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Geocachers in the house?
Hello Tildes geocachers! Found any good caches lately? Going in any good trips? Going to the Greater Bay Area Mega at the end of the month? I would love to know, and meet you online! I’d love to learn more about any interesting caches you’ve found lately and maybe we can discuss puzzles and challenges here.
A long time ago, I used to be into it, but fell off. Maybe it's time to get back into it since I want to get out of the house a little more.
I got back into it at the end of last year. It’s helped me get out and walk now that I’m done with my allergy shots and am less allergic to grass/the outdoors.
Wait, you can get shots for allergies?
Yes, essentially it's microdosing allergens to build an autoimmune response. Mayo Clinic has a good page on them.
Yeah! It’s a long, drawn out process and your allergies have to be severe enough to make the commitment make sense. It took around 6 years (an extra year added because of covid) to become “allergy free” from grass. I have a severe, asthma-attack-like reaction to grass pollen and I broke out in hives from touching the stuff. Now I just get some wheezing and a little itchy. Still allergic, but it’s so so so much better.
I used to have allergies to the major inhalants (hay fever, mold, pet hair, ...) and also had asthma bad enough that I used a steroid inhaler every day and also packed an albuterol inhaler. I had allergy shots for a few years and eventually quit taking asthma medication. When pollen counts are high I am bothered by allergy symptoms and sometimes take an antihistamine but I've found as I get older I am more sensitive to antihistamines
when pollen counts are high, I get very tired. I actually take a daily asthma med, and occasionally need an inhaler anyway, because of the grass, but overall it’s so much better than it used to be. I’m glad you’re going better, but getting more sensitive to antihistamines.
I managed to do totally great this weekend out in the “middle of nowhere” in the upper edges of the north bay in California.
I also got my first tick on me, and I got rid of it almost immediately. I don’t go outside and apparently ticks are starting to show up on beaches because of climate change so that’s going to be fun.
The beach used to be my nature of choice because of the lack of allergens and I’m sure I’m going to be allergic as hell to ticks if I’m also allergic as hell to any other bug bite I get. Gotta be extra safe.
I'm starting to get in to it a bit with my toddler. I was vaguely aware that there was a cache near my local playground so I looked it up while pushing her on the swing and suggested we go look for treasure. She was pretty stoked and has been excited to go treasure hunting all week so I hope to get out this weekend again!
Yay! Have such a great time! I’m going on a geocaching overnight trip today.
For anyone who wants to, feel free to add me as a friend, my caching name is the same as here!
I used to be really big into geocaching, but have slowed down recently. Usually when I'm camping or exploring a new place I'll save a bunch of caches offline (shout out to the c:geo app on Android, which I think is much better than the official app) to be able to grab them along the way on a hike or while driving around.
The last time I did a lot of geocaching was during the covid lock downs when I visited a bunch of local parks to try and get all the caches around me. Maybe it's time to get back into it again because I have moved since then.
I have never done it but the concept of geocaching fascinates me. I always wanted to try but not sure where to start. I also have a few questions related to it.
Is it usually safe to go off main path for geocaching? Maybe not in a sense that you’ll get lost but since the path is un maintained, is there risk of bug bites, poison ivy, needles, etc.
Do people sabotage geocache site? Is there someone that maintain it?
Geocaching touts itself as a family-friendly game. The idea is people should all work hard to maintain the player board (the earth) and the pieces (the caches). There are usually lots of attributes to various caches that tell you how safe or dangerous they are along with hot easy or difficult they are to find.
Groundspeak works really hard to keep the site operational, if simple, and there is a dedicated global network of volunteer reviewers who keep tabs on various caches in their reviewer area. People are also empowered to manage their caches frequently. It runs surprisingly well, but if you have a looser reviewer Area, caches may be left alone longer than necessary. It also really depends on the cachers in your area how frequently geocaches are found. The Bay Area, where I am, is really well moderated and upkept, but it really depends. I hope that helps!
If you're nervous about going off-path a bit at first, there are two ratings. One is 'difficulty' which gives you an idea about how hard it is to find a cache (or how hard the riddle is if it's a mystery), the other one is 'terrain'. This tells you how difficult the location is, so a 1.0 is typically wheelchair-accessible and a 1.5 is near/on a path most often, while a 5.0 might involve climbing a tree with appropriate gear (my favorites!). Also, there are attribute-tags, so you might want to steer clear of those marked 'ticks' as they're usually somewhere in bushes/forest.
However, for me one of the biggest benefits to geocaching was getting more comfortable in the outdoors. I used to be super afraid of spiders, dark areas, tall grasses and going off-path in general, but I've gotten a lot better. Nothing worse than 2-3 ticks in the last years (get the FSME vaccine if you have ticks in your area!). Also, going off-path improved my balance and coordination and strengthened the muscles/tendons in my feet - I no longer worry about a sprained ankle.
I've geocached on-and-off for over a decade. It was a major feature of my childhood; the desire to find new geocaches took me progressively further and further from my house on elaborate cycling adventures before I could drive. At one point, I had found every single geocache in my hometown. I play much less these days, but I still maintain all my legacy hides from the glory days. Unfortunately, I live in city now, where the geocaching culture is weaker.
I've done a little recently! It's definitely not the same with the app as when I was a kid. I remember having a guidebook and a crappy little yellow GPS.
I appreciate how much better it’s gotten in the 8.5 (9?) years since I took it up and stopped for a looooong break. GPS just keeps getting better and that makes it so much more fun for me.
I probably had the same yellow Garmin GPS! That thing almost got me shot a number of times as a teenager in rural Ohio. People do not like when you stumble on their land looking for a geocache.
Wow, yes!! That was exactly it. What a throwback
I havnt geocached since like 2013 I think, I metal detect and coin roll hunt, maybe I should get back into geo-caching, maybe I'll even put a silver bullion into one that gets lots of traffic
That’s so cool! What is coin toll hunting? How does that work?
You go to the bank, ask for a certain amount of coin rolls, I usually go with one box of dimes, and I keep all the ones I like, which are usually the 100% nickel ones, and silver, once ive looked through every coin, I return them to a different bank, so its a hobby you dont really lose any money in
Boxes come In the following sizes
Nickels $100
Dimes $250
Quarters $500
Some people also look for errors, which can be worthmore than face
Whoa
Got back into last year (and got a ton of my friends into it as well). Seems pretty active in my city! Grabbed a few while I was visiting California a few weeks ago and the logs were a lot more sparse. Can't wait until my son is a little older and I can take him caching, his name is already on a few logs from when my wife and I were caching while she was pregnant last year haha.
Used to be really into it with my family. We traveled a lot and it was fun to look for some caches around the world. As you can imagine, some parts of the world have very very few, but that made it only more special when we found them.
It's been a long while though. We settled back in our home country. Have some other hobbies that take up our time. We've lived here since 2020 and I don't think we've look for a single one here! Goodness. I'm gonna have to rectify that.
I recently found a geocache stash while hiking in the forest along a historic (and protected) shepherd's trail dating back to the middle ages. It was stuffed into a hole in a large, house sized rock that had fallen off the mountainside. It was a plastic bag within another plastic bag. Inside that was a hard plastic case with various small plastic items like small kids toys and bits of other plastic things like ribbon and it included a piece of paper stating that it was an official geocache.
Needless to say, I was less than impressed to discover people were willfully putting plastic trash into the natural environment for entertainment. The sun here is very destructive to plastic. Those bags and the plastic case will be falling apart within a year due to UV alone, and small animals had already been nibbling on the bags.
It kind of looked like people had left whatever small plastic crap they had on hand as an addition to the cache, or the original hider simply thought a bunch of plastic trinket material would be an appropriate addition to the otherwise plastic-free nature. I left it there, but to be honest, it didn't feel right.
Having never seen a geocache other than this one, I would like to ask, is this normal?
I don't geocache but my understanding is that caches aren't left there for years to rot. There's a degree of maintenance involved and they're relatively frequently checked on, so there's not the risk of the plastic case falling apart without being replaced or removed (though ofc animals nibbling on plastic bags is still bad and is worth rethinking)
Those are swag items typically meant for trading. Peolle out things in and take them out as sort of treasures to commemorate your find. If they’re well-hidden, the plastic doesn’t degrade. The biggest thing is making sure everything stays dry so I can see why there would be so many plastic baggies. I’m sorry it looked like trash! One of the tenets of geocaching is to leave the area better/cleaner than you found it and to take trash with you. I always travel with dog poop bags to make sure I have some sort of trash bag to clean up as we go. This overnight I’m taking tonight, we’ve packed a few trash bags and gloves and a grabber to make sure we can get as much garbage as we can.
I made a goal to find a cache every day for 100 days. When I reached that goal I stopped completely. Totally burned myself out on it lol. Maybe someday I will start back up. For now, I just maintain the one I hid 12 years ago.