Geocaching with Mark, Paul and Emily
Geocaching is all about finding treasures. Usually its about finding treasures right under your nose. This week we have been out geocaching again (we haven't done it for a while.) We went exploring parts of local area that we hadn't seen before. There are many more geocaches around where we live now.
When you find a treasure in a geocache sometimes all you can do is leave a message. Other times there are real treasures for you to collect. If you do then you have to leave a treasure so that someone else can find it. Ordinary people are called Muggles. Trying to avoid them is part of the fun of geocaching.
This is us out geocaching. I have collected a travel bug - a little key ring with a mission to travel somewhere - taken by its finders some of the way. In this picture we are sending out our first travel bug on a journey to somewhere. We can track where it is on the Internet and receive some pictures of its travels.
Finding some of these can be difficult. Although the GPS can take you within about 3-4 metres of the treasure - you still have to find it - without anyone noticing you.
The Geocaches come in different sizes from the micro caches which only hold a roll of paper to large Tupperware boxes containing many treasures.
Many of the geocaching treasures are found in very pretty places, which makes looking for them worth while.
Here we are getting ready to go and look armed with the instructions, a GPS and our geocaching bag.
Finding the treasure is usually very difficult, as they are well hidden from people who walk by. Sometimes the treasures are hidden inside tree stumps or under bushes and twigs. Some are in plain sight, which makes geocaching so much fun.
This is the GPS we use. It is a Garmin eTrex Vista which we have had for about 4 years. We download the co-ordinates from the web and then move these to the GPS and the PDA. We don't have any good software to do geocaching on the pda at the moment.
Software we are trying out for geocaching.
Last updated July 2, 2006 3:54 PM