I gotta start off by saying that I'm super excited to have found this community! Even though it's not the most active one as can clearly be seen I'm gonna start contributing to it every now and then and hopefully we can get some traction.
Today I have spent practically the whole day Geocaching. I got up early as I always do and since I have a week off for the Winter Holidays I decided to spend my morning solving some mystery caches while my girlfriend Emma was sleeping in. Geocaching is one of the many hobbies we share. I solved a few although I didn't go and find any of them today.
What is Geocaching?
This probably doesn't need explaining for the three whole subscribers that this community has but I'll take the time to explain it for everyone else who might not have heard of Geocaching.
Geocaching is basically a real life outdoor treasure hunt. All over the world there's millions of containers hidden by the enormous community of Geocachers. These are accompanied by a set of GPS coordinates that you need to visit. On site you need to look around for a hidden container. If you find it you get to sign the log book inside and also log the find electronically on their website or app.
Trading items and trackables
The containers often contains trading items. You can take an item and replace it with something else. These items often travel from cache to cache and it's a fun little side activity. This is everything from hairpins to small toys. Usually low cost items. If you're lucky you might even find what's called a Trackable aka. Travel Bug.
These are items with a serial number that's used for tracking. If you find one you can transfer the custody over to yourself and take it with you to be placed in another cache. These usually have a designated goal they want to reach and their travels can be tracked online. This trackable, a memorial coin for my late grandfather, has the goal of crossing all meridians and wants to always be taken further east than where it was found. It has currently been live for 11 years and traveled more than 60,000KM!
Different kind of caches
There are several kinds of caches to be found. The traditional geocaches are the standard ones. They're simply a container placed on a site that you have to find. These can be everywhere from urban areas to deep in the woods. Then there's multi-caches. These often need you to visit several sites where you look for clues that eventually lead you to the final GPS coordinates where the actual cache is.
Mystery caches, as I mentioned earlier in my post, are caches accompanied by riddles or different kind of codes and ciphers that needs to be solved if you are to get the GPS coordinates. These can vary from simple math to seriously difficult ciphers. It's only limited to your imagination. I'll use one that I solved today as an example. In this mystery cache all we get to work with is the image I'm posting below. Can you solve it? The correct answer should be a set of coordinates in the format of N 60° xx.xxx E 005° xx.xxx.
There's several other types of caches but these are the most abundant ones in my experience. Read about the rest here.
That should cover everything one might need to understand what Geocaching is. Let's get to the actual topic of the day.
Discovering pearls of nature
After spending several hours of the morning solving mystery caches it was time to go out into the field. While finding the geocaches in itself is loads of fun what I love most about Geocaching is how it takes me to visit new places. There's so many places I probably never would have visited if it wasn't for Geocaching. Even places that are just a 10 minute bus ride from where I live. I've visited and discovered so many pearls of nature because of Geocaching.
Today was another one of those days. Exploring a new area of our town. This is an area that I've passed with the tram at least a thousand times without actually visiting. I've never had a reason until today to get off at that stop and have a look around.
90 minutes of digging
While we had our sights on upwards of 10 geocaches today we ended up finding only 4. Much due to one of the geocaches which were just impossible to find. It was categorized as a 4.5 out of 5 in difficulty so we knew we were in for a hard one. When we arrived it was quite obvious from the name of the cache and the location we found where it was geographically. It was now just a matter of finding it.
We scoured the area, tugging, pulling and lifting on everything we could find. We started widening our search in case our GPS was a little bit off but the further we got from GZ (Ground Zero) it started making less and less sense. We searched for almost 90 minutes, and we even sent the CO (Cache Owner) a message asking for a hint seeing as there was none. Caches often have hints to help with the search once you're on site.
Just before giving up I decided to just stand and look at the site. To give it one last overlook. Suddenly I noticed a weird little hole in a log that didn't seem natural at all. And lo and behold, there it was! The CO had taken a log, most likely already present at the site, bored a deep hole into it and stuffed the cache attached to a long steel wire inside it. Such a clever hide from the CO.
You can see form the picture and my smile how damn happy I was to finally have found it. After such a long time of looking and almost giving up. I messaged the CO again telling him I had found it and that his cache was in a fine state. No need for maintenance any time soon. I thanked him for a great and cleverly hidden cache and we had a small chat.
Two dead ends
We ended up logging two DNFs (Did not find) today. One seems to have disappeared or been destroyed due to construction so we notified the CO. The other one we'll have to come back for. It was hidden by the same CO as the one we spent 90 minutes looking for and it even had the same difficulty rating. It was right next to quite a busy grocery store so we gave it a quick glance then have it up. We didn't want to start digging through the flower beds in broad daylight with a lot of people watching. Might seem suspicious.
That is another part of Geocaching. Discretion. When looking for a cache you should do so without attracting much attention. Not because Geocaching is a secret. It's meant to protect the cache and containers. Someone seeing you sift through the bushes, finding a box, opening and taking things from it might get suspicious and/or curious. They might end up checking it out and not understanding what it is, thus unknowingly sabotaging the cache and container in the process.
Non geocachers are known as "mugglers" to the community. A term taken from Harry Potter which basically means a person without magical abilities. We want to avoid mugglers to the best of our abilities. It's quite funny.
After giving up on the last cache by the grocery store we called it a day. The sun was going down and the cold was setting in. Time to head back home.
I would love to see more Geocaching storys here on HIVE! It would be awesome if this community could get some traction and attract some more users. I'm subscribed, will contribute every now and then and keep an eye on the community.
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