Geocaching

[Trail Wonky]

Nice guys! Sorry I wasn't able to jump in, just crazy busy with work at the moment. Hope it happens because it's a great idea. Kudos to both of you! [emoji1591][emoji12][emoji1591]


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[überlander]

Man I just might head out and start up again, last time I went was with some friends, we were in the middle of nowhere New Mexico everyone in our Jeeps. Did some fun runs down some trails but what stands out is one of the caches (it was a higher difficulty one) was showing at the top of a small mountain, didn't seem like it'd be too hard so we all hop out and start hiking. The mountain was covered in shale and loose bits which made it crazy hard and fun with all the mini avalanches. We reached the top after about 45 mins or so and couldn't find the dang cache! I saw an outcropping sticking and laid belly down on it, edged out and looked upside down under the cliff, the ammo box was hanging from a ledge and I had to swing down to get it. So worth it, got a CIA lanyard, left a challenge coin, definitely the hardest cache I've found and took what felt like Forever to find. The challenge was a blast, my buddies had never been and loved it. The run down turned into surfing on rocks down the shale, anyways thanks for the post hope my story wasn't lame.

 

[Defender 90 Keith]

Man I just might head out and start up again, last time I went was with some friends, we were in the middle of nowhere New Mexico everyone in our Jeeps. Did some fun runs down some trails but what stands out is one of the caches (it was a higher difficulty one) was showing at the top of a small mountain, didn't seem like it'd be too hard so we all hop out and start hiking. The mountain was covered in shale and loose bits which made it crazy hard and fun with all the mini avalanches. We reached the top after about 45 mins or so and couldn't find the dang cache! I saw an outcropping sticking and laid belly down on it, edged out and looked upside down under the cliff, the ammo box was hanging from a ledge and I had to swing down to get it. So worth it, got a CIA lanyard, left a challenge coin, definitely the hardest cache I've found and took what felt like Forever to find. The challenge was a blast, my buddies had never been and loved it. The run down turned into surfing on rocks down the shale, anyways thanks for the post hope my story wasn't lame.

I must admit the difficulty level is not something I've ever looked at- honestly. Geocaching has allowed me to discover places that perhaps I would never have gone to.

 

[Defender 90 Keith]

that's another 24 or so caches clocked up today. grand total so far is 980.


Not as many as some but hey it keeps me off the streets

 

[Sean S]

Congratulations! You are rapidly approaching the 1K milestone. Hopefully, it will be a cool find. I have been caching for seven years and love the sport/obsession. Geocaching and over landing are a perfect match!

 

[Defender 90 Keith]

Congratulations! You are rapidly approaching the 1K milestone. Hopefully, it will be a cool find. I have been caching for seven years and love the sport/obsession. Geocaching and over landing are a perfect match!

Did you read my suggestion that OB should produce a trackable with their motto etc. The website could promote Overlanding and OB ethos

 

[Sean S]

Did you read my suggestion that OB should produce a trackable with their motto etc. The website could promote Overlanding and OB ethos

I would love to see that happen too. Most geocachers have an affinity with trackables. I would definitely buy a few and either release them as First To Find prizes for finding one of my newly published geocaches or pass them out as gifts to my geocaching friends who I think might become interested in joining Overland Bound. They are already overlanding without knowing it. They have offroad vehicles, are continually modifying them to add to their on-the-trail functionality and are going on quite a few geocaching-themed offroad multi-day adventures to seek out hard-to-reach geocaches placed in some of the most beautiful terrain in all of America. To save costs, Overland Bound already have the perfect promotional vehicle in the current Challenge Coin. It looks lovely. I just have not bought any of them......yet! ;)

Like most geocachers, I own a growing collection of geocoins. It is one aspect of the game of geocaching. Most remain unactivated and will remain in my personal collection. For those that I have activated, they travel with me as I venture from one geocache to the next. I use them to track my geo-miles. Some were bought to mark certain events that I either attended such as large Mega events or to mark certain specific dates or milestones in time such as International Geocaching Day, International Earthcache Day, 10 Years of Geocaching, Pi Day, 10,000 finds, 12-12-12, etc. I have never commissioned a personal geocaching coin before and have no idea of the cost but I do know of lots of geocachers who routinely submit their own artwork to coin manufacturers and produce their own personal geocaching coin. Some of their coins will be trackable while others are commemorative.

Ultimately, I guess that it all comes down to cost for Overland Bound. Even without a specialized trackable geocoin, I am still going to buy a few of the gorgeous Challenge Coins. According to the page for it, it is the first in a series of 4 Overland Bound Challenge Coins.

 

[Defender 90 Keith]

Having a Trackable coin made is not something I've looked into. I was just trying to think of ways of promoting both Geocaching and Overland Bound. I have joined other forums in the past but they have faded into obscurity.

on a different note I am attending a Land Rover Day which is a celebration of the Land Rover Defender and the Series models. last year there were in the region of 300 vehicles. it was an awesome sight. I have suggested to the team about ideas of promoting OB. they are looking into cards or stickers which I could hand out at the event in the hope of gaining new members. I do quite enjoy being the Southernmost member in the UK though.

 

[Trail Wonky]

My wife and I are vacationing on the island of Kauai. A few days ago we did a cache that could only be reached by water. We rented a kayak and made the journey. The cache hadn't been found in over a year and a half. Made the find, brought lunch and explored an area of the island we had never been to. It was a great day!


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[Defender 90 Keith]

My wife and I are vacationing on the island of Kauai. A few days ago we did a cache that could only be reached by water. We rented a kayak and made the journey. The cache hadn't been found in over a year and a half. Made the find, brought lunch and explored an area of the island we had never been to. It was a great day!


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There's a cache not far from me which can only be accessed by boat too. It seems a little excessive to hire a boat for 1 cache. I'll have to leave at unfound

 

[Sean S]

There's a cache not far from me which can only be accessed by boat too. It seems a little excessive to hire a boat for 1 cache. I'll have to leave at unfound

I used to feel the same way but as I became more involved in geocaching, I found out by pure accident that sometimes, those remotely placed, rarely found, hard-to-get-to caches can sometimes be the most memorable and enjoyable to find. I also sometimes use these rare caches to mark a special milestone such as finding my 2000th cache. This cache may even have a terrain rating of 5 stars, which is quite sought after by some geocachers. I am not sure if you have heard of the Fizzy Challenge yet, which will have you finding a cache for each combination of Difficulty/Terrain rating possible. It’s sometimes referred to as the “Well-Rounded Cacher” and the “81 Grid” because there are 81 possible combinations. It is just another facet of the game. There are plenty of other long-term challenges out there and from time to time, I will spend some time completing some of the requirements. About two years ago, I completed the Northern California edition of the DeLorme Challenge. The goal is to find a cache on each page (page 22 through page 125, 104 pages in all) in the Northern California DeLorme Atlas & Gazetteer. It was quite the overland adventure visiting some remote parts of the state and picking up pages along the way but I would SO do it again. It was an amazing series of roadtrips spaced out over a few years and I was fortunate enough to even find some rarely found, old geocaches along the way.

 

[Defender 90 Keith]

I used to feel the same way but as I became more involved in geocaching, I found out by pure accident that sometimes, those remotely placed, rarely found, hard-to-get-to caches can sometimes be the most memorable and enjoyable to find. I also sometimes use these rare caches to mark a special milestone such as finding my 2000th cache. This cache may even have a terrain rating of 5 stars, which is quite sought after by some geocachers. I am not sure if you have heard of the Fizzy Challenge yet, which will have you finding a cache for each combination of Difficulty/Terrain rating possible. It’s sometimes referred to as the “Well-Rounded Cacher” and the “81 Grid” because there are 81 possible combinations. It is just another facet of the game. There are plenty of other long-term challenges out there and from time to time, I will spend some time completing some of the requirements. About two years ago, I completed the Northern California edition of the DeLorme Challenge. The goal is to find a cache on each page (page 22 through page 125, 104 pages in all) in the Northern California DeLorme Atlas & Gazetteer. It was quite the overland adventure visiting some remote parts of the state and picking up pages along the way but I would SO do it again. It was an amazing series of roadtrips spaced out over a few years and I was fortunate enough to even find some rarely found, old geocaches along the way.

My biggest qualm with geocaching is the "Premium" members. I know it cost extra and as a result there should be "perks". I feel the majority of Premium members are Retirees and those individuals who are Unemployed. It ssems they sit at home with their coats on and the car engines running, waiting for new caches to be published. They then race out to obtain yet another FTF. As for people like myself who have to fit in Geocaching as a hobby and not a way of life, we are never able to obtain FTF. grrrrrrrrff

 

[Sean S]

My biggest qualm with geocaching is the "Premium" members. I know it cost extra and as a result there should be "perks". I feel the majority of Premium members are Retirees and those individuals who are Unemployed. It ssems they sit at home with their coats on and the car engines running, waiting for new caches to be published. They then race out to obtain yet another FTF. As for people like myself who have to fit in Geocaching as a hobby and not a way of life, we are never able to obtain FTF. grrrrrrrrff

I feel your frustration. It took me well over a year to get my first FTF. I thought that it would never happen. I live in close proximity to some very famous FTF hounds (one has over 2700 FTFs, which might be a world record) and the number one geocacher in the world calls the East Bay home. The geocacher with 2700 FTFs still works but he is fortunate enough to work flexible hours, which allows him the time to pursue his passion of FTFs. The reviewer for our area usually publishes caches either late in the evening or in the very early morning hours of the morning. I live in the highly congested Bay Area and even with those favorable publishing times, I rarely get a chance to join the FTF group for a couple of different reasons: traffic congestion and most parks, trails, etc. are only open during daylight hours, which is not great if you work during the daytime. My chances of being FTF notably improve when I am on vacation or at the weekend. I have been very lucky a few times when I have found myself in the right place at the right time when a cache or series of caches has been published. Since I generally consider myself out of the running when it comes to FTF, I concentrate on other aspects of the game such as solving and finding non-traditional geocaches. Some of those can be very interesting.

 

[Defender 90 Keith]

we just enjoy the whole aspect of it. we have been to parts of our city (and other cities) that we may never have visited if it wasn't for finding caches. last year we did a cruise to the Norwegian Fjords. During the cruise we visited 4 ports and this allowed us to get some International caches. we learnt a huge amount about the cities we visited just simply by reading the information on the caches pages.

I must admit there are many caches which have been placed with little or no imagination. I've been to many back streets or dodgy alleyways purely to find caches. these hardly comply with the whole purpose of Geocaching.

ah well another grumble complete!!

 

[Overland 505]

What I suggested to the higher ups was a travel bug made with an emblem like we have on the vehicles. They seemed interested so we'll see I guess.


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[Defender 90 Keith]

What I suggested to the higher ups was a travel bug made with an emblem like we have on the vehicles. They seemed interested so we'll see I guess.


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Good to see one of my ideas has potential eh

 

[Graeman]

Now that I am back to working steady near home I want to get back into geocaching.

What type of GPS does everyone use? I have a Garmin 62s

 

[Sean S]

Now that I am back to working steady near home I want to get back into geocaching.

What type of GPS does everyone use? I have a Garmin 62s

I use a Garmin Montana 680T as my primary GPS but more and more often, I use the Cachly App on my iPhone to satisfy my geocaching addiction. It's extremely well developed and has many innovative and useful features. A quick video tutorial on how well it works can be found here.

 

[Graeman]

That is cool. I did not know that you could use your phone nowadays.

 

[Defender 90 Keith]

all seems to have gone quiet on the Geocaching front. how are all my fellow caches getting on? I'm almost at my first 1000 finds.