About as close to that I will come is later in March when I will just grab 5 caches on vacation so that I can add those regions to my profile. Otherwise vacation without caching is like cookies without milk

My wife doesn’t like to cache, however she will on occasion go along if it means a nice hike or some nice scenery provided the vampires are at bay. My daughter hates caching and my son will cache from time to time with me. That being said, we do not plan our vacations around caching. I will, however incorporate caching into our vacations though. Especially if I can add some DeLorme pages, counties, states, etc. Most of the time I will try to keep it short and sweet so that there isn’t much complaining. If I get some time for myself, I will cache a bit more.

Of course, you can pick and choose among the available caches to select those that meet your area of interest. Just finding all the caches in the area (like you probably do at home) is not such a good idea any more. It was different in the past, when people only placed caches in places that “someone might want to visit”. This seems to have changed around 2004 or 2005 when people started placing caches in every parking lot, roadside, and every other undesirable location. This development caused many of those who were active in the early days of the sport to walk away. Just take the time to look for caches that sound interesting and aim for those. If everyone is a caching fan, you can stop and get some numbers along the way or in the general area, but if not, just stick with the handpicked choices.

Last year I made a couple trips where I definately had to be at a certain point by a certain time, yet I wanted to cache along the way. I managed to do both by looking for caches along the route every 200 miles or so. This gave me a chance to find a cache and my father to get out of the van and move his legs a bit. Letting him walk around the van a few times was doable for him, so I didn’t need to unload the wheelchair each time we stopped. What was even better was when I was able to pick out a cache that was less than 30 feet from the van. Then I would hand him his cane and tell him to find it.

So, yes, you can take a trip, do some caching and still not miss the sites you wanted to see on your vacation.

Our trip last March was not a caching trip, but we did do a few caches along the way. We only did 18 caches with over 3000 miles of driving and only four of those being park & grabs. A couple of the caches took us to some pretty cool spots that we would have missed otherwise.

If you have to stop for gas on the Interstate anyway, you might as well grab the cache in the guardrail. If you have some scenic destinations picked out, pick out a couple of nice caches in the area. You might get a closer and more scenic view.

This can certainly be a problem. When we took a trip to Maine we ended up doing about 20 caches in Illinois, many in a couple of nice parks, but it did inhibit us from making progress toward our goal of going East. It did not sit well with the “Better Half” who now has put limitations on our (my) caching on family trips. I usually will wake up early before the others and cache for an hour or so before we need to leave the hotel. Everyone stays happy that way and you can still enjoy the trip. There are also many virtuals available at many places where you might normally ist anyway. An example being the “Le Brea Tar Pits” in Los Angeles.

My advice…. don’t let it interfere with your vacation and it will be more enjoyable.

We plan our vacations, and then plan our caches. We typically don’t do a lot of them when traveling, but I’m always thinking about routes which may offer an opportunity for a new county in WI, or a new state. And we usually manage to find a few.

A couple of years ago, we rented a beater Toyota Corolla in Aruba and cached our way around the island. Just about every place we pulled in to also had a few of the expensive tour buses from the cruise ships. We saw all the sights we wanted to see, found a few caches, and spent less than $50.00 for a full day outing (about 1/3 of an official excursion from Royal Caribbean). We stayed alert, being in a foreign land, but never felt uncomfortable. But the caches we chose were around the popular tourist spots (for the most part…)

cYa, Jim & Chris