Customer Reviews

The Geocaching Handbook (Falcon Guide)

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4 star:		(1)
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I used to geocache and so I read this book with interest. The information is misleading ("GPSr: Slang of a GPS receiver." An initialism is hardly "slang") to slightly dangerous (the author recommends turning off the GPS for most of your trek to "save batteries." Instead of losing your breadcrumb trail back to your camp or car, why not just carry spare batteries?).

It appeared to me that the author had never really spent much time geocaching. Take his advice with a grain of salt.

This is a good book for someone that is interested in or brand new to Geocaching. If you have found a couple of geocaches you will probably not find much of interest here.

I'd never heard of geocaching before so when I saw this interesting title I had to find out what it was about.

The idea is simple and sounds like a lot of fun, though, because basically, it's a game where people leave secret stashes of goodies hidden in places all over the world that you use your GPS system to find. The stashes typically contain things like CDs, DVDs, books, non-perishable food items, maps, inexpensive gifts and trinkets, and so on. Enthusiasts sometimes follow a trail of clues like an old treasure hunt to find the cache, in addition to using their GPS system. They can be buried in the ground in remote wilderness areas or left under a park bench in a city. There are caches in every U.S. state and many countries around the world, from England to Estonia. The book gives the GPS coordinates of each cache.

Since the game was invented a few years ago, it has rapidly evolved and many new variations have been invented, including geodashing, garmin games, geoteaming, hide and seek, just 4 openers, letterboxing, microcaching, minute war, multicaches, orienteering, poker run, project ape, tag, virtual caches, webcam caches, volksmarching, story cache, and something called the "stampin' fools game."

The book covers GPS basics as well as the history of the technology, and the chapters include GPS units, Creating Caches, Geo Games (which I just listed the names of above), Backcountry Safety and Etiquette, Geo Happenings, Clubs and Websites, and Cachinary 1.0.

The book has a forward by Dave Ulmer, the inventer of the sport, including the dramatic story of his snowmobile crash on Mt. St. Helens back in the days when the civilian GPS system accuracy was only 1/10 of what it is now--which was the reason for his crash. Because of that positioning error, he'd gotten into the chute right next to the one he was supposed to be in, which led to his crash.

Overall, this is an interesting, entertaining, and detailed introduction to the sport of geocaching that should be of interest to beginning and seasoned geocachers alike.

This was an excellent book when it was first published, and still is. It explains the facets of geocaching very well. However, it was published a few years ago and geocaching has evolved a little since that time. But it's still a good handbook for the beginner. I've given my copy to a few friends intrested in geocaching to read. After reading this book, get one that is a little more current.
Bob

This book has met my requirements as an introduction to this new (to me) sport.