Geocaching 101. Any fellow Geocacher's on ATS?

I had a new idea tonight.

I collect, and have several other people collecting for me, those airtight coffee containers, and coffee creamer containers. I found one geocache, that was in a painted plastic coffee container, and remarked to my geocaching daughter who's 16, that it was a remarkable sound container. When the weather breaks, I have about 10 containers to cache, plenty of room for bling.

Sorry, If you have no idea what this is about. I'll be making another thread in the survival forum, with Geocaching information, and the types of bling to cache.

My idea? We should be caching survival "bling". The whole game is fun, but there's never been a need to cache anything but trinkets. WHY?

A preliminary to a more useful purpose.

Ok. Let me tell you about Geocaching, if you haven't heard about it before:

Geocaching is an outdoor recreational activity, first played in May 2000,[2] in which the participants use a Global Positioning System (GPS) receiver or mobile device and other navigational techniques to hide and seek containers, called "geocaches" or "caches", anywhere in the world. A typical cache is a small waterproof container containing a logbook where the geocacher enters the date they found it and signs it with their established code name. Larger containers such as plastic storage containers (Tupperware or similar) or ammunition boxes can also contain items for trading, usually toys or trinkets of little value. Geocaching shares many aspects with benchmarking, trigpointing, orienteering, treasure-hunting, letterboxing, and waymarking.

Any smartphone can geocache, you just have to download the app, and it works with iPhone and Android. Turn on the GPS. Have Fun. Search for local caches, and log your finds.

Of course, there is the Geocaching Site to link to, and see if you are interested.

It's great exercise, a challenging interactive puzzle, and a chance for you to explore. There's nothing more satisfying to have searched on your handheld Smartphone, know you are on the proper coords, and after almost giving up, you find the cache. You sign the logbook with your username, and the date, and hide the container exactly where you found it.

I have 6 geocaching "hides", and about 15 log entries per hide. Not everyone geocaches, but those that do love the game, as I do. It's a combination of using technology to find something hidden somewhere outdoors, knowing how to navigate, and the ability to find hidden containers. When THSHTF, Geocaches would be handy to find. We could make more of them, but that is a topic for another thread.

Every geocache I found by GPS, by searching, and looking around for it, I can take you directly there again without GPS. Once you find a geocache, you don't need GPS to find it again. It's in your memory. That's the Geocaching Phenomena. Geocachers have superb memories, that they grow through geocaching.

Ok, enough plugs.

Any Geocachers out there?

reply to post by Druid42


No, but it sure sounds like a hell of a lot of fun. I would like to get involved someday. It just sounds really wholesome and like a great way to keep the mind sharp; it would be fun to get in to the orienteering and GIS/GPS elements. Real treasure-hunting; sounds like a blast.

Cool thread.

Wow,been a few years.
I haven't done it,but I found one of those containers one time.I opened it and went to the website and ripped them a new one because it was on an elevator and it was causing it to shutdown and trap people.

Now,that would be a hard one to find.

So,don't get any ideas from my experience.

Peace,
K

FTA,it was a tin used for chewing tobacco with a magnet on it.

reply to post by Druid42


I'm a geocacher myself! It's good fun and it's something anyone can do! It gives you something to do and it can lead to some cool, and not so cool (read: unusually suspicious) areas.

I'm not sure about the caches I've found being worth much in a survival situation unless you like small tiny trinkets and silly bands though!

Hello there fellow GCeer! We discovered geocaching last year and fell instantly in love with it.

I love the idea of placing survival gear! Sometimes folks will put little first aid kits or carabineers in the regular sized caches that we have found. We normally leave some type of skeleton key as our trademark and the kidos pick out little toys from the cache.

We also use GCing for exploring new places while on vacation. Last time we did, we got to see a lot of really cool stuff around Eureka Springs that we would have never had known about without caching. We ended up spending the majority of our time there out searching for caches instead of the touristy things we had planned and had a great time doing it!

~OkieDokie

reply to post by Mapkar

I'm not sure about the caches I've found being worth much in a survival situation

That's my new idea.

How about caching a bar of soap as bling, or a pack of matches (or lighter) in a sealed Ziploc bag. A bottle of sealed water per cache, or maybe a granola bar. Sure, it may get dated, and stale, but if you were starving, it'd still have calories to give you. Maintenance would ensure recent stocks. Two rolls of toilet paper fit nicely in a creamer jug, watertight, plus room for matches or a lighter. Face it, the first things we'll need is heat and....

Start stocking geocaches with simple survival things. A pair of scissors? TNLN. You get the idea.

]reply to post by OkieDokie

I love the idea of placing survival gear! Sometimes folks will put little first aid kits or carabineers in the regular sized caches that we have found.

Maybe even an old pocketknife, something useful.

Yeah, but you know how to re-find any Geocache you've found, aye? Awesome.

Never heard of it.

But here's an idea.

Start stashing seeds. Spread them over the entire planet, cos when monsanto have destroyed the food supply we're gonna need a backup plan!

reply to post by VoidHawk


A ziploc baggie of corn, bean, and tomato seeds in every geocache eventually? Yes, I can see that.

Great idea. Once sealed, and dry, seeds keep for years. They can stay in the cache until needed.

I haven't done any geocaching since I moved several months ago. Kids & I used to geocache a lot. I'm still on record as cache owner on 3 active caches that are going on 6 or 7 years now. Your post reminds me that I need to contact the site & relinquish those since I'm now many hours away. I wonder what I might find in my new area... Will have to check it out. Caching small useful items in those caches sounds like a good idea. A pocket size prepper or first aid book would be good in some of the ammo can size caches. Those foil emergency blankets, tiny flashlights... Those could be good additions. Just remember that food items & fire-starting materials are highly discouraged in geocaches (safety issues).

(arggghhh... My connection keeps dropping. I hope this eventually posts -- and just once)

Hey, OP!

I love geocaching. Our whole family gets into it.

We went to the army surplus store and bought a lot of the munition boxes (I think that's what they're called). They're square boxes just a tad bigger than a shoe box. We use those to hide larger prizes.

Those types of boxes would be perfect to cache the larger survival items.

S&F

reply to post by AhsoVaniva


Yeah, food and lighters for obvious safety reasons, but to develop a new cache style, such as "survival cache" would denote the type, and what to expect, so I'm not seeing a real issue there.

reply to post by smyleegrl


I've found plenty of those "ammo boxes".

Good to see a few other members are familiar with geocaching, and now that the weather is breaking, I'll be placing several more in my local. I usually get a FTF (first to find) within 24 hours.

Stands up .
Yes My name is Sussy and I'm a geocacher.
I am addicted to it and I cannot see me giving up my addiction for a long time.