What we will cover in this article:

• What is geocaching (part 1)
• What equipment you need to get started (part 2)
• Now What – Finding caches on line (part 3)
• Picking a good first cache to hunt (part 4)
• The hunt (part 5)
• Caching with kids (part 6)
• Advanced geocaching (part 7)

Photo by LollyKnit

(Part 4) – Picking a good first cache to hunt:

All caches are rated 1-5 stars in difficulty and terrain. For your first hunt you are going to want to pick a cache with a low rating, something between 1 or 2 stars would be good. Also you are going to want to pick a cache with a larger container, no micro or small caches they will frustrate you in the hunt.  It would also be helpful to pick a cache that is away from populated areas this way you can have a leisurely hunt and not worry about muggles. A muggle is a non-geocacher, you want to make sure a muggle never sees you remove or replace a cache.  When a non-cacher sees someone remove a box from a secret hiding place and rummage through the contents and put it back in said hiding place it’s gets their curiosity flowing.  They will take it out, look it over, and hopefully realize what it is and put it back. But sometimes people are not so nice and the cache can become vandalized or stolen.  Now this location has been ruined for other players. Nothing is worse that coming to a muggled cache site and seeing cache contents strewn about and the cache container smashed to pieces.

Now that you have picked a cache lets get it loaded on your GPSr.  Different brands and models of GPS units have different loading instructions, it would be best to look at your user manual for loading waypoints to your specific model. Here I will just go over the basics…

The coordinate info is only available so I hope you signed up for that free account.  The coordinates of the cache are located at the top of the cache page just below the title and are formatted something like this “N 42° 21.138 W 072° 40.334” you can enter the coordinates in to your GPSr manually (did you read that manual?), or better yet you can download the GPX file and transfer it to your GPSr using the software that came with your unit. Even better yet if you have a Garmin GPSr you can download Garmin Plugin Communicator and use the “send to GPS” button and it will do all the work for you.

Now it would be a good idea to print the cache page. The info on the cache page will help you in the hunt once you get to the cache site as well as help you find the cache page again so you can log your visit on line after you find that cache…

Part 5 – comming soon!

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