Geocache minus GPS

[apathos]

I'm brand new to caching, haven't even done a single one yet. I've been reading a lot here, and now it's time for me to ask a question. Can geocaching be done without a GPS? I'd like to try it a bit before I purchase a GPS unit. My wife isn't so convinced that our family would enjoy it, so I'd like to try a few before investing the $ into a unit (because if I do this, I'm getting a Garmin 60CSx, so I don't want it to sit around).

 

I do have a Handspring (Palm offshoot running Palm OS, not sure which version, I'll look it up tonight), so I can get the whole 'paperless' bit done.

 

So what I'd like to know is, can I expect to find some caches by only using Google Earth, knowledge of the area, and determination? Or is this like planning to knock a building down using only your head?

 

If I do this without a GPS, what other devices/software/stuff should I consider getting to assist me with this? I'm thinking I'll have to get a good compass and maybe a detailed map. What software do I need for my Handspring?

 

Would someone even be able to lay out a summary of how I should best prepare for this?

 

Again, I hope to get a GPS soon, I just have to convince my wife of how fun this can be before I actually purchase one. Of course, she's the one who has to pack the extra diapers...

[+Knight2000]

When you say family do you mean kids? I am wondering how old they might be.

 

Our kids love caching and the places that it takes us. (They are 9 and 5.) Better than all that though is the time that we spend together.

 

You can do some with GE. It is more difficult though. Try some easier rated ones with GE in your area. Read the logs and hints for more help.

[+Miragee]

Welcome to the Forums!

 

There are several people who have found hundreds of Geocaches without using a GPSr, so you can find them without a GPSr. However, if you decide to do that as a new cacher, I would limit your searches to only Regular-sized caches, in a park where you can see the location using Google Earth.

 

Because it can be a lot harder to cache this way, it could be discouraging for someone who isn't into it quite as much as you are.

 

That is a great GPSr and coupled with the City Navigator maps, is very useful. It will not sit around, especially if you do any traveling to unfamiliar areas and need to find the nearest Starbucks.

[+StarBrand]

Some cachers have found over a thousand with only a compass and a topo map. I know of a guy that found 20 with only Google Earth and missed finding only 8 before he got a GPS. It can be done - a bit harder but can be done. Keep in mind the GE is not always very accurate and should only be 1 tool you make use of.

[detrieux]

Apathos,

 

We have found 7 without a GPS. There are some who have found 1000 without GPS. It may be a little harder without one but hard to say since we do not have a GPS.

 

Right now we are limited to hunts which avoid Poison Ivy. But have found two in wooded areas where there was some poison ivy present.

 

We have just been using to map on the Cache description and just try to figure it out based upon the hints. The keys as I have seen on only 7 finds are:

1. They can not be placed in a hole dug for the specific purpose of placing the cache.

2. It is important to know what size of a cache you are going after.

3. Look in hollow logs, holes in trees, under logs, under rocks that do not seem to be in a natural position.

4. When you get to the area, just stop and look around for things out of the ordinary, paths to no where, broken branches, things out of place.

5. They are mostly low but look up as well.

 

Take a flashlight, mirror, gloves. These may help you see in places as well as reach in places you might get a spider bite, bug scare, etc.

 

Always take a thing to put in the cache. Make it so others will want to try to find it. We all have things lying around the house that have some value but just do not want to throw them away. No food or highly scented things.

 

We plan to go to a Meet and Greet in our area in August to see what others have for this fun game and then decide if we want or need a GPS. You might consider going to one with your wife to meet some other cachers in your area. Nothing like others to help you to get motivated to go on the hunt. Can't wait until the poison ivy leaves fall and we can go for some really interesting ones in our area.

 

The main thing is to have fun and enjoy the feeling of Birthday Presents every time you open a container.

 

Good luck and have fun.

Gary

[+Miragee]

<snip>

 

I do have a Handspring (Palm offshoot running Palm OS, not sure which version, I'll look it up tonight), so I can get the whole 'paperless' bit done.

 

<snip>

I forgot to address this part of your question. For the Handspring, I would recommend getting Cachemate. However, for it to be really useful, you need to become a Premium Member, so you have access to the .gpx files. Those have the cache description, five Past Logs, and the hint included in them. Using a program like GSAK (Geocaching Swiss Army Knife), you can Export the information in the correct format for your Palm.

 

When you become a Premium Member, you get access to create Pocket Queries, so you can have the information for all the "Regular-sized" caches in your area in your Palm. You can Export a .gpx file from GSAK to Google Earth and then print that out to take with you along with your map and compass.

 

Later on, when you get your GPSr, you can adjust the PQ to include the rest of the caches around you, including those pesky, cleverly-cammoed, impossible-to-find, Micros and Nanos . . .

[crawil]

I would have a cacher in your area take you and your family out for an afternoon using their GPSr. That way you all can have a taste of the real thing without having to spend the money on a unit of your own. Michigan has an active 'caching community and if you check out the regional forums, I'm sure you can find a willing caching partner.

[+Knight2000]

Buy a cheapie at Walmart and then return it if your wife was right.

[+6coondawgs]

I have not tried caching without a GPS. My kids are 10, 7, 4 and all love to go geocaching. I know that here the local 4H office has GPS you can rent for like $5 for 2 weeks, I also heard that some of the State Parks here have started placing their own caches and they have rental GPS units at the gate. If I were trying to talk my wife into a GPS I'd probably see if I could round one up to try out.

[+Miragee]

<snip> (because if I do this, I'm getting a Garmin 60CSx, so I don't want it to sit around).

 

<snip>

If you can afford it, I would go ahead and get the GPSr. I wish I could find the post from a couple of years ago where a guy posted about going to a different city for a convention, or conference . . . or something like that. He listed at least a dozen things he was able to use his GPSr for during the trip, both for himself and others in the group, like giving directions to places, getting the phone numbers of stores and restaurants, showing people where they were in relation to landmarks in the city, etc.

 

That GPSr, with the City Navigator maps, is a very useful tool, even if you don't end up using it for Geocaching.

 

[+OEnavigators]

My wife was just as uneasy about it when I first started. She warmed up slowly especially when she saw how much fun the kids were having. Now we all go together and have a blast. Geocaching is really great family time together.

Not to mention all the really great destinations you'll discover. Just go for it. It won't take many finds and she'll be wanting her own GPSr.

[apathos]

Wow, thanks for all the advice and help! This gives me great hope. I just mentioned some of these ideas to my wife, and she is much more inclined to try them when it costs little/nothing. I now have her permission to get excited!

 

Miragee, I need to go check on those maps, I think. I gave them a quick once-over last week, and found that none of the maps I tried did any better in my area than Topo, but I don't recall if I tried City Navigator.

 

Thanks again for all the help and encouragement!

[+mousekakat]

We cache with a Tom Tom ONE that is predominantly a car GPS'r, but it has a good zoom capability, we're able to put in the coords without trouble, can save POI (points of interest, etc.)

 

We got our unit initially because I'm an American in Sweden and I have trouble at times finding my way to places, and even though I'm fairly fluent, it is still hard to ask for directions at times and this made it much easierto find my way around.

 

Geocaching was just the icing on the cake for us!

 

Perhaps you can talk her into a unit that is more universal that she can also use to find places when she's out as a bonus?

 

Ours is like our dishwasher, we can live without it, but we sure don't want to any longer now that we have one

 

Oh, and we cache with a 14 month old riding on pappa's back in a carrier and a 7.5 year old eager to find the goodies... and more often than not, our dog pulling my fat, old butt up the mountains

 

And we all love it!

[+Night Stalker]

You are really approaching this from the wrong angle. You need to consider that other uses for that 60CSX. When is the last time you were traveling on vacation and wanted to go to a restaraunt that had a certain kind of food. That GPS with City Navigator will take you there. Need gas. It will tell you how to get to the closest station. If you travel at all it is an awesome tool. Then you can use it for geocaching and the wife will be happy.

 

[Blue_Stone]

As to doing the paperless thing right off the bat, I would wait on that. Only because you're going to have a learning curve with the GPS and its mapping software once you get. You CAN use the .loc files, but the info they contain is limited.

You can pay just $3 for one month premium membership so you can get the PQs (another little learning curve), and GSAK and Cachemate both have trial versions you can use. (GSAK trial is full featured, Cachemate trial only lets you work with 10 waypoints.)

Both GSAK and Cachemate have a decent learning curve.

Why go through all the trouble, and installation, then uninstallation of the software if caching doesnt work out for you?

 

I would do as others suggest in trying to rent a GPS, or hook up with some local cachers, and just print out a few caches to start with.

If she likes it, THEN you could jump in with both feet and go paperless.

Just my opinion. []

[+andGuest]

I will pile on for the uses for the GPS. I have the 60 CSX and over time feel it will pay for itself. I have found places to eat, directions back to a mian road, and given people direction who stopped and asked me for directions when I was not from the area. I waste a lot less gas driving in circles with turn by turn directions (it can lead you astray at times though). If you never use it for caching you can at least use it on trips to get you where you are going. Of course for the mentioned stuff you will have to get the software mentioned or something similar.

 

If you are going to try it GPSless then also try this website: http://maps.live.com/

I sometimes find google earth blurry when looking at some areas. On google earth I could nto get a clear image once in an area that I needed for a puzzle cache and found the other site. The same area was crystal clear and found the area no problem.

[+Team Teague]

My husband bought a GPS a couple of years ago, all I did was complain about what a waste of money it was, then I somehow found this website and realized that it could be a fun thing for our family. Get us out of the house, with a mission away from the TV (and for me the sewing machine - I'm a quilter). We just started about 6 weeks ago, our 2 1/2 year old rides in a backpack any my 6 year old son really enjoys finding the "treasure".

 

With that being said, we ended up buying a Garmin Etrex Legend (the blue one with the serial cable) on Ebay for $80 including shipping for my son and myself to carry, as my husband wasn't letting us "hold" his.

The Legend works just as well and is just as accurate as my husbands fancy shmancy unit, only it doesn't have maps and all that on it.

 

Have your wife email me. I'll tell her about "date night" caching the other night.

 

Stacey

[+TrailGators]

One thing you could tell your wife is that there are many things you can use a GPS for. You can use your GPS to navigate whenever you drive in unfamiliar areas. You can use your GPS to locate restaurants and hotels on the fly. You can your GPS to track how far and how fast you've run or walked.

[+Team Cotati]

Trying to substitute a handheld gps unit for a car navigation system is a gigantic mistake. But go ahead and try it, you'll soon see. For example, if traveling solo, using a handheld for street routing is quite dangerous.

 

And yes, I do understand that there are 'dash' mount kits available, doesn't change a thing. Dangerous, don't do it.

Edited July 31, 2007 by Team Cotati

[+TrailGators]

Trying to substitute a handheld gps unit for a car navigation system is a gigantic mistake. But go ahead and try it, you'll soon see. For example, if traveling solo, using a handheld for street routing is quite dangerous.

 

And yes, I do understand that there are 'dash' mount kits available, doesn't change a thing. Dangerous, don't do it.

I've done it millions of times without any issues. The thing beeps at you whenever there is an upcoming turn. So you can quickly glance down to see which way to turn.

[pikaki57]

WHat I have done to convince my family is I took them out on a cache hunt close by the house with 1 star difficulty and 1 star terrain. I punched the coordinates into Google Earth, looked for familiar areas and took them caching. We found it. The I took one cache that was a bit harder...GPS would have been nice (was admitted)...Now we have a GPS. Just a basic low mid range one! We all love it!

[+jwe4i]

yes some can be done without a gps. i have found quite a few just by knowing the area and knowing what to look for. each geocacher that places caches seems to have a certain way they hide things and you can look in the most obivous place or sometimes at something that looks out of place and there it is. i picked a a 100 dollar gps at walmart and it performs great. actually i think they are down to about 75 now. good luck.

[+Harry Dolphin]

One thing you could tell your wife is that there are many things you can use a GPS for. You can use your GPS to navigate whenever you drive in unfamiliar areas. You can use your GPS to locate restaurants and hotels on the fly. You can your GPS to track how far and how fast you've run or walked.

 

You can use the GPS to tell your wife that she's speeding. (Sorry. Couldn't help myself. Someone has been know to tell me my speed.)

[+tands]

Hi,

 

We had our GPS stole at Christmas, and have found a couple dozen since and only one of them was with a GPS. We go to www.flashearth.com and use the multiple maps it gives you.

 

You highlight the coords on the cache page, press CTRL-C to copy them to the clipboard. Then at flashearth, you click in the coordinates box and press CTRL-V to paste the Groundspeak coords in. Then click the search button and bingo, you're looking at the site.

 

We call this Sat-Caching, and love doing it. When you do this, you are taking out half the uncertainty of caching. You only have the error of the hider's GPS to account for. You just have to get good at using Sat/Aerial views of landmarks to figure out where the cache is.

 

- T of TandS

[+fauxSteve]

This might not convince the wife, but the kids will have a good time: take them to your local Home Depot and tell them to lift every single light-pole skirt in the parking lot until they find a film canister. Chances are they'll find a cache... maybe even two if the parking lot is big enough. It might not be the best introduction to caching, but it's representative of one popular aspect.

 

More seriously, there's probably a small or regular one with some trade items in a local park that can be found with Google Earth and a decent hint. Just type in your zip-code and look at the ones that are difficulty and terrain 1 or 1 1/2.

[+tands]

True, 1 and 1.5 stars caches are most easily found with the sat, but 3, 4 and 5 D hides often submit even more easily, since they rely on smarts more than gps position. I wouldn't, recommend trying anything tougher than a 2 difficulty even with a GPS until you get cocky enough to handle not finding caches.

 

If you're really lucky, you'll discover the transcendent joy of a properly logged DNF.

 

- T of TandS