My wife and I bought ourselves a Garmin 60csx GPS for our anniversary. I did my research and this unit gets outstanding reviews and is priced very reasonably. And Joe (my bro-in-law who is a big GeoCacher) also recommended this model to my wife. I did also buy a 2g micro card to add street maps so we can use it in our car for long trips as well.
GeoCaching is completely new to me so I'm trying to learn as I go. This GPS unit is really cool, but I haven't the slightest idea how to use the thing. The manual is very vague and doesn't help me very much. My wife has taken on trying to teach herself how to learn this thing. She has been able to load the GeoCaches from the site to the unit and we did go out and try to find some. There is a GeoCache about 3 blocks away from our house, so of course this was the first one we found as a family. It was an old ammo container that had a combination lock on it and in order to open it you must get the combination from the person who set the GeoCache and you get that info online from GeoCaching.com.
There are several types of GeoCaches. Some are very small or micro size, which mean all they have inside are a small piece of paper that you can sign your name on. Others are bigger and can even have small notebooks and miscellaneous items inside as well. The bigger ones are really fun for families because some have small toys or trinkets that you can take, but you must replace them with something you brought with you.
We found a muli-stage GeoCache yesterday that was incredibly fun! We had to find a historical plaque and answered some triva questions on the plaque, then used some math and found the Nav points to the final GeoCache. This GeoCache was about a 1.5 (fairly strenuous) mile hike up the mountains, but we did finally make it up there!
The view down on Utah County from where we were was awesome! The funnest part of GeoCaching was that we would have never found out about this place if we hadn't been searching for some hidden treasure as a family! My kids absolutely love it and I am looking forward to do more treasure hunting...err, I mean GeoCaching throughout the summer.
