And then there was this whole thing about getting a hobby/something to do to enhance my days. I think I may finally have found something that might be of interest: geocaching! I’ve read about it in a few different places, it seems to be quite popular around the world and so I figured it might be fun to try. For those of you who don’t know what geocaching is and are too lazy to google it, I can inform you that it’s a sort of treasure hunt outside where you use GPS to search for treasures/caches. These can be different kinds of containers of varying size and content and can be hidden both outdoors in nature and in the big cities. The treasure hunts are of varying degrees of difficulty, where you can do the more tricky version called multi-caching; this is a hunt where you find several caches along the way that will give you a clue to the final cache that contains something special, or mystery caches that involve solving a riddle or an equation etc. Another somewhat more explorative variety is the earth cache that essentially leads you to a point of interest, a monument or something along those lines.
When you go out geocaching you need to follow three main rules:
- Write something in the log book
- Add something to the cache if you remove something from it
- Place the cache in the exact place where you found it
You can geocache with your smartphone using various different apps (I chose c:geo which is free and has gotten fairly good reviews) or you can acquire a GPS device and go out exploring. The benefit of using your phone is that you don’t spend any extra money for a standalone GPS but I suppose the downside is that the GPS may drain your battery faster and doesn’t have quite as good a signal as an actual GPS device does. So really it’s a matter of priority and budget – initially you can try it out with the phone and buy a GPS later on if you feel at that point that you need one.
So I’ve now created an account at http://www.geocaching.com and my plan is to take my trusty phone and walk around the neighborhood when I take the dog out for walks and see what kind of goodies I can find. I’m excited!