New here

[+PDXguy1966]

Greetings from the beautiful Pacific Northwest! My wife and I just took the plunge into the word of Geocaching. I have been kinda lurking here for a while off and on and convinced my wife to join up. For a little background on us, we live in Milwaiuke OR which is really near Portland. I have been disabled and out of work for about 3 years due to a back injury.

 

In that time I have packed on some weight (not that we were thin to begin with) and this is making my back pain worse. Exercise is not our favorite thing but we know we need to do it. With Geocaching we will have a reason to do it, adventure, a friendly online community and best of all it is something we can do together.

 

We just signed up and are needing to get started. Any tips for us to start out slow and easy would be GREAT, tips for this area (Portland Oregon) would be even better. What should we look for in a GPS? should we both have one? Any help or suggestion's wound be nice.

 

Thanks in advance

Shawn and Samantha

Edited May 19, 2008 by PDXguy1966

[+kidcobalt]

Hello from Ontario Canada.

 

My wife and I are new ourselves. We live on the Niagara Escarpment with numerous hiking trails and caching is giving us another reason to check them out and yes work on those extra pounds.

 

Welcome aboard-have fun!

[+The Pathman]

Speaking as a husband and wife team, You could get away with only one unit but we have found that having two works best for us. We use Magellan eXplorist 400's and love them. Cheap and easy to use with excelent accuracy.

We would recomend starting with larger caches with an easy terrain and difficulity level 1/1 and work your way up from there.

Welcome to the addiction and just have fun

[+scoutfrog]

First off, Welcome to the game! Second off, the fact that you choose to be a permemum member helps too. It will give you access to more caches and more maps.I myself am kind of new at this (about 8 months) but it gets eaiser fast. I'm all the way across the contry in Tennessee, so I cheated and looked up caches using your zip code. You too can do this, just input a zip code in the search "by zip code " box on the groungspeak home page. I will list some eaiser caches for you to start with, you can look up the page for each cache by entering the "GC" number in the "view a cache listing" box just down from the top of the GC home page. As for getting started, as with anything, start slow and easy. Don't just rely on your gps to get you there, I look at maps to give me a general idea of where I'm going, what street, a park ,a trail, sometimes there are streets that the won't show, or in the case of a couple here, they torn down a subdivison and put in a Target store, the maps still list the streets! Near the top of each cache's page you will find difficulty and terrain "stars" or something like 1.5/1.5 or 2.3/3.0. A 1/1 should be wheel chair accessable and very easy to find where as a 3/1 will still be 'chair accessable but much harder to find. now a 5/5 means bring climbing gear, lots of water and food and a couple friends to help you with your possable 1-3 hour adventure! As far as a GPS, one will get you started and 2 will, well give you 2 sets of "eyes" (gps eyes that is) lookinh for a cache. For now, if you stick to the eaiser caches 1 will be just fine. I started with a Magellin 400 that I got froma apawn shop for $50 and have now(today) just bought a new garmin 60csx. Most of my caching friends use them and they are great(althuogh a little pricey $300 from an internet supplier) but well worth the money once you get to using them. You might also look for help localy in the form of local geocaching groups. We have a very active group here(GETGC.ORG)and I've learned a lot from the group as well as given back a lot to others. Some of your local groups are the fallowing web addresses, OREGONGEOCACHING.ORG , SOGEO.ORG OREGONSAGA.COM . Most any caching group will be glad to help you get going. Our group is real go about taking new cachers out on a cache run or 2 to help them get going. O.K. now for the caches a propissed you, I entered 97222 for your zipcode and these were the eaisest caches I found GC16RGK GCHFVK GCKGAY GC13Y7P GCMC80. All are regular size(something else to look for at the top of ecah cache page, go for the larger ones first till you get a feel for thr hunt) and should not be too hard to find. And I bet that if you check the cache pace real good and look at the map and hints , you might be able to find 1 or 2 with out a GPS. Well hope this helps, enjoy the game, Frog

[+PDXguy1966]

Thank you for the warm welcome. All the tips are much appreciated. This should help us get off to a good start.

 

Shawn & Samantha

[gonegeofishing]

Clackamas Geocaching Association

http://www.clackamasgeo.org/

 

Try to hook up with these guys. Sure they might smell funny at times but they are a hoot to go geocaching with.