Seasonal Sunday: Geocaching Tools of the Trade

I talked about geocaching in a previous post called 'Geocaching is What Happens When Nerds go Outside.'  You can read that post here.  It explains why I should hate this hobby but actually love it.  I'm pretty inept at actually finding caches but really excel at creating cache hides with my deep thinking and creative skills.  I put together a series last fall called the Pickle Jar Hero Series that has surpassed 100 favorite points but I'll go ahead and stop bragging now.  Today's post is going to take you through some of the tools to get you going on this hobby so that you can get out and appreciate the beauty of the outdoors.  

So you want to be the biggest nerd on the block but you're not sure how to get started?   Go to geocaching.com and create a username and password.  Pay the 30 bucks for the year membership to be a premium member.  Premium gives you access to all of the hides and it's worth it.  Your smartphone is going to be your GPS so you really don't need to buy a separate GPS device unless your phone sucks or you just like to spend money on gadgets.  All you need for your first find is your phone and a pen to sign the cache log.  Just make sure you start out with easier hides when you are starting out.  Each cache hide will tell you the difficulty level, terrain level, and what size cache you are looking for.  

You tried it and you love it, now what?  Don't make a hide of your own.  The geocaching people we know recommend having a couple hundred finds before you start making your own.  It takes time to learn what people enjoy and how to be more creative than an old Tupperware container in the woods.  You also need to learn what areas and objects are acceptable for hides.  I didn't do any of this and put together my 11 part Pickle Jar Hero series after just a few months of caching and less than 100 finds without physically visiting any of the sites before placing the hides.  Why can I do this and you can't?  I excel in my geocache nerding, that's why.

So you have your phone and your pen, now what?  Here is what I recommend to get started:

We use this tactical backpack that we ordered from Amazon.  It was under 25 dollars and it is well made and carries all of our nerd gear.  I think the bags on the geocaching website are overpriced so look around before buying there.  It has a designated area for a handgun if you feel the need to exercise your second amendment right while caching. 

This is the geocaching flex lite magnet tool.  You can buy it right off the geocaching website for a reasonable price.  This is a flashlight and magnet combo tool that telescopes to help you find that cache.

This is the telescoping inspection mirror/magnet tool that you can get on the geocaching website for a reasonable price.  It helps you see in hard to reach areas and retrieve things that are metal and out of reach.  

An extra large tweezer is handy for getting into gross or hard to reach areas.  We got ours at Axman Surplus for a couple bucks.  

The coolest caches require a UV light.  We bought ours from Amazon and it was a reasonable price.  I only wish more caches utilized this cool feature.

Those are the special tools of the trade that we use.  We also carry extra pens, sunscreen, bug spray, bandaids, a pocket knife, and some supplies to fix anything that a cache we find might need.  Good luck!