Modern Buddy

The last thing I need is another nerdy pasttime, yet… Recently started geocaching. Anyone else?

This all got started at Amerivespa (scooter related!) when a pal from Austin me me for lunch, then said "Oh, there's a cache near here I want to get." I knew about geocaching but had never found one. It was kind of fun.

Then on vacation in the Outer Banks with my niece and nephew, thought it might be fun to take them out and find some. We wound up not doing it (too freakin' hot!) but in planning to do it, I had to explain the whole thing to my wife, who was suddenly curious. So a few weeks ago, we went and found one near us. She remained curious, so I thought it might be fun to spend a day on scooters cache hunting. (Also a way to entice her to ride more often, heh.)

Yesterday was our first day of scootercaching. We just picked a place for lunch then pulled up some nearby caches. We'd already loaded our scoots with some trinkets and other stuff to leave in caches.

Overall, a fun day of scootering. After a few finds, we decided to just ride somewhere further out—there were many within a small radius and we were riding a few blocks, stopping, going again.

I'd love to try to do some sort of Scootercache hunt but haven't quite worked out the logistics.

there is something similar to geocaching called letter boxing. Its like geocaching only you don't need a gps to do it. Just a compass and some skill with following directions My wife and son have done it and they like it quite a bit. With letter boxing, rather than leaving a trinket, everyone has thier own stamp. Once you find the letter box there is a notebook inside that you put your stamp in.

ericalm wrote:The last thing I need is another nerdy pasttime, yet… Recently started geocaching. Anyone else?

This all got started at Amerivespa (scooter related!) when a pal from Austin me me for lunch, then said "Oh, there's a cache near here I want to get." I knew about geocaching but had never found one. It was kind of fun.

Then on vacation in the Outer Banks with my niece and nephew, thought it might be fun to take them out and find some. We wound up not doing it (too freakin' hot!) but in planning to do it, I had to explain the whole thing to my wife, who was suddenly curious. So a few weeks ago, we went and found one near us. She remained curious, so I thought it might be fun to spend a day on scooters cache hunting. (Also a way to entice her to ride more often, heh.)

Yesterday was our first day of scootercaching. We just picked a place for lunch then pulled up some nearby caches. We'd already loaded our scoots with some trinkets and other stuff to leave in caches.

Overall, a fun day of scootering. After a few finds, we decided to just ride somewhere further out—there were many within a small radius and we were riding a few blocks, stopping, going again.

I'd love to try to do some sort of Scootercache hunt but haven't quite worked out the logistics.

Ive been a GPS geek for about 15 years since I first installed one on my boat in Washington. I've had one on my scooter for years...and my wife and I have both been intrigued by geo OR scootercaching.

Where do we find lists of different caches? Are the caches local,regional, etc. I assume they are found n the internet....?

I did some geocaching last winter and it is very entertaining. I find it hard to do in the summer in Arizona, but with the temps cooling down, I am looking forward to picking it up again. I always have 15 to 20 saved into my GPS, so it usually just happens that if one is close by, I will sign the book. There is always room for more nerdy hobbies, geek away

ASUDeadhead wrote: There is always room for more nerdy hobbies, geek away

Haha! Scooters. Just saying.....

excellent idea. are you using your iphone to find the cache's?

a few years ago I used to run with a group called the Hash House Harriers. It was part scavenger hunt, part kegger and some running. I got this GPS watch so if I got lost I could find my way back to where my car was parked but that's when I first heard about caching. I could use that watch to find GPS coordinates. I always envisioned creating a cache of mixed CDs and requiring a mix be left As with most of my plans - I never followed through. I've never once looked for a cache.

Bottomline: I think scooting and caching sounds fun!

https://www.geocaching.com/

There are apps for most GPS-equipped phones but if you're using a GPS device, I guess you use the website to record coordinates for various caches then head on out.

I went on a long afternoon ride today, doing some route planning and wandering. Stopped at several places along the way just to check and see what was around. There are pretty much caches all over in the city, all the parks and hiking trails, all over.

I didn't find any today but bookmarked several to snag later.

Now… how nerdy is this? Well, Geocachers refer to people near a cache who might get suspicious or curious as "Muggles," something I have a little trouble doing when posting my logs.

I have a GPS for hiking, and I just plug it in through USB and download the coordinates of caches near where I will most likely be running errands. It is super easy and makes every trip out of the house more of an adventure.
Happy caching, don't get caught by the muggles.

ASUDeadhead wrote:and makes every trip out of the house more of an adventure.

I find that almost every time I mount up and hit the road beomes an adventure! I tried geocaching once, but my phone was giving me issues (nothing new with the Palm Pre). I gave up too easily, but looks like something to try again.

im a winter geocacher but yep i plan on turning my scoot into a cache itself
two great hobbies

I too tried it, without much success.
As a Land Surveyor I've used GPS equipment with 'sub-millimeter' accursey The Magellian hand held I got was +/- 3 meters. I always had problems with the 'final hide' I'd be right on top of it and still not find it!! (Duh factor I suppose)
My GPS (Gustaff) commited 'Hari-Kari' at Camp Jeep in '07 Haven't replaced it yet.
What I did like to do however, was when on trail rides with the Jeep Club is then down load the trip-track onto Topo maps after we got home and have a record of the trip, trails, elevation information and etc. I would mark on the maps where people got stuck, needed strapped and/or winched out and than tag the specific spots and co-ords with photos, made for great talk at the next get-together.

We've been Geocaching for about 4 or 5 years now. We've never done it via scooter, though, because we have a kid along with us. It's been great fun and we've been to all sorts of places we'd never go to otherwise. We usually take along a handful of cache descriptions whenever we go on vacation, both as something to do and a way to explore outside of the beaten tourist path. Portland is the birthplace of Geocaching, so for our 100th find, we made of point of visiting the original cache. We've also placed a couple of caches in parks near our home.

pdxrita wrote:We've been Geocaching for about 4 or 5 years now.

I started with it in '04

pdxrita wrote:We usually take along a handful of cache descriptions whenever we go on vacation, both as something to do and a way to explore outside of the beaten tourist path.

Have done that as well, Cape May, NJ and while at Camp Jeep in '07

pdxrita wrote:Portland is the birthplace of Geocaching,

Something I did not know, thanks for the 'trivia'

pdxrita wrote:for our 100th find, we made of point of visiting the original cache.

Cool Idea!
A couple I know through my Jeep Club has only been at it for a little more than a year have almost 1500 finds, they're obsessive about it!!!!

I have been Geocaching for a couple years on my scooter. For the past 6 months on using my iPhone. Geocaching can use a lot of gas going from one place to another. That is why the scooter is such a great idea. The gas savings are wonderful. In addition, the scooter can often go places the car can't get to very easily. What a great way to combine 2 fun hobbies into 1.

Honestly, half the fun for me at this newbie stage is just being somewhere and looking at the map of all of the caches around me. It's somehow entertaining to think about all of these things secreted away, out of sight yet often in plain sight at the same time.

I have a few ideas for scootering-related caches, like series along certain routes.

I also thought it might be cool to hide a series along several of LA's MTA subway stops. The subway is sorely under-utilized here in the land of many cars. Though folks could drive from cache to cache, I'd like to encourage them to buy a day pass and visit some of the interesting neighborhoods along the way.

I've been doing some caching with my wife and kids for about three years now. For the first one we ever found we looked for a half hour and found nothing. My wife sat on a stump to think (rest that is). I noticed the stump looked out of place so I flipped it over (wife moved first). It had a small door on the bottom hiding a hollowed out area. SCORE, 1st cache. The best thing about caching is that it gets us to visit places we would never, ever,ever have otherwise gone.

uh oh, I just started an account. What have you started, Eric?!?!?!!?

VoodooKitty wrote:uh oh, I just started an account. What have you started, Eric?!?!?!!?

Bwahahahaha! Soon we'll have an army of scootercachers!

thanks Eric, now I have a possible new addition. I found my first outside my apartment complex on my walk to work at 5:30 this morning (still dark), and I found one within a few hundred feet of the firestation. I'll have to take my portable radio and go on the hunt out back after lunch.

I prefer letter boxing to geocaching. I like carving my own stamp, it is more personal that way.

http://www.letterboxing.org/

From Wiki: (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Letterboxing) The origin of letterboxing can be traced to Dartmoor, Devon, England in 1854.

iMoses wrote:I prefer letter boxing to geocaching. I like carving my own stamp, it is more personal that way.

http://www.letterboxing.org/

From Wiki: (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Letterboxing) The origin of letterboxing can be traced to Dartmoor, Devon, England in 1854.

There are actually hybrid letterboxing/geocaching caches.

I like the personalization idea. Some geocachers have done this with stickers. I get tons of free printing offers from Vistaprint.com. I may do up some address labels to use as my scootercaching stamp. If I do, I'll upload a template here. Maybe we can have a National Scootercacher Alliance.

(Yes, half the reason I get involved with things is the various accoutrements…)

BTW, my username on geocaching.com is scooterism.

ericalm wrote: I like the personalization idea. Some geocachers have done this with stickers. I get tons of free printing offers from Vistaprint.com. I may do up some address labels to use as my scootercaching stamp. If I do, I'll upload a template here. Maybe we can have a National Scootercacher Alliance.

(Yes, half the reason I get involved with things is the various accoutrements…)

BTW, my username on geocaching.com is scooterism.

YES and YES!!

and I'm voodookitty, just like here

ericalm wrote:Maybe we can have a National Scootercacher Alliance.

I'm in!

And I'm CGough691

I've never found one but I've been a member since 2005! I'm jijifer there, too.

iMoses wrote:I prefer letter boxing to geocaching.

I like watching letterboxed films on my TV. It's less work.

TVB wrote:

iMoses wrote:I prefer letter boxing to geocaching.

I like watching letterboxed films on my TV. It's less work.

LOL...
BTW I'm RedSeasDivider in my letterboxing life. I was given a "Moses" action figure as a birthday prank/gift by my coworkers. So I used it as the basis of my letterboxing stamp.

KABarash there as well........

ericalm wrote:

Bwahahahaha! Soon we'll have an army of scootercachers![/quote]

We're in! We are KU CATS!
only been caching a few weeks, but we're hooked. We have time set aside on Sundays for caching. This past Sunday we found three and got stumped by our first "nano"cache. I feel quite confident that my 10yo figured out the hint . . . but no find. We will return on Wednesday . . . Leap Day. Must find a cache on Leap Day. . . we will leap with Joy when we find that Nano. . .

This is really good timing on finding this thread as we were just talking about how we'd like to leave our mark at the caches. A stamp had entered our minds. . . we saw someone use a laminated type return address label. . . that was cool, vista print does have lots of options . . .

pdxrita wrote: We usually take along a handful of cache descriptions whenever we go on vacation, both as something to do and a way to explore outside of the beaten tourist path.

It's funny how quickly things have changed since I wrote this post, 2ish years ago. The idea of bringing along a handful of cache printouts sounds so quaint now, since I can just pull up caches on my phone. Now, whenever I'm traveling, or even if I'm just wandering around somewhere with some time to kill, I pull up c:geo on my phone and check to see if there are any caches nearby. In fact, I'm staying in a hotel south of Seattle, near Boeing, this week. Think I'll check for caches. Maybe there's some cool airplane-related cache nearby.

I've been caching since 2006. I've only found 718 in 20 states and in 3 countries. Just nabbed 11 this weekend off the bike trail from Silver Strand State Beach to Coronado Island. Geocaching will take you places you never would have gone otherwise. These places may be in your own town. Sure looking for plastic buckets in the bushes is odd, but where and how they are hidden is what the fun is all about. The last 3' is the real test for many.

jasondavis48108 wrote:there is something similar to geocaching called letter boxing. Its like geocaching only you don't need a gps to do it. Just a compass and some skill with following directions My wife and son have done it and they like it quite a bit. With letter boxing, rather than leaving a trinket, everyone has thier own stamp. Once you find the letter box there is a notebook inside that you put your stamp in.

I've done letter box before. I enjoyed making my own stamp. Also you can put a traveling box within a box. The traveling kind gets taken by the finder and they place it into the next box they find.

I never vent looking for stuff but my 1st GPS was my Hp Ipaq with bluetooth mouse and a proggie . It said street names which was totally cool because in those days only $600 devices did that and average GPS unit cost $300.

I bought a Magellan eXplorist GC, which is one of the cheapest paperless GPS's you can get. Fun stuff, but I suck at finding caches. SO many are in openly public places, I always feel awkward digging around for them and give up quickly. My wife is getting interested as well... hopefully we can do more with it this Spring.

My Ural makes an ideal cache-mobile. I can go off-road if I need to, and it parks anywhere. I even have it registered as a Travel Bug, so if you ever see me out and about, you can "find" me.

~SM

KABarash wrote:I too tried it, without much success.
As a Land Surveyor I've used GPS equipment with 'sub-millimeter' accursey The Magellian hand held I got was +/- 3 meters. I always had problems with the 'final hide' I'd be right on top of it and still not find it!! (Duh factor I suppose)
My GPS (Gustaff) commited 'Hari-Kari' at Camp Jeep in '07 Haven't replaced it yet.
What I did like to do however, was when on trail rides with the Jeep Club is then down load the trip-track onto Topo maps after we got home and have a record of the trip, trails, elevation information and etc. I would mark on the maps where people got stuck, needed strapped and/or winched out and than tag the specific spots and co-ords with photos, made for great talk at the next get-together.

For real? Glad to meet another surveyor online!

Hehehe, just y'all wait until the missiles start flying over in the Sandbox, and the DoD presses the Big Red Button that 'degrades' the GPS system back to Clinton-era accuracy.

Letterboxing will be all the rage again.

There is a way to deal with "selective availability." It's programmed into survey-grade devices. I don't think it affected autonomous devices, or at least not enough to make you run off the road.

So I signed up on the Geocaching site there.. Gatorpie89.

I'm disappointed, there have only been, I think, four challenges and whatnot in the last year in my area. The current one is take a picture with the Harmony Mills building and post it up, it's kind of sad, because it's a big ass building, and when I was going to classes on campus, I drove past it every single day.

No one does the challenges. Geocaching.com tried to come up with a new spin on geocaching and it failed. There are plenty of regular caches in your area: http://coord.info/map?ll=42.91281,-73.89542&z=12

How about setting up a deer cam at the cache so you can get pictures of the visitors? Could be fun.

Ok so I think I'm might give this whole geocaching a go.
I have one problem. I don't have a GPS yet.
So can anyone point me toward a good GPS for a starter?

Garmin eTrex series are great. You could also purchase the Geocaching app if you have an iPhone and use it but there are some drawbacks. I like a dedicated GPS unit when out in the middle of nowhere.

Garmin has also kind of copied Geocaching.com with their own Opencaching stuff which is the same as geocaching.

If you have an Android phone, there's a free Geocaching app, C:Geo. Looks like there's also a free app for iPhone, Geo Bucket. The downside to using a phone GPS vs. purchasing a dedicated one is that the phone GPS's tend to be a bit less accurate. But even with a good GPS, we've frequently found ourselves 20 feet or so away from the cache when the GPS said we were on top of it. That's part of the fun, though. The GPS just gets you into the area and then you have to use your geosenses to figure out where someone might hide something.

What is this don't have a clue what you are talking about?

kimmiekarma wrote:What is this don't have a clue what you are talking about?

treasure hunting!!
Plus its even more fun on a scooter.

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pdxrita wrote:If you have an Android phone, there's a free Geocaching app, C:Geo. Looks like there's also a free app for iPhone, Geo Bucket. The downside to using a phone GPS vs. purchasing a dedicated one is that the phone GPS's tend to be a bit less accurate. But even with a good GPS, we've frequently found ourselves 20 feet or so away from the cache when the GPS said we were on top of it. That's part of the fun, though. The GPS just gets you into the area and then you have to use your geosenses to figure out where someone might hide something.

I would say that's about as good as autonomous GPS is likely to get. Even with my survey-grade equipment, a "float" can be off 6, 10' or even more feet horizontally. It takes a "fix" to get less-than-inch accuracy and that requires a survey-grade machine receiving a constant stream of correction info from a CORS station.

It's not that it CAN'T be dead-on. But if it is, you've just been lucky.

It doesn't matter how good your GPSr is when the person hiding the geocache doesn't take the time to get "good" numbers. Once you're within 10' you need to turn off your GPSr and use your brain. Don't do the bumble bee dance. I've found alot of caches just using google maps on my blackberry.

Oh my....I'm ashamed to think how long it's been since we've geocached. I keep re-upping my forum dues, though, just because I know they need the money.

My name on there is Chosenlass. Last time I looked, a bunch of my finds had disappeared, so I have no idea what's up with that.

I'm in St Louis area, so if there's any interest in a meetup or whatever, let me know!