Most of the time when you’re geocaching, the cache isn’t too terribly hard to find. You may remember in our guide to geocaching, the cache itself was hidden under a grill in a park. That’s an easy to find cache. Most are a bit harder. Once in a while, however, you’ll find yourself climbing 40ft trees, scaling vertical cliffs (that you probably shouldn’t be without safety gear) and crossing raging rivers. At that point, you’re into “extreme” geocaching.

Here’s one such example of a cache in Denmark where the cache isn’t too tough if you can safely navigate the rapid across the river.

While many higher end handheld devices do support turn by turn direction like their automotive counterparts you’ll find they’re much more at home out in the backwoods.

A handheld GPS unit is usually far more rugged and water resistant if not outright waterproof. They don’t frequently come preloaded with maps. Instead, you’ll need to purchase separate software especially with lower end devices. However, even if your GPS device isn’t loaded with maps, it’s still plenty useful as it can keep track of where you’ve been so if you get hopelessly lost you can still backtrack.

Also, if you know the coordinates of where you’re going, it can also point you in the right direction.

Which brings me to one of it’s more common uses these days, geocaching. Geocaching is a great summertime activity and one that can keep the kids entertained for hours on end. I’ve talked about geocaching at length in my guide to geocaching post and video so I won’t repeat that all here, but it sure is a heck of a lot of fun and if you haven’t given it a try, I highly recommend it.

My first geocaching excursion was fun, with the exception of the run in I had with a cement wall where the cement wall was the definite winner and my inattention to my surroundings and not noticing a hornets nest a couple feet above my head when our group parked our bicycles resulted in an angry hornet stinging my son on his hand.

I thought my second excursion was going to go a lot smoother especially since we met up with family members who had already found the first two caches we were looking for but wanted to have my husband, who was on his first geocaching experience, and myself find them too. We were with my nieces and nephew who were so excited about showing us how to geocache that I didn’t have the heart to tell them I had already been on my first excursion the week before.

Although the kids were under strict instructions not to tell us exactly where the first cache was they made it pretty obvious by pointedly sitting on a bench and not looking at us. So my husband and I both got down on our hands and knees to look under the bench. He found the cache. I got about an inch from a yellow jacket nest (don’t know if I mentioned that I’m allergic, but I am).

My sister-in-law said “Only you would find the yellow jackets and not the cache” Yeah, I felt special.

So when we were hiking to the second “already found” cache my sister in law whispered that when we got to the area that I should look on the right side. That seemed easy enough. Then we got to the area which was by a bridge so it seemed obvious the cache was on the bridge somewhere.

Since I’m a good listener (some of the time) I immediately started searching on the right side of the bridge and found a nest of bumblebees (yep, I’m allergic to them too). I started to back away but from the obvious body language of my sister-in-law and from my niece pointedly looking over the bridge I knew that cache was close to those bees. So I kept one eye on the bees and the other searched for the cache. I found it but not before a major hint from my sister-in-law who said that the hint given on geocaching.com about the cache being camouflaged meant that it blended in with its surroundings and that it was not the camouflage of greens or tans I was thinking of.

The cache blended in very well. It was painted the same color silver as the bridge. I kind of think whoever painted the bridge did it when the cache was on it and painted right over the top of it because the paint looked pretty fresh.

I didn’t get bit either time because I was careful and because I had a good coating of insect repellent on.

We were just getting going so we biked a couple miles up the road to look for some more caches.

The next one was in the woods and before we got 30 feet in I was getting bit like crazy (so much for the insect repellent being effective - even a second coating of it didn’t help much). We found the cache but I headed back out of the woods while my nieces and nephews went on to find the next one which they got really excited about because it was a fairly big plastic container with a large variety of trinkets inside so they all took one out and put one in from the backpack they carry with a supply of them tucked inside.

While you are reading this I will be at Governor Dodge State Park geocaching. I’m hoping I will be able to report the excursions there as being injury and insect bite free. Cross your fingers for me!

Wrapping things up this week, I figured this would be a great time to post this how to video we recently did on geocaching. I love it because it combines geeky technology (gps) with treasure hunting.

Dorrie’s been posting about geocaching a bunch recently so you can get caught up on just what the heck geocaching is on her “what is geocaching” post and “my first geocache” post.

In the video I cover how to get coordinates for geocaches near you, how to get them into your GPS unit, and then how to follow your GPS to get you close to the cache.

One thing to keep in mind is that a GPS unit is really only accurate to about 30 or 40 feet so once you get really close to where the cache is supposed to be hidden, it’s time to start thinking about where you’d hide the hidden “treasure” if you were doing it.

Hope you enjoyed cool non essential technology week. Dorrie’s back next week and who knows what rockin’ cool stuff she’s got in store for you.

Let me know what you think of the video. If you like it, we just might do more. (hint, use the comments button below)

But last week my middle son and I were visiting my oldest son, who just happens to have a handheld GPS unit, so we went to geocaching.com, looked up the caches near his house, picked one that said it was easy, put the coordinates in his GPS unit, and got on our bikes to head to the park where it was hidden.

I almost made it unscathed, but not quite (I may not have mentioned it yet, but I do seem to be accident prone and somewhat of a klutz). We were on the bike trail leading into the park, which goes around a corner, downhill, and then through an underpass so bicyclists can avoid having to cross a busy road.

I was okay until I got into the underpass where recent rain had apparently washed some of the dirt down onto the paved path. It was about 3 inches deep and had started to harden in some places making it rutted and bumpy. My bike (has road tires) got caught in one of the rutted areas another bike tire had made and tossed me into the the cement wall (yes, the wall won). Luckily I didn’t go down completely and the bruises have since gone away, but I’m pretty sure I’m going to have a scar on my arm where it scraped along the wall.

After that our geocaching adventure got much slower because I was hurt and kind of whiny.

Then when the GPS unit said we were close and we went to lock up our bikes and walk the rest of the way, we realized there was a hornet’s nest on the light pole where we all had just put our bikes (I may not have mentioned this yet either but I’m allergic to bug bites). My oldest son retrieved our bikes, and got a bite on his hand from mad hornet in the process.

Now we had two “walking wounded” in our group of three and we hadn’t even gotten serious about finding the cache yet.

We kept going though.

Once the GPS unit said we were in the area, we started looking under picnic tables, by trees and bushes, and by a grill.

Even though the cache was supposed to be easy to find, 10 minutes later the three of us were still looking. I kept going back to the grill because it seemed to be the most likely spot for the cache to be hidden. My middle son finally got down on the ground, laid on his back under the grill, and found it. It blended right in because it was the same color and looked more like a piece of metal on the grill than a cache.

We got really excited! It was a small cache so we had brought our own pen to write on the log. We had also taken a dollar coin to put in the cache but it wouldn’t fit which really disappointed my middle son. He wanted to put something in so bad so he put in the only thing he had, which was his ticket stub from seeing The Dark Knight the day before (awesome movie!) that he had planned on saving.

Then we took our tired and injured, but happy and successful cache finding bodies back to my oldest son’s house where I washed the debris out of my wounds and my son rubbed a skeeter stick on his bite.

What did we learn?

- Geocaching is lots of fun but a person should be a little more prepared than we were
- Take a first aid kit in a backpack, just in case
- Take a variety of different sized trinkets so unless the cache box is really small, something will fit
- Take a camera to record the happy moment when the cache is found

Truthfully, until I went geocaching myself, I really didn’t understand why people were so excited about hunting for hidden items. I couldn’t believe how excited and giddy we were after we found the cache. People watching us would have thought we found a hundred dollar bill from the way we were acting.

I now have the geocaching bug. Next up is geocaching on a camping trip next week. I still haven’t decided on what GPS unit I want to buy, but luckily the family we are camping with has just gotten a GPS unit so I’ll be able to use theirs and see if I want to buy one like it.

He said, What the (insert word a typical 20 year old male would say) is that?

I said it’s hunting for things other people have hidden, like a scavenger hunt and that it’s fun. The look he then gave me said, “Why would I want to do that and you have no clue what something fun is.”

But after looking for just one hidden cache, he’s hooked and says “Hey this is pretty cool.”

Yeah, I know.

He got me thinking about geocaching in relation to people who haven’t heard of it. I tend to talk to people like they know everything I know and probably don’t notice the confused looks as I ramble on about geocaching and how much fun it is. If you’ve heard the word “geocaching” but don’t know what it is and like me, don’t like to admit when you don’t know what a word means, the best way I can think of to describe it is that it’s going on a “high-tech treasure hunt” outside in the (gasp) dirt, bushes, woods, trails, marshes, cemeteries and anyplace else people can think of to hide caches (a container that contains, at a minimum - a logbook or sheet of paper for people to sign, and often contains small trinkets that people can take one of provided they replace it with something else).

Going geocaching reminds me of when I was a kid in the 70’s, when parents weren’t frightened of letting their kids run around outside at will and didn’t immediately think “West Nile Virus” when a child came home covered in mosquito bites or “Lyme Disease” if they managed to get ticks on them. It was back when the only video game around was Pong and parents didn’t feel guilty about telling their kids to stop bugging them, go outside and play, and don’t come back in the house until it’s dinnertime.

With all the talk today about kids getting fatter and that we need to get them outside to play, it’s a great time to introduce them to geocaching. Buying the equipment is less expensive than buying a video game system, and although children need to have a parent or other responsible adult with them (but a group of teenagers sent out together go to geocaching is perfectly acceptable), it’s a great way to get everyone in the family outside and to get some exercise and spend quality time together.

Okay, the basics.

Like I said earlier, geocaching is a high-tech treasure hunt. People search for caches by their coordinates which means to go geocaching you need a GPS unit. Now, you are probably asking how to find out where caches are located. You’ll need Internet access. If you don’t have it at home, go to your local library and use a computer there. Then go to geocaching.com. You’ll have to register on the site to view the location of caches (pronounced like the its money “cash”), but basic registration is free.

Take a pen when heading out to go geocaching because some caches are so small a pen won’t fit in them. Also take trinkets such as trackable coins known as geocoins, travel bugs (a tag that is attached to an item so the location of that item can be tracked online - often people who place them hope the item will travel from cache to cache, maybe from state to state, and sometimes from country to country), small toys, keychains, little flashlights, and a multitude of other items. In most cases it’s not about finding the item inside the cache (the exception is when some businesses and organizations have contests where prizes are hidden inside - such as Jeep Corporation which has sponsored geocache contests where the prize was a new Jeep).

By now you might be thinking. “How hard can it be to find a cache if I have the coordinates of its location?” Sometimes it’s not hard at all. Other times they are so cleverly hidden that it takes patience, sharp eyes, creative “thinking outside the box” that includes looking at your surroundings and figuring out what looks out of place in order to find the cache. Some caches are painted in camouflage or look just like a rock, are hidden inside a hollow tree, or are very small - no bigger than quarter. Lots of times they are hidden in a 35 mm film roll container. Sometimes it might seem like looking for the proverbial “needle in the haystack” but the challenge of finding it is what’s fun!

Are you wondering if there are caches in the area you live? I wondered that too when I first heard about it. It sounded fun but I didn’t want to spend a lot of money on gas driving to wherever caches are hidden. I live in a rural area, a few miles from a town of 1,700 people - not exactly a bustling metro area. I was amazed to find there are 5 caches within 2 miles of my house. That got me thinking that caches are mostly in the country and not in cities. Wrong. My oldest son, who lives in Lincoln, Nebraska, has 71 caches within a few miles of his house.

There are very few rules for geocaching and they are basic “being considerate” ones. After finding a cache, write in the logbook. If you take something from the cache, put something in the cache. Then put the cache back where you found it. If the cache is gone or has been vandalized go online to geocaching.com and write in the comments because that notifies anyone else who may try to find it that something has happened to it and also lets the owner of it know to either fix, replace, or remove the cache entirely.

Depending on what type of GPS unit you buy, you can plug the unit into your computer and download coordinates for caches directly into it. Otherwise, just jot the coordinates down on a piece of paper.

If you don’t want to invest in a GPS unit until you’ve tried geocaching, ask your friends and family if they have one and borrow it for an afternoon. Otherwise look for a used one. You don’t have to spend $500 on a fancy GPS unit for geocaching to be fun. A $100 unit will work just fine.

What’s not to like about it? You’ll get fresh air, exercise, quality time with family or friends or maybe just with yourself, and you’ll get to experience the thrill of finding something that’s hidden. What’s not fun about that!

So get up off your butt, get outside and enjoy yourself!