I use Google Earth to give me an idea of where I'm going ahead of time. I go ahead and lay out several caches I want to hit and make a day of it, so I don't have to be in a hurry.

Where does one go to get coordinates for in my area.

Put your zip code in, that will give you the caches in a certain area. I would HIGHLY recommend signing up for a premium membership, once you get going. Its only $15 or so a year, but there is alot more that is available to you as a paying member.

So on a random side note, I was on Ebay last night cuz of this thread. The bare bones, old as dirt Garmin Etrex is about $50ish (but it's about 10 years old)

Now, just for my own clarification, "car" gps units like the TomTom do NOT work for off-road applications, right? Even without the map, would they give GPS coordinates?

I have a decade old Garmin eTrex Vista. I just updated the firmware last summer and it works just great but it still is nothing compared to the color, touchscreen, relief showing, topo realistic screens of today.

Sigh, a boy can dream. A PLB before a new GPS. But I checked and there is two within a quarter mile of my office. Might check those out.

I often do a GE search before a difficult cache to find the best route into the area. I used GE on one cache that required a fair bit of hill climbing but with GoogleEarth I scouted an alternate route that turned a D/T of 3/4 into a 2/2. After logging, the owner jokingly came back to me and said that I cheated myself out of walking past some other great features in the Badlands and that I should go back and redo the hike the way he intended it to be done!

I've done a bit of geocaching with a friend. Definitely a fun time to be had.

I'm looking at purchasing a Garmin GPSMAP 60csx myself... I've heard a lot of good things about them.

Thanks so much Montanero!! This is great!!

They will work, just probably not as nicely as a regular GPS. It will give you distance to a GPS point. You just have to know how to do it with a Tom-Tom or other car-style GPS. Every Geocache I have found since I started has been found with a Tom-Tom One. Once you get off recognized roads, you switch modes and have to zoom in tight to find your way.

I've never owned a non-car-type GPS, so I don't find it all that hard to use a Tom-Tom to do it with.

GeoCaching is known as "Treasure Hunting" in my household. Lots of local parks in the area have caches. In some places the map looks like you can use them as stepping stones across the region.

We find it is a good afternoon time activity where there is some directed interest/goal for the kids to latch on to. The GPS (an old model Magellan) gets us near, then it becomes a challenge to find the hidden cache. Often we just sign the log book instead of taking something (TN/LN - Took Nothing, Left Nothing). Teaching the girls that the journey is its own reward, along with "don't stick your hand in that dark hollow log without checking for critters first".

Be warned, I have friends who got very hooked on geocaching, to a disturbing extent...