids and a garmin, and the droids were just as accurate as the garmin every time. The readings were almost exactly the same, although on the droids we are learning our metric.
Install both. Then open geobeagle and start caching!
You can pre-load caches, which is nice and a little faster, but it's never necessary, you can cache anywhere you are with no pre-planning. Under settings, choose map to see the caches around you. There's a link to go right to the webpage to read the details if you do not have the caches preloaded
If Caches Are NOT Pre-Loaded -
- choose geocaching.com
- Android will go to a list of caches near you, choose one
- On the cache page, scroll down to "for online maps" (it will be right above where the logs begin)
- Choose google maps (this is the trickiest part, tapping the right link with them so close together! LOL!)
- Android will ask you what to open it with, choose geobeagle from the list
It will then go to a screen like the black one below. From there you can view the map, use the arrow to navigate once you are close, and the webpage link will take you to the page to log the cache. (the "log cache" button will enable you to log using SMS, but we have never done that... I just go to the website and log from there)
To Load Caches Ahead Of Time -
- generate a pocket query as normal (you must be a premium member at geocaching.com to do this)
- download the file on your computer. (emailing it to your phone does not work well for some reason)
- hook your droid up to your computer. (remember to then pull down the top shade like you are checking your new messages, and choose "mount"
- Place the zip file on your phone.
- unmount, disconnect
- Open geobeagle, choose the settings button (always the second button over that is a bunch of lines like a paragraph, to the left of the house) and choose cache list
- Then press settings again and choose "sync/sdcard/download"
- Now you will have a list of all the caches in your pocket query, and from the black screen above, you can choose details and read about the cache without going to the website. No need to go to the site and open googlemaps either - it will load right from the list.
Whatever Happened To Ammo Boxes? May 11 2011
We were out caching today, for the first time in awhile. Some of the caches were fun. Some.. not so much.
Why does everyone think it's a great idea to hide a bison tube in the woods these days? What happened to hiding containers you wanted people to find? I'm not opposed to bison tubes, and I prefer my caches to be in the woods rather than on a stop sign.. but a bison tube in the woods is a tricky thing. It needs a good hint, or extremely precise coordinates. Here IS a hint - it's hard to get extremely precise coordinates in a dense patch of woods. And looking at 50 different sticks to see which one the cache is hidden in, just really isn't that much fun. It's NOT the same as a creative container. It's been done. Over done. Move on to something more unique, or go back to the basics, please.
Whatever happened to ammo boxes?
Odds & Ends - August 4, 2011
I realized when I logged in here this morning that I never finished posting about our week at geowoodstock, nor the pics.. and I haven't posted about finding our first Munzee. I don't think I've even posted the pics from this years ASP geobash...
It's been a very busy summer! Not a lot of geocaching the past year, for us. We find a few here and there.. but mainly when we go to events these days. It's actually harder with the kids older, and going in dozens of directions (all of which we have already cached pretty thoroughly) every day, to make time for geocaching. Maybe this fall will be better.
I know a lot of others are saying Munzees will never catch on because they do not take you to the awesome places geocaching does.. but for me, the smartphone addict, I LOVE the idea of them, and think I would prefer them to geocaching these days, if I could add pics and comments about the locations. I think they can take us to awesome places, just like geocaches do - and the simplicity of scanning them to log them.. I love that it eliminates the cheating, the log replacing, the logging.. I really love the idea. It does need some work in the application, it's still new.
Next up for us is the geobash in Bloom later this month. We love that event - Joe always has some great hides, and Datruck is hoping for some more night caches, those are his favorites.
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