Geocaching

No fun bah.

I was just thinking about doing Orienteering in Boy Scouts.

Has anyone done this? Is it fun?

― MarkH, Monday, 2 September 2002 18:32 (8 years ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

Yes and yes.

Sort of amazed there isn't more discussion here tbh.

Anyone else out there playing Traveler's Quest? It's sorta like geocaching only with a greater margin of error.

I'm surprised I haven't looked this up here before. Less surprised that it's generated only a modest amount of discussion.

Has anyone further, apart from me, tried it a decade on?

I wonder if I've ever encountered Autumn Almanac's g/c alias!

Yeah massive geocaching fan here. Been doing it for five years, have only accumulated 500 finds which is peanuts compared to some. With a family and a full-time job I don't have much time to do it these days but I will always search out a new cache or two when I'm in a new place.

Aha! Seems I fell into it around the same time then. I've been out of it for a little while as injury precluded hiking, etc. But I still enjoy publishing needlessly convoluted puzzles to annoy the locals!

I've never set any caches myself, I'm just a finder. I do enjoy it although I get frustrated when I'm looking for a cache that has a low D rating and a slew of recent logs all saying "quick and easy find" but which I cannot locate for the life of me. Which happens a lot.

I dig it. I've no discernible finding ability at all. (Or am simply impatient.) Possibly a factor in turning my attention to placing them instead. LOL.

Last year there was a geocache placed in my local nature park, which is set on a steep hillside where one should definitely stay on the trail to avoid creating problems with erosion. But, of course the geocache couldn't be hidden on the trail because then it would not be hidden. Consequently, I would see people thrashing around off trail, trampling plants, looking for the geocache. This location was not well thought through and left me with a mild a distaste for this kind of 'fun'.

There are definitely plenty of ill-advised placements. eg. the bomb-squad was called out near here a few months ago to detonate a geocache decorated in the manner of military hardware, or something, and hidden in a town square.

It's kinda hard to explain the appeal. I've most enjoyed ones where you have to work quite hard to determine the coordinates and/or navigate between multiple undisclosed locations and finally go hiking up a mountain you've never visited before, etc. The mere signing of a logbook is not often inherently 'fun'.

Instances where the whole of the challenge amounts to trying to remain inconspicuous while trampling foliage in an urban park...I certainly understand how that seems close to pointless.