Placing Caches

Being a relatively new geocacher (less than a year / 500 finds) I am not expected to be a proliferate cache hider. I am expected to find as many as I can and learn from what I have found so I can make the caching community a better place. I am doing that.

There are so many different types of caches and one of the overwhelming things about placing you first cache is, "Which type and where?". Location should dictate what kind of hide you use, simply because you should try to use the largest container an area will accommodate without being easily found. Since the DFW area is not heavily wooded, small, micro, and even nano hides are popular.

My first hide was considered a "small" and is still in action. I took a heavy plastic bowl with a snap on lid (similar to a cool whip bowl only thicker) and camo'd it with black tape (it was brightly colored so tape was needed to help it blend in). I used black tape because I did not know where to get camo or olive drab tape until much later. I found a grea location and hid it, carefully recording the coordinates my borrowed GPSr was reporting. They were off a bit, but in the end that did not matter. You are allowed a margin of error of 15 feet or so.

Placing caches can be expensive if you feel the need to buy containers instead of recycling them. Now to be honest, the container of choice, a 30 or 50 cal ammo can, is hard to beat. It can take a pounding and remain watertight for years. Ammo cans are sort of the "holy grail" for geocachers. Obiously you cannot hide an ammo can everywhere, so that is where the other sized caches come in. However you can use household items in lieu of an ammo can. Any watertight plastic container will work for a couple of years. I have a 5 gallon water resistent plastic bucket and lid that I hope to hide sometime...I just have to paint it to match the wooded area where I hide it.

Hiding caches can also be expensive if you are trying to make them elaborate. My friend Will has a couple that he spent a lot of time and money on in an effort to make them memorable. Fancy connectors, magnets, fishing leaders (to anchor small caches to keep them from moving), reflectors (for night caches...a challenge!), camo tape (just buy it in the painting department at Wal-Mart) glue, and artificial greenery all can drive up the cost of your cache. Add to that prizes to stock your cache with and you can have a rather pricey hobby. I have found new caches with DVD's, CD's software, camera's, and MP3 players in them, however this is not the norm. Most people will only put those things in caches if they have them lying around and they are not using them.

Now think about the cost of one cache and multiply that by the tens or hundreds that some people place. Personally, I have a goal of placing 5% of the total of finds I have. Right now I have 25 hides of which 23 are current. The other two had to be archived due to some conflicts over placement. I try to play fair.

As I have said before, I cache on the cheap. Most of my hides are "micros" (35 mm film canister sized) but I have a few small and medium sized ones as well. Most of my micros are pill bottles that have been camo'd to match their surroundings (that reminds me, I need to get some more camo tape). I have also used Altoid tins (in areas where water is not a big factor), large vitamin bottles, plastic coffee cans, plastic peanut butter jars, "beach tubes", and of course, 35 mm film canisters.

I have hidden them under bleachers, in lamp post skirts, tree boles, fences, guard rails, thick thorny bushes, under rocks, on electrical boxes, in picnic tables, under trash cans, under logs, and picnic shelters. I really like magnetic hides and have placed a few of them in the area.

Most of the "swag" (trade items) I have used is stuff I had lying around the house. Stickers, foreign money, magnets, fast food toys, and of course my signature item, 1980's cassette tapes. Those have been very popular with some of the cachers my age...sort of a blast from the past. I had at one time 200-300 or so but I have put them in almost every cache that will hold one IF I remember to bring them with me!

I love geocaching. I like to find them and I like to hide them. I enjoy the hunt, the sneaking around to grab one without a muggle seeing me, and I like the long hikes in the woods. It is an activity you can do solo (what I do most of the time) or with a group. You can do it in the daytime or at night, all year long. As a matter of fact, caching in the winter has some benefits...no Poison Ivy (or PI as it is known to cachers) or high weeds!