Category: Extreme Geocaching

/ Eric Schudiske /

That’s a Geocache?!? The Unending Evolution of Geocaches

Traditional geocache

For most, the evolution of the geocache container begins with a sturdy great-great-great-grandfather geocache.  It’s the iconic metal ammo can. But in one decade of geocaching, the geocache family tree branched off into dozens of directions.

Each branch embodies the spirit of evolution.  Geocaches now blend more and more into their natural environment.  Say you place a cache on the outskirts of an estuary?  There’s a bird geocache for that.  You’re considering an urban cache on a park bench?  We’ve heard of magnetic microcaches that resemble gum for that.

Take a quick look at the picture below on the left.  Guess how many geocaches are in that picture?  Ok, I know there are a few caveats. There can only be one geocache every tenth of a mile and none of these are activated, but how many possible geocaches do you see? The answer is… six. The bird, those pinecones, that rock, even two of the sticks are actually geocaches.

How many geocaches are hidden in this picture
Just enough room for a log

Geocaches are not the only part of the geocaching equation to evolve.  Geocachers developed a keener “geo-sense” over the past decade.  Say that you placed a corn cob shaped cache in field of corn… the cache will be found.

A cache like this one pictured at the bottom of the page is all in a days work for an average cacher.

I’d love to hear your most difficult find.  How many DNF’s did you log before uncovering the cache?  Let us know, just post a comment to this blog.

Thermometer reveals a geocache
/ Eric Schudiske /

Highest and Lowest Geocaches – Geocaching Presents

Editor’s note: the Travel Bug® aboard the International Space Station returned to earth in early 2011. The Travel Bug can now be viewed (and logged!) at Geocaching HQ in Seattle, Washington, USA.

Richard Garriott is a man on a mission. The active geocacher holds two extreme records in the world of geocaching.  He’s placed the highest and the deepest caches.  One cache is on the International Space Station, the other in an ocean trench off of Europe.  Hear why he’s spent millions to push the treasure hunt to the edge.

See all the Lost & Found videos, from an 88 year old geocacher to how Geocaching.com got it’s start, here.

/ Eric Schudiske /

Geocaching Caption Contest 3 – Win a Barely Coveted Prize

Winning Entry, “Fly me to the moon…..Let me cache among the stars! Let me have a FTF …..on Jupiter and Mars!” – jenbut

This is the third installment of our Geocaching Caption Contest. What foreign world does this cache exist?  “I never knew that this Utah cache was on the moon.”  You can do better.  The winner receives these barely coveted 10 Years! temporary tattoos.

You could win these barely coveted 10 Year! tattoos

Please include your geocaching username in all entries.  Winner will be chosen by an ad hoc committee of Lackeys.

13 Lackeys voted last week to crown the winner of the second Geocaching Caption Contest.

Take a look at the post to see who won.

Good luck this week!

/ Eric Schudiske /

Geocaching – More than Just Fancy Footwork

Train Travel = Geocaching

Here’s some (fairly) simple math.  Geocaching = Hiking.  Right?  Well, the answer is yes and no.  Welcome to the “new geocaching math.”

Besides foot travel there’s a few other modes of transportation that invite geocaching adventure; kayaking, hot air ballooning, off roading, and space travel aboard a Russian Soyuz rocket.

All these means of transportation have been exploited to take geocaching to a new level  – or out of the atmosphere. But how about caching by train?  It’s how the savvy wild west pioneers would have geocached.  Now one of the finest examples of powering caching by train takes place, not in the wild west, but in Merry Old England.

Geocacher “Steve-e-b” brought his interests and talents to bare on the task.  He launched a website detailing geocaches around 94 stations around Birmingham, England.  You can use a drop down menu to access nearby caches for each of the stations.  Train + Geocaching = Adventure on a time table. How about that for using simple math to plan your next geocaching adventure?

Steve-e-b and I exchanged a couple of emails.  He says he never set out to merge train travel and geocaching, it’s just something that happened. “… so many of our first caches were found during shopping trips (or, as my wife would say, during “craftily planned trips designed to avoid shopping”). We always traveled into the city by train or bus, and so geocaching by train evolved from there.”

He says he hopes the map inspires those visiting or living in the West Midlands to plan a geocaching journey.

But what have I missed?  What other forms of travel combine so well with geocaching and possibly the shopping experience?