Geocaching Guidelines

What is this geocaching thing anyway? I’ve looked hard to find a neat and clear explanation that really describes the fun of the chases, but ‘Treasure hunting for the 21^st century’, and ‘Techno-hiking’ don’t really do it for me. Here’s one from Wise Geek  that is not too bad:

 

GPS device. The cache is usually composed of a small plastic container that houses some small items such as toys or coins.’

Hmmm…still not very exciting. This is a better description from Whatis.com 

‘Here’s one typical geocache hunt: The geographic coordinates of a geocache were described on a Web site, which the users followed to the cache. The geocache consisted of a plastic Tupperware box containing a little notebook, a disposable camera, a printed informational sheet about the location, and several trinkets (a pen, postage stamps, a rubber ball, and a local postcard). The finders were encouraged to write a short note in the notebook, including the weather that day, who was involved on the hunt, whether the cache was easy or hard to find, and any other information they wanted to include. One finder took out the rubber ball and left a little toy car in its place. The finder left a photo of her husband and son in the camera and then placed everything back in the box and rehid it for future geocachers to find. Back home, the finders sent a note to the Web site describing their experience.’

That is pretty much what it is about, but since I spent several hours trying to find an explanation and still haven’t found one that might really catch your interest, I thought it may be better to just walk you through a day’s cache hunting. Watch this space for a step by step  guide.