Remember planning trips before discovering geocaching?

[Trekkin and BirdinParticipant]

Before selective availability was turned off and before we discovered geocaching, planning any kind of trip was a matter of picking out something we wanted to do or see and going to do it. We planned trips with our boys to go dogsledding for the day in the national forest, then heading down to Canal Park in the evening to see the ice sculptures from the Beargrease run. We’d plan camping trips at Potowatomi and hike some of the state and county parks and take in some of the sights. We sea kayaked into the Apostle Island caves.

Now, we tend to look at what caches we’d like to visit when we go somewhere. Often, those caches still bring us to the kinds of places we visited pre-caching, but the whole tone of the trip is different. Not saying one way is better than the other, just…different.

Anyone else have any observations?

[hack1of2Participant]

• We use GPSr’s instead of paper maps
• We look at favorite points of caches when planning our route
• We consider what challenge caches we’re working on as we plan a trip or route
• Google and Tripadvisor have replaced AAA Trip tiks
• Sometimes we’ll pick caches and plan trips around that, other times we’ll pick a destination/attraction/park and plan caches around that
• We do however still consult travel guide books if planning a trip of significance
• As always we look for waterfall hikes whether they have nearby caches or not
• It’s about the hike, the adventure, being outdoors, not about the caches
• It’s about the caches, the challenges, not about the hike.  And it’s never been about the numbers.
• We are much better dressed for bushwhacking than we were in our pre-caching days.
• We can go to just about anywhere in Wisconsin and look up caching friends for an adventure or two. 🙂

 

[BeccaDayParticipant]

Not too much has changed for us but we aren’t power Cachers.  We pick an area we want to go and I do look for caches but don’t usually choose the destination because of the caches, it’s usually something else that draws us. We were already making detours in our routes for interesting things, now we just pick up a cache while we’re there.

Not all who wander are lost. -J.R.R. Tolkien

[Author]

Posts