How do you cache? What "method" is the most fun for you?

[+Miragee]

When I first started caching, I had my GPSr loaded with all the caches it would hold from my GSAK database. As I drove around town running errands, I looked for every cache that showed up on the map screen.

 

Then, it finally dawned on me that I really didn't enjoy looking for urban caches. However I do enjoy caching with other cachers, regardless of what kind of caches we are looking for. During some of these caching adventures, I discovered they have goals, like keeping a specific distance radius around their home clear of caches.

 

 

But, other cachers have different methods. Some use the Geocaching maps and Bookmark specific caches they are interested in and only load those into their GSPr. As they head for one cache, they miss many others without a care.

 

Through reading the Forums, I have learned that some cachers use GSAK to filter for caches with specific Terrain ratings. Those are the only caches they enjoy looking for. When I was traveling, I filtered for only the easy caches within .5 of the road, and, while traveling, enjoyed looking for caches I wouldn't bother looking for locally.

 

So, I'm just curious, how do you cache? What is the most fun for you? Do you like to race out and clear the new cache that cluttered up your clear radius, or is there a cache just down the road from you haven't found yet because it is a DNC (Do Not Care)?

[+Morgan's Marauders]

In my location, I want to keep my home area clear - so when a new one pops up, I'm on it! This summer, I hope to branch out and do some of the higher terrain ones that are nearby. When I am going to an area, I'm still a paper cacher so I generally limit my pocket queries to terrains of 3.5 or less.

 

When I get more in shape (and get my data cord to work for my garmin!) I will downolad all the surrounding caches and go at it!

[+TrailGators]

I enjoy caching in scenic places with my caching buddies the most.

[+BlueDeuce]

I normally cache two ways: one or two over my lunch hour, or five or six on a Saturday.

 

If it's Saturday I really prefer a nice State Park or Nature Reserve. Over lunch I can make a twenty minute drive so I’ll usually look for county parks or a large city park, just get me away from the urban/suburban areas.

 

Either way I thoroughly research every single cache before I approach it and I know if I’m going to need things like boots, a lot of time, or a lot of bug spray.

 

I'll usually skip the insane difficulty level micros, I don't really care to spend all my time in one place going over every inch of ground, If I'm going to make that kind of effort I'll stay home and do a jigsaw puzzle.

[+Kit Fox]

With just over 1000 finds, I can afford to be "picky and choosy" as to how I want to cache. I've become a professional at clicking the ignore button on caches that don't interest me.

 

I run three pocket queries:

#1 Has caches with a minimum terrain rating of 2.5 or higher.

#2 Has caches with a minimum difficulty rating of 3.0 or higher.

#3 is all caches for Northern LA County, and a good swath of Kern County.

 

I spend extra time on PQ #2, weeding out caches that don't interest me. I then combine PQ #s 1 and 2. This almost always weeds out caches that I dislike.

 

#3 is a my primary area, and I do filter out any obvious (park and grabs). I'm thankful that the majority of the terrain covered by #3 is open desert as well forested mountain ranges.

 

If I pull up to a spot, and it doesn't meet my requirement of fun, I add said cache on my ignore list. I used to be OCD about cleaning up the "nearest unfound," but I don't care anymore, because they "don't exist" in my world.

 

 

My primary source of entertainment in geocaching, now is placing great caches, in great locations. I've been doing extensive research for my new cache series based on military aviation wrecksites. I love learning the history of an area, and sharing it with others, with a geocache. Base on the quality of logs, I think many cachers enjoy historical caches as much as I do.

 

I think many of us cachers would no longer complain if there was a simple method (criteria, rating system, etc) that would simply "disappear" the type of caches we dislike. This would certainly make my job of filtering out unwanted caches easier.

Edited May 5, 2007 by Kit Fox

[Neos2]

We like variety, although you could generalize and say that he likes woodsy trail type caches a bit more than I do, and I like evil micros a little more than he does. We both like places with historic interest, geologic interest, or some interesting twist.

 

Sometimes for a full day outing, we have a "theme" for the day--"urban adventure" "everything in X park" "hiking for the view" "earthcaches and virtuals" "all of ARFs caches near the airport" etc. That doesn't eliminate any nearby caches if they look good, though.

 

Other times I just download all the caches near a small town an hour or so away from home and look through all the caches in the area to find five or six I really want to do. Once we're there, we start on the list of "wanna do" caches and play it by ear from there.

 

We cache paperless so we can load a lot more caches and information than we could ever hope to complete in the day. That makes it possible to change our plans if we run into something unexpected (A place that is nicer than we imagined it could be, a festival blocking access to several caches, a small town blocked by an emergency situation, the caches we thought we wanted to do are all unfindable and we want some satisfaction for the day, etc).

 

Even though I use GSAK and other tools, I still read through at least some of the cache pages in unfamiliar areas to try to create the experience I want for a day. A few minutes online at home has probably saved me hours of aggrevation in the field.

[+geospyder]

I use GSAK for my filtering. Different filtering for different types of caching trips.

 

Local - I try to grab anything that pops up.

 

Remote - tomorrow I'm heading about 100 + miles away in the remote desert. I have six on my list. Five of the six I hope to snag haven't been found since last year. Definitely remote but it’s more satisfying that a lamppost find (nothing against lamppost caches – I even have one myself – but only one)

 

Trip - next weekend we're heading a couple hundred miles away over to the California wine country for a few days. In this case I'll use the filter to just show traditional and virtual caches 2.5/2.5 and below that have been found within the last month. That way I'm not spending a lot of time looking for something that may not be there. This would be a relaxing run between wineries.

 

Filtering is the way to go.

[+Confucius' Cat]

My caching varies.

 

Most often, i do spur-of-the-moment caches, which means I simply look at my map and go after the nearest one from wherever I am. This is a good "break" for me as I drive 75000 miles a year within Indiana.

 

When bored with home stuff, i run my virgin caches PQ and go after the nearest one.

 

Sometimes i just want to take a walk in the woods, so I drive to a local wooded area and use method 1 above.

 

GSAK is my friend.

[+Isonzo Karst]

Terrain 5 - which around here means a kayak, multis and anything by a number of hiders, folks who are going to be placing a pleasant hike/walk in some interesting forest or swamp. I'm extremely fortunate in the number of fine hiking caches in my area, and the number of new ones appearing.

 

Anything locally with "moist" in the title, something that a couple in my area started and has been very well received. Bushwhacking hides deep into the cypress. Love 'em.

[+Airmapper]

Like Miragee at first I would go for anything I came close to. I still load all the cache info I can get to the GPS, but I generally pick out areas I would prefer to go and for the most part ignore LPC's, and other urban micros. I like caches with a hike, or in a cool place with scenic or historical interest.

 

Today I got a reminder as to why I quit searching for lame micros. I went to Mickey-D's for lunch and it had a cache in the parking lot. I went to look, searched for several minutes, and logged a DNF. I knew it was probably on this big electrical box in front of the drive through window (I looked at the logs when I got home, it was.) so I just walked off and said "It's not worth it."

[+TrailGators]

Like Miragee at first I would go for anything I came close to. I still load all the cache info I can get to the GPS, but I generally pick out areas I would prefer to go and for the most part ignore LPC's, and other urban micros. I like caches with a hike, or in a cool place with scenic or historical interest.

 

Today I got a reminder as to why I quit searching for lame micros. I went to Mickey-D's for lunch and it had a cache in the parking lot. I went to look, searched for several minutes, and logged a DNF. I knew it was probably on this big electrical box in front of the drive through window (I looked at the logs when I got home, it was.) so I just walked off and said "It's not worth it."

I am the same way now. Somewhere along the way, I crossed a line and hit my limit on LPCs and other quickie urbans like straws on the camel's back. I do like McDonalds but the GPS stays in my truck when I go there.

[+LostPuppy]

I load (almost) everything in my local area that appears to be up & active just in case I'm in that part of town and have a few minutes. There are a few exceptions where I know I won't be hunting them unless it's a specific goal, like night caches.

 

As far as my selection process, it depends. If a new cache pops up and it is in a reasonable driving distance, I will drop everything and make a run for it.

 

Sometimes, I pack up some or all of the puplets and go find whatever terrain 2 or lower caches are around. Even at 6 & younger, they don't mind log-only micros as long as they have room to help.

 

Sometimes I pick a destination and load up a variety of caches to do en route and at the destination. Last weekend we took a day trip to Dodge City and found 12 or so, and everyone got to take turns looking (including the long suffering Mrs. Puppy).

 

Sometimes I get free time and select a target with a hike involved. Or I pick a cache dense area and see how many I can grab in 2-3 hours just following the 'Next' arrow. Or I go get the smiley on that nasty puzzle I've been trying to solve.

 

I guess it just means I'm rather haphazard about how I cache. It just depends on the moment...

[+geospyder]

Remote - tomorrow I'm heading about 100 + miles away in the remote desert. I have six on my list. Five of the six I hope to snag haven't been found since last year. Definitely remote but it’s more satisfying that a lamppost find (nothing against lamppost caches – I even have one myself – but only one)

 

Nothing to do with the subject but just thought I'd give an update on the above. It ended up being over 300 miles round trip but I was able to snag all seven on my list. They were all very remote with a couple requiring some serious four wheeling. Saw wild horses, a small herd of antelope and one small rattler. It was an extremely satisfying day. Love caching days like today.

Edited May 7, 2007 by geospyder

[+Miragee]

Cool! My day was not quite as exciting, but I got to celebrate a friend's 1000th find on a hike to a cache that had not been found for over a year. We hiked several miles in the morning.

 

In the afternoon, we found some easy, right-by-the-road caches, and an LPC , and it was a great day!!

 

For our adventure, I loaded my GPSr with all the caches for the areas we were going to drive through. I used a Route from Mapsource and the Arc/Poly filter in GSAK to get all the caches along the 30-mile drive.

[+geospyder]

Cool! My day was not quite as exciting, but I got to celebrate a friend's 1000th find on a hike to a cache that had not been found for over a year. We hiked several miles in the morning.

 

In the afternoon, we found some easy, right-by-the-road caches, and an LPC , and it was a great day!!

 

For our adventure, I loaded my GPSr with all the caches for the areas we were going to drive through. I used a Route from Mapsource and the Arc/Poly filter in GSAK to get all the caches along the 30-mile drive.

 

At one of the caches we saw a plume of dust in the distance. Hmmmm - another crazy human out in the middle of nowhere. It was one of your local cachers - John of Jahoadi and John. He was cleaning up the same area we were in before heading to an event being held in Gerlach, NV. Small world!

Edited May 7, 2007 by geospyder

[+boda]

Our caching resembles LostPuppy's post. We are pretty eclectic. We cache often with another couple and we tend to travel with them as well. All our trips involve geocaching - not as the goal, but as a way to further enrich our travel. We really enjoy the multis that take us around a small mining town or some other historical site. We particularly like the caches that show off the area, no matter what size or type.

 

I keep 500 local caches updated in the GPSr so we can go at a moment's notice, or stop on the way home from shopping, etc. We don't clean up the area - the closest caches to our house are LPC's and, although we will get one if it pops up while traveling, there is no reason to get them here. Maybe someday. Someone passed on to us a long time ago that it was better to leave the local caches for those one-at-a-time quick moments, and to concentrate on those a short distance away for the afternoon caching experience. It seems to work for us.

 

We often plan a day trip or an afternoon trip to a city 60 - 120 miles away and cache there.

 

We often plan our day caching around a series or group of caches that we will need to hike or four-wheel to. Those are the most enjoyable.

 

Anyway you do it, it's fun.

[+Renegade Knight]

At first caches were so rare that I hunted them all. Any place that had 5 caches was worth a road trip. Just having caches to hunt was the goal.

 

Time changed it. Sometimes it was about making a milestone.

Sometimes it was a raid to another town so I could pass up my friend as #1 in that town. Sometimes it was a cache trip on a scenic road. Sometimes it's the comany (ok mostly it's the company). As caches become more common I stopped going everywere just to have any to hunt and I kept my town clear. Then that got to be too difficult.

 

With 1000 finds my interest in milestons stopped.

With the massive number of caches I finally stopped hunting them all.

With the never ending supply of urban caches I finally stopped trying to clear out my town. I gave up micro's.

 

What's left is day trips for a nice area, or a different part of the country to just see it and the caching there. Hanging out with friends and family with geocaching as the excuse. For now that's really about it anymore. I don't find many caches. I have not had a vehicle that's reliable enough for the kinds of trips I like to take.

[+mamid]

I have my husband who does all the skut work (keeps the kids from running off, carries the baby, stuff like that) and he finally got his own account yesterday.

 

Then there's my gf who caches with us. We bring her and her son along and the three preschoolers have fun.

 

And finally, there's our new roomie. He loves caching and because he's a young one compared to us, he is more than happy to go into the bushes after the stuff I don't dare go after cause of my (almost healed) broken toe.

 

Most of the time, I scope out an area before we go there on google maps and then print out (no paperless here... my pda has ... well... died.) and we go for them.

[+WRITE SHOP ROBERT]

Well, since this topic was partly born out of a post in another topic that I replied to, I just HAD to come in and read it, and add my two cents.

 

When I used to work in a designated area, I would keep a stack of printed cache pages on my clipboard, and mix them in with my work assignments when I had enough time to goof off.

 

For trips, I would pick an area that I wanted to visit and read up on the caches in the area picking the ones I wanted to find. To cover the trip getting there, I would pan along my route in the geocaching.com map looking for ones that looked easy, or especialy interesting.

 

Now that I'm on the road in the Big Truck, I pretty much have given up Caching when I'm at home. I'm not there long enough, and always have too many other things to do.

 

As for on the road Caching, first I have to find internet access, then I go back to the "pan map" mode. I start with the ZIP code where I am, or at some cache off my "found" list as a refference.

 

Here's how it has gone for me on this trip:

I was in Denver, with three days to get my load to Fernley, NV. I spent the first day driving hard to get to Salt Lake City, where I knew I could park, with a short walk to the best library in the country. Then I panned the maps looking for caches that looked good for me to find along the route they told me to take. Since I have two days to go +/- 500 miles, I decided to pick a couple that I could hike to as well as the usual interstate park+grabs.

 

I guess I'm just more of a visual person, the favorite way for me to pick Caches is to look at the map and see the little icons.

Edited May 7, 2007 by WRITE SHOP ROBERT

[+Exocet]

I started geocaching in Feb 2001. There weren't many back then, about 600 or so worldwide. So I, like many others, went after as many as I could. Most were in really interesting places or creatively done so every cache was a lot of fun.

 

A few years ago I moved to Krakow, Poland. Right now there are just 300 geocaches in all of Poland and 860 in Slovakia. I do ignore a few geocaches by one user who likes doing "micro in a forest" caches but I go after most geocaches in the area. Anything that gets me out to a new area is a good thing and most caches are further than 20 miles away at this point.

 

My favourite caches, though, are ones that have a lot of information (history) behind them or are in an absurdly wonderful or beautiful places. Even if it's a drive-by cache I will do it if the cache placer obviously loves that place and has put a bunch of historical notes on his or her cache page.

 

Since I moved out of the US ...apparently now there are prolific geocachers who place hundreds and who have visited thousands. This is unbelivable to me. While someday I may have visited 500 geocaches, I would never really consider placing more than about 5-10 caches in Poland. One, to leave room for others. Two, because the caches I place are special to me. I want the caches that others place to be the same (and thus to me).

[+simplyred]

I like caching with my quads, but any cache that takes me to a beautiful place or a place with a beautiful view is what I prefer. Always bring the camera and take lots of pics. Idon't have many caches in my area, I've pretty well gotten most and have been slowly getting the less interesting ones (Micro & Multi's). But usually I'll plan for some caches and make a day trip out of it. Also got my eye on some really awesome caches that will be weekend trips.

[+Totem Clan]

My method?.....

 

"Get 'em all and let GSAK sort 'em out."

 

or is it the other way around.

 

I hunt for whatever I have the time and interest in at the moment. I normally will end up doing them all. I may grab the new one that is on the way to the store while I'm going to town anyway, or I may plan out a weekend run with an exact route and a exact list of caches to do. I might load up all the caches that I haven't found yet in the neighboring city or a state park and then drive there and hit them one after the other based on the next closest cache.

 

In other words I don't have a set style of caching. I just cache.

[+Sixpack-o-Stephens]

I'm sure that I am a newbie, when it comes to caching, but I do love it.

 

I have four sons that love to get out with dad and gut go be active. So most of the time, my caching depends on which, if any of the boys I have with me. Sometimes they limit what kind of terrain I can tackle, but I am getting more adventurous with them and what I will let them do with me.

 

I am just about 10 caches away from clearing my home area and that is my current goal.

 

When we went to the Grand Canyon over spring break this year, my wife really enjoyed caching with us because we got to get out into the woods on dirt roads and "explore"

 

I'm still "young" enough in the sport that I LOVE the numbers. A friend of mine and I have an unspoken competition going (and he is winning )

 

I have begun to hide them and I have really enjoyed trying to come up with interesting places and unusual hides.

 

I think the one thing i enjoy most about this (if you can call it one thing)is that I can make it what ever I want it to be each time I go out. I can tailor it to fit who is with me, what I want to do, what I am in the mood for, etc...

[+Miragee]

<snip>

 

I think the one thing i enjoy most about this (if you can call it one thing)is that I can make it what ever I want it to be each time I go out. I can tailor it to fit who is with me, what I want to do, what I am in the mood for, etc...

Thank you for bringing that up. The ability to change the focus of any Geocaching outing is a great point. When I was in Colorado, my cousin, her husband, and daughter wanted to see what this Geocaching thing was all about. I got a Pocket Query for all the caches in Littleton, but then did a quick filter in GSAK to eliminate the Micro caches. The remaining caches were the ones I loaded into the GPSr and Palm for our Sunday-afternoon adventure.

 

As we drove around their familiar territory, all the caches we looked for were either Virtual caches (Alferd Packer's grave ) or easy-to-find Small and Regular-sized containers. We had a great time!

 

I'm not sure their enjoyment level would have been the same if we had spent time chasing down a few Micros in parking lots . . .

 

[+WRITE SHOP ROBERT]

OK, so I'm sitting at the Library in Ontario, CA and I just realized that when I'm not going anywhere, I'm prone to use the "radius from home" method. My main difference is that "Home" is just where I happen to be at the time, and rather than being able to load them all into my GPS and then pick, I just print them all, and pick later. With limited time on the library computer I don't want to use it up reading the descriptions. I've just printed all the caches within .5 miles of the library, and of the spot where I'll be parking later.

[+Corp Of Discovery]

It varies. Some days I have a goal while others it's just start here and see where the day takes me. In either case what make a day good is having a variety of finds. Finding 20 ammo cans hidden in hollow logs is just as lame to me as finding 20 film cans on lamp posts or 20 straight virtuals or trying to take 20 webcam photos in a row.

[+Rich the Bushwhacker]

I download 500 to 1000 in my target area for the day, omitting the puzzles and my ignore list. I head to a location for a mile plus walk to a cache, then hit others in the area if I have time. I'm happy with one, but will find more if I'm in the mood.