Pamela:
Hello and good day, eh? Welcome to the Super Good Camping Podcast. My name is Pamela
Tim:
I’m Tim
Pamela:
and we are from supergoodcamping.com. We are here because we were on a mission to inspire other families to enjoy camping and other adventures such as we have with our kids. Today we’re doing something a little bit different. On this episode, our guest today is a fellow podcaster. Her name is Amie, and her podcast is Geocache Adventures. Welcome, Amie, and thank you for being on the Super Good Camping podcast.
Amie from the Geocache Adventures Podcast
Amie:
Thank you so much for having me.
Pamela:
You’re welcome!
Tim:
This is a first for us. We normally have to do all kinds of explanations because when we do the guest series, they’re all YouTubers, so they have no idea about the podcast world nobody does. It’s great. This is gonna go swimmingly. So right out of the gates, we’ve done some geocaching; give me a rundown for somebody who’s never done it before. What is geocaching? How does it go?
What is Geocaching?
Amie:
Geocaching is a GPS-based real-world treasure hunt game or scavenger hunt game, depending on how you want to look at it. There are over 3 million geocaches hidden around the world. It is played in over 191 countries on all seven continents, so even in Antarctica, there are geocaches if you’re ever down there. What you do is other geocachers hide containers. It can be anything as small as a pencil eraser to as big as you can envision. I’ve seen shipping containers turned into them. Now those giant ones are not as common granted, but they range in size drastically. So they will contain anything from just a piece of paper, the log you sign when you find it, to items you can trade. Most people these days download apps on their smartphones and create an account on geocaching.com. Then they pull it up on their phones, showing them all the geocaches in their area. You can use the app to navigate and find the geocache. Some people still like to use handheld geocaches. It’s more of a preference these days unless you’re in a remote area with no cell phone service, and then the handheld becomes necessary, but they’re everywhere. So geocaches are nearby if you’re more of an urban or city dweller.
Pamela:
We’ve done geocaches near us.
Tim:
We’ve done a bunch of the geocaches near us. We live in a pretty big city in Toronto. So there are just tonnes of them here in the city, and some are pretty good. We did, don’t hold me to it, maybe six or seven of them, and some were pretty difficult to find. You think in a city, there’s nowhere to hide stuff. Yeah, I’m sadly mistaken. There are lots of places to hide things. Okay, cool. That covers a whole bunch of questions. How did you get started? Was it an accidental thing? Did something draw you to it?
Amie:
I learned about geocaching from a co-worker originally. I thought it sounded interesting. And I created an account but didn’t do anything at that point. My son was, I think, seven or eight months old at that time, no, not even that. I think he was about three months old. He was still pretty little. I had no idea what I was doing, let alone how do I do it with an infant. So I didn’t do anything. And then, about five years later, when he was older, and I was trying to think of different things we could do, I remembered geocaching, and my account was still active, even though I had never done anything with it. So we pulled it up. I was amazed by how many geocaches were near us. And so we kind of started it with him and me. He still does it with me. I do it on my own too. It’s a fun activity for family, for kids of all ages, or to go out alone and have some self-care, me time. I enjoy it. It’s a great way to get outside and do something different.
Tim:
Yeah, that sounds cool. And I can see how if you want to be in your own headspace, go off and do something and ignore the kids for a change. We used to drag them around with us. Ours are 20 and 16 now, so they’re taller than us and want to do their own thing.
Amie:
Mine is eight. He’s still in that “cute, I want to do things with you phase, but I want to do the things that I want to do phase.” So he’ll do it with me sometimes if there’s an incentive usually. But often, when I get a day to myself, I’ll try to find a couple.
What Are The Different Types of Geocaches?
Pamela:
Can you describe a cache? You mentioned different sizes of cache, but there are also different cache types, correct?
Amie:
Yes, there are. The traditional geocache is a container hidden someplace with a log of varying sizes. There’s also a multi-cache, a physical container like a traditional cache, but you go to multiple stages. So you’ll go to stage one, and at stage one, you’ll find the coordinates to the second stage, and you’ll go to the second stage, and maybe you’ll find the container there or the coordinates for another stage. It can be as little as two stages to as many as I have heard, 20 stages or more. It depends on the creator of the geocache. There’s a virtual geocache type with no physical container. The logging requirements are different. Sometimes it’s a picture of you or a personal item at the location that you must add to your online log to claim. Or you may have to answer a question about the site. Those often take you to interesting places, maybe a tourist place, sculptures, neat parks, etc. And those are great ones to do when you have non-geocachers with you because it usually takes you to someplace they can enjoy too. There’s a puzzle cache where the coordinates to the puzzle you’ll have are posted.on the app, but that posted location is not the geocache’s location. You have to solve a puzzle to get the coordinates of the actual location. And there’s more. There are many different types of geocaches, which is great because there’s something for everybody. There are what we call event caches, which people get together for. It can be anything from just a meet-and-greet get-together, having drinks, hanging out, swapping stories, to picnics. They have large-scale reoccurring events called mega events and gig events that will have hundreds or 1000s of geocachers from all over the world attend those events. There’s what’s called a CITO event. Cache In, Trash Out is what CITO stands for. That type of event is where geocachers get together at a park or along the roadside, and they pick up trash and help the environment by cleaning it up. There are Earth geocaches, which take you kinda like a virtual cache, there’s no container, and it takes you to a physical location where you have to answer some sort of question, but it’s geologically related. So there’s a learning aspect to it in that way. There’s one called an Adventure Lab, which is like a virtual cache. It will take you to different locations, and you will answer questions, but the adventure lab will have up to five or 10 locations that will take you to different points, all for the same adventure lab and cache. That one differs from a multi-cache because every point in the Adventure Lab you log counts as a find, whereas the multi-cache only counts as one find.
Tim:
Right, right. One of the things I thought was very cool. When I started to play around with geocaching a million years ago with shorter kids, I found a great part of it was that there’s often a story told with it, whether it’s a historical something about that site, some kind of background, it’s more than go find the thing, take the pencil eraser out.
Amie:
Yeah, especially with the Adventure Labs, they tend to emphasize historical places or locations to tell a story. Where I go, geocaches are of another type. That one uses an additional free app, and you download a third-party cartridge created by people. That will take you to historic sites like a little tour, or it’ll tell a story or even some people have created games, text-based games, like the old one Zork, and put you in a virtual world where you’re playing this game to find the coordinates to the geocache. There are other types that I didn’t mention as well. There are so many different types. We could spend a lot of time just talking about the different types and subtypes of some. Because, like with the puzzle caches, you have a type of puzzle cache called a challenge cache, which will be posted at the location listed in the app. But you must complete a geocache challenge to qualify for logging it. So it can be that you have to have 1000 geocaches. To be able to log this one, you have to have geo-cacheed in five or more states to log this one. There are all types of challenges. There are even sub-groups of some of the Geocaching types. So there is something for everybody in geocaching.
Tim:
That’s exactly what I was thinking. If you ever want to sum it up, there’s something for everybody.
Pamela:
It is. Once, I heard on one of your episodes was a gentleman who put together a cache where it sounded like there was a pinwheel. You had to assemble the pinwheel, and then you had to drive in the car, and then that would give you the coordinates when the pinwheel spun to where you had to go next, something like that.
Amie:
Yeah, that’s what we call a gadget cache. It’s not necessarily its own cache type, but it’s a type of geocache where people have created some sort of mechanism or something you must do or complete to log the geocache. It’s typically a traditional type of geocache, but it’ll have some sort of gadget aspect.
Pamela:
That sounded so fun.
Amie:
People can get creative with these things, but the variety out there is amazing.
Tim:
Yeah. I don’t know what I was thinking about opening that can of worms. So okay, obviously, you do local ones. I think I caught something about planning trips like there’s a travel industry subsection around geocaching.
Geocaching Travel
Amie:
There is! There are travel companies that I can think of off the top of my head that have been on my podcast before. One is called Geocaching Adventures LLC. And it’s a travel agency that sets up destination trips around geocaching. So many different things are tied into geocaching that people don’t even realize.
Tim:
Well yeah, it’s not something that comes up. You don’t hear people talking about it that much. I’m not a geocaching podcast guru. It’s not something you hear people talk about all the time.
Amie:
Outside the Geocaching world, I don’t hear people talk about it. I’ve had questions from some parents that I know their kids are working on a geocaching badge for Boy Scouts or something like that, and they have questions, but typically it’s not something I hear mentioned unless you’re in a group of geocachers.
Tim:
Right, interesting. Oh, and so what are non-geocachers that are just hanging around? What do they call them?
Amie:
We like to call those muggles. Just like Harry Potter did.
Tim:
Cool. I just thought I would get that in there. Okay, so there’s a travel industry, but are there any other industries that use geocaching, or geocaching uses other industries?
Geocaching-related Stuff
Amie:
There are geocaching books anywhere, from Geocaching 101 and How to Geocache to children’s books about geocaching stories. Other fictional books use geocaching as an aspect of the story. There is a geocaching board game called Cache Me If You Can, and they also have a card game version. I have the board game. It’s by DPH games. I love it. It’s a lot of fun for my husband and me. He’s my snuggle muggle. We typically call our muggle spouse or significant others the snuggle muggles. He’ll tolerate some geocaching stuff with me sometimes but also enjoys playing the game. And the neat thing about that game is that the way the board gets set up it’s different every time you play it.
Tim:
Oh, cool.
Pamela:
Oh, nice, so you can keep playing.
Amie:
So there are different things like that. I don’t know if you’re familiar with path tags.
Tim:
Nope.
Path Tags
Amie:
Anybody can order a path tag. You don’t have to be a geocacher. To order them, I have been told that they’re sometimes big with military groups. What they are, they’re about the size of a quarter and have a hole in them. So you can add them to a key chain or something, and you can design your own custom path tag. So it’s like your own little coin with your own design. You can either design it yourself or work with a designer. Then people use these as personal trade items. They like to trade them at events and collect them or leave them in geocaches. There’s an ID number for each design that you can go onto the path tag website and log your path tag. People will search for certain path tag designs, and you can trade them online. People get super serious about path tags.
Tim:
That’s cool. So tell me, I was gonna say what was your favourite but that’s always difficult to do.
Amie:
That’s always a difficult one
Tim:
If somebody asked me what’s my favourite place to camp? You would spend about 20 minutes while I list off all of my favourites which would be a bazillion places. Tell me a cool geocaching adventure you’ve been on.
Amie:
So one that I went on this summer with my husband and son. We were on vacation in Memphis and did a geocache called the Crystal Shrines Grotto, a virtual geocache. This took us to a place in a cemetery. This place is open to the public and tourists. You go in, and there’s a little cave. Somebody has created a shrine, a grotto in there. There are all the stalactites, and there’s all this Christian imagery in there. It was neat to see all this stuff carved out in stone. There is a plaque that talks about the history of the place. It was just really beautiful. My husband loved it. My son loved it. It was a cool place to see, and I discovered it existed because of geocaching.
Tim:
Cool.
Amie:
One of the things we like to say is it’s amazing the places geocaching can take you. I have discovered places even in my own town where I grew up and live now that I didn’t know were there. There are these little hidden gems that I stumbled upon because I would go after a geocache.
Geocaching Apps
Tim:
Cool. That’s awesome. Is there only one app? I think it’s called the geocaching app or something like geocaching.com.
Amie:
The official geocaching.com is run by a company called Groundspeak. So they have their own official geocaching app, Groundspeak. But there are other apps that you can get as well. And the two probably most well-known and biggest third-party apps are Geo Go, which is for Android phones, and Cachly, which is for iPhones.
Tim:
Okay, cool. I think I have the official geocaching.com one or something.
Amie:
They all do the same navigation stuff, but they all have slightly different features. And the third-party apps, Geo Go and Cachly, I’m not sure if the term is licensed, but they work with Groundspeak. And they have approval from Groundspeak to ping the Groundspeak servers. So that pulls the same information as the official Geocaching app does.
Tim:
Cool, so when you log a find, it logs it on your Geocache account or your profile.
Amie:
Exactly!
Pamela:
Are they paid apps?
Amie:
I’m not sure about Cachly. I believe it is. Geo Go is a paid app. I think it’s like $3.99 to buy the app. The reason those are paid apps is that it costs them money to be able to use the server feedback.
Tim:
The licensing.
Amie:
Right, the licensing. So there is a small initial fee for Cachly and Geo Go, if you want to use the official geocaching app, you can create a free account on geocaching.com, and that’s a basic membership. Or you can pay for a premium membership of $30 US a year. Some geocachers will make their geocaches a premium setting; only Premium members can access that. A basic membership can access any basic cache. But the app has a bit of a catch when you do that. I’m unsure why, but the app limits how many caches you can access on a basic membership. But if you use your phone or computer browser to go to geocaching.com, you can pull up any basic information there. So I’m not sure why the app has some limitations. But there are more geocaches accessible if you use the geocaching.com website.
Tim:
Okay, the free one for me as a beginner schmuck is fine now. Yes, we’ll see how often I do it.
Amie:
And that’s a good way to start. If you’re not sure if you will do this a lot. Start with the basic, check it out, and get a feel before spending $30 on it.
Tim:
I wholeheartedly endorse that idea. Yeah. All right. Well, I have to bring it back to camping and geocaching.
Amie:
We have not been camping for a while because our schedule has been so crazy. And usually, when we’ve gone camping, we’ve had family camping trips where I’m severely outnumbered by the muggles. So I can’t necessarily get everybody on board with me to go. But it is a great pairing of activities because many places, many campsites, will have geocaches at them or nearby. Not all of the National Parks in the United States allow geocaching containers. So they will typically allow virtuals or earth caches. Some of them will have traditional caches, but I’m not 100% sure of the reasoning for this. They don’t all allow traditional geocaches. Now, most of the National forests in private parks do allow it.
Tim:
Interesting. Yeah, I wonder what the reasoning behind that is. I don’t think I’ve ever read anything about our provincial parks, which would be the same as your state parks. I don’t think I’ve ever seen anything about geocaching. I know they are specific that you must have a day permit regardless of why you’re coming into the park. That’s sort of administrative business, but I don’t think they don’t allow you to do it. I might have to look that up now.
Amie:
Early in geocaching, there was some misunderstanding and concerns about caches buried in containers, animals, and different things, so the relationship between geocaching and Parks has greatly improved over the last 20 years. There are still some limitations to it, such as that.
Creating a Geocache
Pamela:
Is there an onus on the person who stashed the cache in the first place to maintain it and ensure that their cache is still there when people try to find it?
Amie:
They’re supposed to. Unfortunately, sometimes you have cachers that hid a cache and then stopped geocaching, but it’s still out there, and it’s just not being maintained. Not to open up a can of worms with that. It gets into a whole thing about cache maintenance. Some people will do a throw-down container when they can’t find the geocache. So they place a new container and log the find. That gets into a controversial thing, but typically when you hide a geocache, you are supposed to be responsible for maintaining the geocache. You are supposed to obtain permission from the land owner or property management company, whoever is maintaining that, to place the geocache there. And then, when you submit your hide, it goes to a group of volunteers that are the reviewers that look over the geocache. They ensure it’s not placed on a railroad track, a dangerous area, or something like that, right? They can’t be within, I think it was 150 or 200 feet of a playground, different rules like that to ensure the public’s safety and that sort of thing. And they go through, and typically they will ask you Who permitted you to place this here, and many reviewers will have you put it in the cache description. Each Geocache has its own page, giving you basic background information on the Geocache. Then once it’s approved and published, Geocache owners, GOs, as we call them for short, are typically responsible for maintaining the container and the log. If there are any trade items, we like to try to refill that to make sure people can trade items with it, because, unfortunately, not everybody follows the “if you take one, leave one rule.” Long answer short, yes, the hiders are supposed to be responsible for maintaining Geocaches.
Tim:
Oh, that makes sense. Somebody’s got to do it, and then theoretically, they’re the best ones to know exactly where it is because they stashed it. So I hadn’t thought about the rules. They want to ensure it’s not on a railway track or something. That’s a good idea. That’s why I didn’t design any of this.
Amie:
Reviewers do a lot of work that many people don’t necessarily realize they do.
Tim:
Right? Yeah, well, that’s cool, especially if you’ve got volunteers going out and checking it and ensuring it checks off all the checkboxes. It’s a lot of work but good I think that’s a great idea, and yay for them.
Amie:
Yeah. Okay, so now that we’ve talked about geocaching and covered some of the basics, I want to challenge you guys to go out and find a geocache. I want to hear about it.
Tim:
All right, cool. We can do that. You know what? We’ll tie it in with camping. The big kid and I are jumping in a canoe and going away for eight days in the boonies. So I’ll see if we can find something along one of the routes, and we’ll take a shot at stumbling around and see if we can find one. That’d be cool.
Amie:
That’d be perfect. I can’t wait to hear about it.
Tim:
All right.
Pamela:
Excellent. Well, that’s it for us for today. Thank you so much to Amie from Geocache Adventures for joining us. Please get inspired by Amie to get into geocaching. It is really fun. We’ll talk to you again soon. I’m Pamela.
Tim:
I’m still Tim.
Pamela:
we are still from supergoodcamping.com. Please do reach out to us. Our email address is hi@supergoodcamping.com. You can follow us on all social media. We are on Instagram, Twitter, Facebook, and we have a Facebook group called The Campfire that is free for anybody to join. Subscribe and click the bell to get notified when we put new videos on our YouTube channel. We will talk to you soon!
Tim:
Yeah, and I want to throw it out there cuz I’m like that, slide on over. Go check out Geocache Adventures. It’s cool. It’s interesting to listen to all of the people talk about geocaching. They are a passionate bunch, and it’s a great podcast. Go check Amie out.
Pamela:
That gadget cache sounds neat.
Tim:
Yeah. All right. Cool. That’s it for us this week. Talk to you soon.
Pamela:
Bye.
Tim:
Bye.