What Geocaching is All About – Suburbs Version

A surprise geocaching container built like a spider, hidden near a Bass Pro Shop in the suburbs. The paper log was rolled up in a tiny container that was tucked inside the body of the spider. 

(First in a series about geocaching as a beginner.)

Here is geocaching in a nutshell – you use an app on your phone to hunt little hidden containers. When you find one, log it both on the app, and on a paper log inside the container.

Most of the information I’d seen about it featured people looking around in parks and nature preserves. I kept wanting to try it, but never seemed to get around to venturing out to one of my nearby state parks. When I finally opened the app on my phone to figure out how it worked, the app’s map was filled with geocaches all around my suburban neighborhood.

I didn’t have to make a special trip; I could start close to home.

Once I signed up for a free basic account on the official geocaching website, all I needed was my phone and a pen to sign the logs.

The app even got me started by highlighting a geocache in a church parking lot near my house. It was threatening to rain, so my husband and I drove – he wanted to try it, too – but we could have easily ridden our bikes to all of our first spots.

When you click on a geocache icon on the app’s map, it takes you to a screen with detailed information, including tips for finding it, and a “Navigate” button that you use to get yourself close.

Your phone will buzz when you’re within about 20 feet, then you start looking around to see if you can figure out where it is hidden.

Screenshot of the mobile app’s detailed description of a single geocaching location. The smiley face goes on a geocache icon when you log that you’ve found it.

Once you’ve found it, you use your pen to sign the log paper inside, and you also log it in the app.

You’re not supposed to tell people too much about how to find a geocache, but I will say that my first one was pretty easy to locate. The app wants you to succeed, especially if you are a newbie.

Many of them look like the one in the photo below: a pill-bottle-shaped container with a screw-off top, covered in camouflage tape.

Typical geocaching container – my first one! 

Most of the containers I found didn’t have anything in them but a tiny resealable plastic bag, with a paper log rolled up or folded inside. The one exception is in the photo at the top of this post – a big plastic spider that served as an (alarming!) geocache.

One did have some extra trinkets, called SWAG or Stuff We All Get, tucked inside. If you take one, you’re supposed to leave one of equal value. There’s a whole ongoing discussion about ideas for cool SWAG to leave in geocaches, including geocache SWAG Pinterest Boards.

Here is what it looks like on the app when you’re in Navigate mode and getting close…

Screenshot of what it looks like when you are close to a geocache spot (the green icon) on the geocaching app. The blue pointer is your position, based on the GPS in your phone. 

My suburban jaunt included hunting around in bushes near an apartment complex, looking inside lawn sprinkler controller in-ground boxes, and discovering that you can lift up the bottom part of certain parking lot lampposts around my local Bass Pro Shop…

Finding a geocache container in the bottom of a lamppost.

The photo below shows what the little paper log looks like – you can see the open geocache behind it, which was zip-tied to a branch of the surrounding bush –

Geocache log strip of paper that is rolled up to go into a small container, seen in back of photo.

The most fun geocache to find on my first excursion was in one of the more ‘burbs locations you can imagine – a Red Box movie rental kiosk outside of my local CVS drugstore.

It took me awhile to discover it, and I had to think hard about how someone would hide a little container in a waterproof fashion, in a location within the Red Box area that wouldn’t be found or disturbed by random passers-by, or people using the kiosk to rent movies.

There is a geocaching container hidden in this innocuous suburban Red Box movie rental kiosk outside a CVS drugstore.

A lot of us are looking for ways to get outside more, both at home and when we travel, and geocaching is a terrific way to do that. It is family-friendly, but also enjoyable for singles and couples, and can be as easy or as strenuous as you choose.

Are you a fan of geocaching? Tell us about your favorite find down in the comments.

All photos and screenshots by the author.

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