May 2nd marks the 15th anniversary of when Geocaching began. Get out on May 2 and May 3 to find a geocache—any geocache—or attend a Geocaching event—any event or CITO— you’ll earn a special 15 Years of Geocaching souvenir. Plus, you’ll discover your geocaching mission for the summer.
On the new search page, we’ve put together three new one-click searches to make choosing the geocache you want to find—and earn your souvenir with—easier. Just click the box to find events near you, the oldest geocaches in your area, or nearby geocaches with favorite points.
On April 24–27, geocachers around the world will gather at events to clean up natural areas, plant trees or remove invasive species and earn a souvenir. Check out the Event Calendar or the new geocache search for CITOs near you. Make sure to mark your ‘Will Attend’ to let the event organizers know you’re coming.
The next weekend, May 2 marks the 15th anniversary of when Geocaching began. Get out and find a geocache—any geocache—and you’ll earn a special 15 Years of Geocaching souvenir. Plus, you’ll discover your geocaching mission for the summer.
You did it! You hid the coolest, most creative geocache ever and followed all the necessary guidelines…right? Well, the fun doesn’t end there. As a geocache owner, you have a responsibility to maintain and manage your geocache after it is published. The hide itself is just the beginning of your geocache-owning journey.
To learn more about hiding a geocache or planning a Geocaching Event, visit the new Hide a Geocache page. Then, take this quiz to test your hiding knowledge.
Unlock Your 2015 Geocaching Mission on May 2 and 3
This May 2nd and 3rd, celebrate the history of geocaching by unlocking your mission for 2015. May 2nd and 3rd signal the beginning of geocaching, some 15 years ago. On May 2, 2000, GPS signals were descrambled, increasing the accuracy of GPS devices worldwide by ten times. The following day, what would become known as the first geocache was hidden.
Celebrate 15 Years of Geocaching on May 2nd and 3rd by finding any geocache or attending any geocaching event. You’ll earn a new digital souvenir for your geocaching profile.
Unlock details of your 2015 geocaching mission by reading the souvenir’s description. Join the conversation with your fellow geocachers on social media by tagging #Geocaching15 in your posts.
On March 14, 2015, aka 3/14/15, geocachers around the world celebrated Pi Day by finding a Mystery Cache or attending a Pi Day event and earning two souvenirs. In case you missed it, there was another puzzle hidden within the souvenirs.
Take a look at the two Pi Day souvenirs. Notice the numbers and letters around the rim? Combine those to find the page for GC31415, which contains a very special message from one of the co-founders of Geocaching.com and a few delicious pi(e) recipes.
The Cache Page Reads, “You don’t really need to visit this cache. The place is not of any interest, the container is awful…”
The geocache page for Krneki #1 reads, “You don’t really need to visit this cache. The place is not of any interest, the container is awful…” If you’ve read this far, you’ve just read the sub-sub-genre of geocaching satire. Krneki #1 geocache owner icabrian recently visited Geocaching HQ in Seattle. He popped in after traveling thousands of miles from his home country of Slovenia. The emerging geocaching country is home to more than 3,600 hidden caches, and it’s also home to a fiery debate. Each geocaching community wrestles with this very question at some point:
What defines a quality geocache?
icabrian uses Krneki #1 to raise the issue in Slovenia. He writes on the geocache page, ” Everything is wrong with this cache, because it was placed to spark a public debate about where this game is going, what we want from it and especially what we don’t want from it.” He also claimed, when I spoke with Igor (his real name) that the logbook for the geocache was always wet. That’s mighty bold bragging about an awful geocaching experience.
The world’s most forgettable geocache?
Perhaps not surprisingly the community embraced the conversation. People like to talk about quality geocaching, and they know it when they see it, and they know when they don’t. Krneki #1 has more than a dozen favorite points. Igor’s answer to what defines a quality geocache? He tells me, “(Geocaching) is not just about hiding a box. The box becomes a geocaches with something on top.” He talked about placing the geocache at an inspiring location, crafting a rich story or a clever puzzle, something beyond the box which transforms the container into a geocache.
How would you define a quality geocache?
Put your answer in comments below and through the magic of the internet, we’ll create a word cloud soon and see what gems pop out.
DIY: Quality Geocache Video
Check out this quick video for a few tips to create a Favorite Point worthy geocache
Click to learn about placing a Favorite Point Worthy Geocache
