Geocaching Adventures

Well, my geocaching adventures have begun. I've got my GPS receiver all set up, and have the necessary software to find caches. In the beginning, it was a little confusing, but now that I've got the basics down, it's kind of fun. I'm still not accomplishing anything real by hunting for hidden caches, as it's mainly just a time sink that gets you outside, traveling to somewhere that you might not have normally visited. Right now, I've found 24 caches, and have even hidden one of my own. Here's my setup if you're interested in the details: Garmin 60Csx GPS, combined with a premium membership at geocaching.com, the Geocaching Swiss Army Knife (GSAK) software, Cachemate (for downloading cache details onto an old Palm), Topo 2008 and City Navigator 2009 maps from Garmin as well. This gives me the ability to use the GPS in the car for auto-routing, and also use the GPS off-road for cache hunting. My daughter and I went cache hunting last Friday night and had a good time. We found a travel bug (a trackable item that travels from cache to cache), and then deposited that travel bug into another cache in Missouri, and even picked up yet another travel bug there to move along to a different cache. Now that the gear has been set up, it's just a matter of heading out to find the treasure. Yesterday, I headed out for an afternoon of caching. Several were Park and Grabs (PnG), and one was a 4-mile roundtrip hike in Platte River State Park. It was a fun afternoon! The hike sure made me forget that I live in corn country!