Chi WOW WOW Blog

Well I hadn’t until Tammie Denski from Pocketpups sent me a gift of some really cool Geocoins that she designed with her chihuahuas, Zoe and Cassie on them. I love them!!! So now I am curious about Geocaching and thinking about the design of my own Geocoin…

So what exactly is Geocaching? (pronounced geo-cashing)
Well it’s similar to a treasure hunt but instead of using a paper map or instructions, you use a GPS device and follow coordinates to locate the prize or “cache” as it is called. Individuals and organizations set up caches all over the world and share the locations of these caches on the internet. GPS users can then use the location coordinates to find the cache. Once found, it may provide the visitor with a wide variety of rewards. All the visitor is asked to do is if they get something they should try to leave something for the cache. Most contain logbooks to sign and most are located in areas that are worth seeing for some reason or another. Here’s what Tammie had to say about her experience in this new age game of treasure hunting.

How did you get involved in Geocaching?
Since I love hiking and sight seeing, I was planning a trip to South Carolina and looked on a website for Paris Mountain Park. There I saw information about Geocaching. I bugged my boyfriend for two years before he finally surprised me with a GPS unit and we tried our first cache hunt on the way to the Carolinas. We stopped in Charleston, WV at a geocache named CATO. Zoe and Cassy were in their mega cool doggy backpack so we followed the GPS and ended up descending down a hillside. Steve found the cache and we found him further up the trail where we started. I guess we took the “hard” way to the cache and we had a good laugh about it. He signed the log but did not swap anything at that time.

What has been your most memorable experience to date?
There are SO many memorable cache experiences and gorgeous interesting places we would have never seen if it weren’t for Geocache, it is hard to pick just one. I guess the most memorable was the second cache I found in Charlotte, NC called Tomb Raided.

In the cache was the first Geocoin I found, a travel bug with a mission - gave me a rush for some reason. I was hooked! Since then I have designed my own coins, been featued on Podcacher and Icenrye’s Videozine podcasts and attended Geowoodstock V in Raleigh, NC where I was a vendor selling my glow-in-the-dark cache rock containers. I have recently given coins to co-workers at BASF who geocache. One person took a coin to Hawaii and left it in a cache there, it’s mission was to go to Geotiki’s geocoin studio Oahu. The logs from the artist and metal smith Tiki were great! He designs the most sought after Geocoins in the world. I have many of them and they fetch a pretty penny on ebay. Another co-worker took some of my coins to Shanghai and I have a coin that travels around Australia collecting photos of the outback. This coin was mailed to my coin customer and he placed it there for me. Then the BIG geocoin race between me, my boyfriend and my sister Marie, this is our second race - last year Steve’s geocoin volkswagon beetle won with over 12k miles accumulated in a year. His coin made it to Russia, Germany and Australia.

There are also Geocaches and coins dedicated to dogs and other pets. I have placed a cache in a Northville, MI next to a dog park. It is a cache dedicated to owners who want to swap unused dog toys and it also collects dog related travel bugs. My dogs go with me sometimes but since they are very small chihuahuas, I have to be careful only to bring them to easy low terrain cache hikes, on mild weather days.

What kinds of trinkets have you collected?
You generally do not keep the travel bugs and coins you find in a cache. You read the mission and move it along to the next cache. I have purchased coins and been to Geocaching events where you swap coins and other signature items. I have coins from Geotiki.com the handcrafted coins from Oahu, Crake Productions from Texas, many coins my family gets me for Christmas and award coins from my boyfriend. He has them engraved with the cache I found for the milestones I reach. Kids love to collect the toys left behind in geocaches, most of them are happy meal toys. I have gotten an iPod sock, a chihuahua stuffed toy and other useful items. One of the items I love to collect are Pathtags. They are like a Geocoin, but you can keep most of these you find. They are all the same size and have a hole in them (design is the same as the UK’s trolley coin concept).

Is there anything you want to tell people who are considering taking up this hobby?
You can get into it very inexpensively. Buying used GPS equipment is always an option. Paperless caching if you get into the sport is the easiest way to take your missions with you on the road. Paperless caching uses smartphones or PDA devices to manage database queries of caches in your target area. Stick to clean trails for the most part - most cache hiders will stick to a clean trail until about 10-30′ from the actual cache. Be safe out there! Know and practice basic hiking safety. Always take water, a small first aid kit for your hiking pack and keep a larger kit in the car. Caching in pairs or groups is always best for staying safe. If you don’t find the cache the first time, report your DNF. This helps the cache owner monitor for issues with cache hides. Sometimes caches can be stolen or removed without the owner’s knowledge. If you want to hide a cache, see the rules on geocaching.com and get the location approved by local parks or location property managers.