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Geocaching Tips Make a waypoint for your car or starting location before heading out. This is important! It's easy to get turned around and disoriented when looking for a cache. Do yourself a favor and mark your starting location. No matter how close the cache seems to be. Better safe than lost. (Just think how embarrassed you'll be if you have a GPS in your hand and still can't find your way back to the car!) Don't over do it! If you haven't been hiking in a (long) while (like me), a 1-1/2 mile hike is longer than you think! Especially where change in elevation (i.e., hills) is concerned. Take it easy. Rest often. Remember one of the reasons your out here is to enjoy yourself! Take some water with you. Take twice as much water as you think you'll need. You won't regret it! Learn to recognize Poison Oak, Poison Ivy and Poison Sumac. Teach your children to recognize these plants too. Avoid them! Even if you are "immune," you can still get the oils on your skin and clothes and pass them to others who may not be "immune." When searching for a cache, it's reasonable to assume that the cache is not located in a patch of poison oak/ivy. If the way to the cache is through poison oak/ivy, chances are there is a better approach. Back off and have a look around. Beware of ticks. Ticks can be more or less of a problem depending on the type of terrain, ground cover and season. Check yourself (and your kids) when you get back to the car or home. Check your dogs too! Figure out where you are going before you get there. Check out MapQuest and then look at some topographic maps. Aerial photography (TerraServer or MapQuest) can give you some good information too (like potential approach routes or nearest parking areas). Many park and recreation areas offer some kind of area map. Get one! Your GPS will get you to the cache, but not always by the best (or fastest) route. Plan your hike and get as close as you can (ideally within 1/4 of a mile) before letting the GPS guide you in over the final approach. Route choice is still an important part of the hunt. Resist the urge to follow the GPS arrow slavishly. Stay on trails as long as you can. Walk along the trail a ways to see if it will turn in the direction you want to head. Remember that it is unlikely the cache hider took a hard way into the cache location! Another reason to stay on trails as long as you can is to reduce the amount of impact Geocaching will have on the area near the cache. Some caches can be hard to find. Trust your GPS. (Maybe double-check that you entered the coordinates in correctly.) But when you get close (less than 20 feet or so), your GPS can't help you that much. Look around for likely hiding spots or "stand out" terrain features. Switch hats and think - where would you hide a cache? You'll find it. Take your time. Leave the cache as you found it. Resist the urge to "improve" the location or placement. It's okay to move the cache if it is obviously out of place (like out in the open), but otherwise you should replace the cache where you found it. Leave the cache in as good as, or better shape than you found it. This means when swapping items, try to swap items of equal value and quality. This is a subjective thing, but taking all the "good" stuff and leaving "junk" is just rude. Put the cache back where you found it and replace any cover or camouflage. The next hunter to come along wants to have as much fun (or frustration!) finding the cache as you had! Log your results at www.geocaching.com. Let us all know how much fun (or trouble) you had in finding (or not) the cache. Log your failures as well as your successes! The cache hider as well as future cache hunters would like to know if there is a problem locating the cache. Maybe it's been looted, plundered or stolen. But know one will ever know if failures aren't logged. Javascript ROT13 Decoder |
