I used to do letterboxing as a kid, and recently (just this week haha) I've got into geocaching, and it is extremely fun! Do you do these activities? Got cool stories or favorite cache designs? (I found a cache yesterday that was hand-made to look disguised as a shelf fungus on a tree.) What does your letterboxing stamp look like? (Mine's the alchemical symbol for lapis lazuli, except backwards because I was a smol and forgot it would be mirrored, and I have no idea where it is.)
yeah, i used to go geocaching occasionally, but now i am in college and drained of all time and energy to do so
There are a bunch of geocaches nearby, I occasionally check them out since we've got plenty of tourists. I found a travelbug once but I left it in the cache and apparently it later got lost.
I did geocaching in like 2011-2014ish or so? My friend and i found one in the park by our houses, we may have found another somewhere else... i found like four on my own by sorta cheating and looking at the comments to find pics people had taken But i didnt have a gps or anything? One lady was out teaching new people How 2 Geocache, and saw my mom and i looking under a footbridge for one cache and was like "are you muggles?" I said we weren't, she was surprised that I didnt have any equipment (she had some type of gps, i literally dont know what youre supposed to do with them?) I sort of want to get back to it, i moved to a new city a couple years ago and didnt pick it up
@Everett if you have a smartphone, you can use a map app or a geocaching app to navigate to the coordinates! It'll narrow the search down to like a 10-20 foot radius if there's not too much tree cover blocking the satellite reception. When we knew people who did it years ago they all had to use, like, car GPS or specialist devices, but it's easier for more people now bc of smartphones, which is Rad imo
Here's a guide written by a gifted kids' page about how to get into geocaching! It's really helpful. Basically, you make a (free) account on geocaching.com, find a cache near you, and then use a phone or car GPS to navigate to the coordinates. It's helpful to bring said GPS device, a pen in case there isn't one in the cache, and possibly some tweezers if the cache is one of the really small "nano" caches (which often have the paper log rolled up really tightly in them, and which might not be good for a first attempt anyway). You head to the coordinates and then, using any or all of a) the title b) the hint c) the comments from other folks on the cache's page, find the cache's hiding place, which might be in a magnetic box in a guardrail, under a rock, or something similar, like hanging from a tree on the side facing away from the trail. Be careful not to pick up the cache when """muggles""" (non-geocachers) are around. Then you write your username and the date on the log and replace it just how you found it, and use the website to log your find. Some caches will have small trinkets like McDonalds toys in them, in which case the etiquette is generally to leave a new item if you do take something. With letterboxing, you want a dedicated logbook, a stamp you either made or bought, and an inkpad. Then you can go on letterboxing.org or AtlasQuest to find letterboxes, which seem to be rarer than geocaches, and which, while they sometimes give you coordinates to start at, often include some kind of direction, clue or riddle. When you find one, you stamp your book with the stamp in the letterbox, and the letterbox's book with the stamp you brought, and write names and dates and etc.
