I've posted about it a few times in the past. This is my newest hobby that I finally took the plunge on this summer. I missed about 2 months for various reasons but on Labor Day I was in a park and found one and it set me back on the Geocaching trail. Yesterday, I found my 31st cache. Not a huge number compared to others but I feel I'm started to get the hang of things.
Let's get things started off here. If you want to get started go to Geocaching.com for the listings. From there, pick a few and head out. Keep these ideas in your head though. I'm going to leave out the more common sense ideas.
What You'll Need:
You should always keep a pen on you. The smaller caches won't have room for a pen. If you can't sign the logbook, you have no way of verifying that you were there. I would also recommend a flashlight, tweezers, something to probe unseen areas and swag if you want to leave something behind.
Don't be discouraged by early failure:
Easy, medium, hard... they all get a little easier with every cache you'll find. I was telling Kelly the other day that getting from 21-30 was easier than 11-20 which was easier than 0-10. Every find will teach you a little bit more about where to look. When I first started out, I had no idea where to look and I depended on my GPS heavily. Now, I can sometimes pick out the hiding spot without even looking at my GPS.
You'll slowly learn and your mind will start to work like a geocacher. Suddenly you'll arrive at Groundzero and start looking for holes in trees or fallen logs to find your cache. Where in the beginning, you'll probably have to luck into a couple of caches.
Sometimes, just put down the GPS:
I can be guilty of this. You wander around back and forth because your GPS can't zero in on a consistent location. You look away for 2 seconds and see the cache immediately. I would say, I've done that 5 or 6 times already. I'm getting better about stopping and looking instead of staring at the little numbers on my phone.
Research, research, research:
I usually go out early Saturday or Sunday morning and try to polish off a number of caches before the muggle (cacher word for non-players) starts to really get dense. This is nice for picking off a number of high traffic area caches with little interference.
Before that, I plot out my path for that trip. I know in what order I'm going, I read the description completely, read the log entries and look at the placement of the cache on the map. Why do I do this? Because my success rate of finding caches that I go in cold for is much lower. The more I research and prepare, the better my odds are when I go out looking. There's nothing worse than walking a mile to a cache and then having to walk a mile back empty handed. Research will increase your odds of success.
Dress appropriately:
This was my first big lesson as a cacher. Wear pants!!!
No, seriously... wear pants. If you're going off the beaten trail at all, which most caches in the woods will require, you're going to want pants. You're going to be walking through some thick underbrush at times in the summer and it will save you a lot of bug bites and possible poison ivy to do this.
I always wear pants when I plan to geocache in the woods.
Sometimes, the cache just isn't there.
This has happened to me, I think twice so far. Went up to a cache, didn't find it and was confused because that was the only possible location it could be in. Left, came back at a later date and the cache is suddenly there. I have no idea why this happens when there's nothing in the logbook about it being gone. It just happens.
Read the last several log entries:
This will save you a massive headache. If the last several cachers have logged Did Not Finds on this cache, there's a good chance it's gone. If no one has logged anything on the cache in several years, it might be gone too. If the last post is asking for owner maintenance then you might want to hold off for a few days until the owner fixes it. The logs exist for a reason.
There are some helpful hints that might not be super apparent at first. I hope this helps anyone that is thinking about going after their first cache soon or who has just started finding a couple.
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