25 August 2010

The KFA goes GeoCaching

| johnboy
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[First filed: Aug 24, 2010 @ 13:08]

phone shot

Hidden all over Canberra are hidden caches. There are hundreds of them. Bright eyed enthusiasts scurry between them peering at hand held devices and secreting coded messages for each other.

But it’s not as sinister as it might seem at first hand.

Part orienteering, scavenger hunt, game of hide and seek, with a whiff of the flash-mob it’s Geocaching, and quite a lot of it happens in this town.

When I first heard about it I was interested, but didn’t have a GPS (an essential tool).

But these days even midrange mobile phones have GPS so I thought I’d give it a go.

$13 got me the dedicated geocaching app which immediately alerted me to nearby caches and I was off with George the Kelpie of Few Accomplishments.

Heading up Dryandra Street I quickly realised I was going to have to head into the woods.

the grove

But walking from the road to the GPS location I realised there was a bit of a path. The sort of thing you wouldn’t notice if you didn’t have reason to be going that way.

Walking up the hill I reached the point where the GPS said I should be, looked around, and there it was!

Geocache

Risking the redbacks I removed the rocks and there was a little blue piece of tupperware.

cache

And inside was a little notebook for recording my passing, a pen which had ceased to work, some playing cards and a pin.

Apparently it’s normal to take and leave things between caches.

cache contents

For months people have been trekking up into the trees, scrabbling around by the side of Barry Drive, and recording it.

notepad

So I did the same.

notepad added to.

Then it was a case of putting the rocks back in place, telling the software I’d found it, and walking the dog back down the hill.

I don’t know what I really achieved.

But in a daft sort of way it’s rather fun.

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Muttsybignuts9:24 am 26 Aug 10

Deano said :

We did some geocaching on a recent trip to Griffith. Lots a caches at various rest stops and other interesting places along the road. It was a great way to keep the kids enthused and break up the trip with stops at places where you wouldn’t normally stop. Griffith has a good selection of caches that take you to various places of interest around the town.

Doesn’t using a GPS take some of the mystery out of it though?

Even though you have the coordinates, can zoom in on the location in Google Maps and have a GPS that can lead you to the spot, you still have to get out there and physically get to the location. For many caches in out of the way places, just getting there is an adventure.

What was in the Griffith caches? Pot or tomato tins full of E?

The nerd in me went W00T! when I finally decided to read this post.

This is actually something I can get my nerdy kids into – they read the posts here earlier tonight and got EXCITED! We had a look at the site and got more happy. Then the kids realised that there is no “pot o’ gold”. That took some explaining. All good now.

The fact that it is like a treasure hunt got my kids hooked, the fact that the treasure is mostly cerebral took some discussion….they are getting there.

I do believe that my kids are in and me too.

We will do it without a GPS – family decision. Going to use maps and ESP 😉

growingupisoptional3:17 pm 25 Aug 10

Been doing caching for a few years now, and it was excellent when we moved to Canberra.
Helps you find your way around all the local interesting points while having fun with the kids in the bargain.
It’s about 1.3million times better than a tourist guide.

As for extreme geocaching does caching by hot air balloon sound extreme? I’m not sure.
We took off from old parliament house and landed on Springbank Island just west of the Museum and found the cache there called mount springbank.
If you interested there are photo’s here http://www.geocaching.com/seek/cache_details.aspx?guid=4a31dc44-fc7d-42ec-9bb4-15c0f90fb656 in the image gallery.

We also placed a cache by balloon and its on youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tOt8HD9-2vE.
Once again we took off from old parliament house grounds and landed at the Tuggeranong interchange.

So daft? Yes
Fun hell yes.
And when someone asks you what you do in your spare time you can say
“Using multi million dollar government satellites to find tupperware in the scrub” they’ll think your daft too.
Great write up Johnboy.

Anything that gets kids out of the house and exploring is a good thing. Nerdy or not – it’s good clean harmless fun.

ConanOfCooma7:15 am 25 Aug 10

Fun, perhaps, but considered more nerdy than a 32 year old male in a Games Workshop store on a Saturday in the school holidays.

And that’s fkn nerdy.

Should have done more research, it appears there really is such a thing as extreme GeoCaching. It tends to include scuba gear and helicopters.

And then there is xtreme GeoCaching where you use a prismatic compass, celestial navigation and mud maps.

We did some geocaching on a recent trip to Griffith. Lots a caches at various rest stops and other interesting places along the road. It was a great way to keep the kids enthused and break up the trip with stops at places where you wouldn’t normally stop. Griffith has a good selection of caches that take you to various places of interest around the town.

Doesn’t using a GPS take some of the mystery out of it though?

Even though you have the coordinates, can zoom in on the location in Google Maps and have a GPS that can lead you to the spot, you still have to get out there and physically get to the location. For many caches in out of the way places, just getting there is an adventure.

Woody Mann-Caruso6:00 pm 24 Aug 10

Doesn’t using a GPS take some of the mystery out of it though?

It can for some of the easier caches, especially if the coordinates are the final destination and you just plug them into Google Maps then hit zoom. Still, you’ll often find your GPS saying ‘you’re right on top of it’ but when you look around there are a million and one places it could be. It’s also likely that your GPS reads the same coordinates at a different position to the hider – depends how long you both stand still and what your signal is like. Multi-caches (multiple sets of coordinates) and puzzle caches (puzzle needs to be solved at one set of coordinates to get to the next) keep it interesting, as do micro urban caches that need to be found, logged and re-hidden without muggles catching you.

Take the kids – they love it. For them it’s exploring in the 21st century. We always take items to deposit and sometimes take an item with us.

And we prefer the bush ones to the urban ones – but sometimes we’ll park at the edge of a suburb and via streets and laneways eventually find the cache.

We have been doing it since the geocaching websites started appearing and we used a Garmin hand held GPS. The iPhone app makes it all much easier but the kids do still like to use the GPS as its arrow direction display is easy for them to see.

It really is good, cheap, enjoyable family fun.

The Traineediplomat4:05 pm 24 Aug 10

Welcome to the hobby!!!! it’s great fun and a good community in ACT. Lots of different styles of cache. Hill Caches, Micro City Caches, Multis, Devious Puzzles…it’s all there!!!

nexus6 – it’s just that you can ‘play’ your own way. Some do it ‘for the numbers’, some for exercise, some for puzzle solving, some for the community feeling. You can be as much into it as you want.

Sadly in my current location, caches are few and far between!

johnboy said :

The app is called “Geocaching”

Tax deduction achieved!
(I’m just sorting out my tax, so see everything in terms of tax for the moment)

I have been thinking about giving geocaching a go. I still dont understand what the attraction is, but given how many people do it i figure there must be something to it. Good on you for posting your experience Johnboy.

georgesgenitals3:28 pm 24 Aug 10

Hey Johnboy – would it have killed you to write your name and the URL a bit more neatly?

I love GeoCaching, I have been doing it for ages!! Just you wait till you find a ‘micro cache’. It’s just a big treasure hunt… great for something to do while walking the dog 🙂

I think there are well over 1,000,000 caches world wide, with about 1,000 just in Canberra

Skidbladnir said :

So, you spent $13 and some data usage before you then walked the walked the dog, and tried to claim it as a capital expense\tax deduction and a billable hour?

Don’t forget to offset the fringe benefit you received in the form of fitness acquired while walking George.

Pommy bastard2:41 pm 24 Aug 10

I used to indulge in the original version of geocaching “letterboxing”, when I lived in Devon UK. Good fun, and an added incentive to get out and about.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Letterboxing

Doesn’t using a GPS take some of the mystery out of it though?

So, you spent $13 and some data usage before you then walked the walked the dog, and tried to claim it as a capital expense\tax deduction and a billable hour?
(Hint: You’ve forgotten to mention the application by name for your itemised claim to the ATO)

Errr… we don’t all live like that…

the app is called “Geocaching” (who’d a thunk it!)

What you achieved is going somewhere you wouldn’t otherwise have gone, even if it is just a short walk off the road in suburban ACT 🙂

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