Basically, people hide stuff and post the location coordinates on the internet and with a handheld GPS you go looking for the hidden item.
Once you find the item, you sign the log and put the "cache" back for another person to find. You can hide your own if you wish.
This has become extremly popular as there are over 800,000 hidden around the world. Just within a ten mile radius of our home there are hundreds hidden.
We have an early Christmas present to ourselves that we just had to open. In fact, Sue's best friend Beth, forked over some pretty heavy cash months ago to help purchase the GPS.
We got a pretty good one with lots of bells and whistles. Now the big project will be to learn all the functions.
Pinpoint Your Location — and Direction
With the GPSMAP 60CSx, you can find your way in almost any conditions:
High-sensitivity GPS receiver gives you improved satellite reception even in heavy tree cover or deep canyons
Barometric altimeter provides extremely accurate elevation data
Electronic compass can determine your heading and direction, even when you're standing still
IPX7 waterproof case can withstand an accidental dunk in the water and still perform
Large, color TFT display makes viewing the screen easy, day or night
Built-in Americas autoroute basemap, including highways, exits and tide data, gives you automatic, turn-by-turn directions
Add More Detail
The 60CSx comes with a blank 64 megabyte (MB) microSD card, so you can store extra maps from optional MapSource® mapping software. Just connect to your computer with the USB cable, and you can load map data or transfer routes and waypoints. You can even purchase microSD cards that are preloaded with MapSource maps, which means you don't have to connect to your computer. The microSD card slot is located inside the waterproof battery compartment, so you never have to worry about water getting inside.
Our oldest son Ben came over Wednesday afternoon and showed me how to work the basic functions of the unit. We also downloaded the coordinates of a cache that was located about a mile from the house. The mile was "as the crow flies" so we took some back roads as far as we could then walked a short distance to the prize area.
This was a cool adventure. First off, Ben and I had the opportunity to do something together..I alway enjoy that.
The road leading to the cache was a minimum maintance road and was deeply rutted. Good thing we had a four wheel drive to get through.
It was really out in the middle of nowhere.
The gps coordinates get you close to the cache, then you have to look for the item with hints if they were provided. The cache hider said that "rock and roll is here to stay". Hey.....I see some rocks!
And a barrel...Hmmmm, Rock and roll? A barrel rolls! We looked inside and guess what we found?
Inside the cache we found a "traveling bug" that is been moved all over the country. It started out in Michigan several years ago and has been hidden and re-hidden all over the country. The last time it was found was in Florida. Someone moved it here recently and we found it. Now it is up to us to hid it again and keep the bug traveling.
This was a lot of fun. When we returned home we loged in to the geocaching site and reported our findings. We also loaded in three more sites we are going to explore this weekend.
We need all the excercise we can get after all the food we consumed on Thanksgiving!
Tune in again soon for another edition of "Now What Are They Doing?"
2 comments:
It was really fun when we went Geocaching on the maiden voyage of your sweet new GPS unit.
my maiden voyage was on easter island - beat that! when you guys come out next year we'll have to do some geocaching in the mountains. -sv
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