Originally Posted by
mattmill
Hi there, My name is Matt and a co-worker of my wife was telling us about geocaching. My kids, 11 and 7, thought that it would be fun to go on treasure hunts, especially the 11 year old. My wife works a lot of weekends so I am always looking for something to do with the kids and dog.
So, I am looking into all this. It seems a little overwhelming but I do not have a GPS unit yet. I think that once I have one in hand and learn how to use it a lot of this will make more sense to me. We live in Brunswick and it looks like there are many caches in the area so we could almost walk from home to a few to "get our feet wet."
Is it worth waiting and buying a used better unit when they come up or just getting the basic yellow etrex? You guys know the way these work and the 60 series seems nice with the antenna but over twice the price. I want the kids to be successful, if they are not they will want to stay home.
Thanks everyone and looking forward to the first find,
matt
Well it looks like I'm coming into this discussion a bit late, but figured I would add my two cents anyways.
First, as TRF mentioned, welcome to geocaching and to geocachingmaine.org . . . hopefully you and your family will find geocaching as fun and rewarding as I have . . . and hopefully you will find that geocachingmaine.org is a great site to get questions answered and to "meet" some great folks.
As for your specific question . . . my own opinion is to buy what you can afford. For $150 or so (or even less as you have discovered) you can purchase a new map-capable (something I personally like since I am very visually oriented) GPSr. In general the more expensive the GPSr is = the more features . . . but I have found that very often I use very few of these extra features (it really depends on what you're looking to use your GPSr for.)
My first GPSr was a Magellan Meridian color unit . . . I bought this since it had a color screen and the bundled package made it very attractive to me since it came with software, cords, vehicle mount, etc. I still use this GPSr today . . . primarily in my vehicle to get me to the parking area of the cache since it offers turn-by-turn directions . . . although I also use it when sledding and ATVing as I have a topographical map loaded on it as well.
My latest (and favored) GPSr however is a Magellan Explorist 210 which I purchased for $150. This unit is wicked small and light-weight and seems to be a bit more accurate than my older Meridian. This unit does not offer a color screen, but I find it more useful when hiking and geocaching.
Regardless of what GPSr you purchase you should find that just about any GPSr on the market will serve your needs for geocaching . . . and be aware that even though the latest and greatest GPSrs may be better the accuracy and success of the hunt depends on both how accurate the hider was in establishing the coordinates (and consequently how accurate their GPSr was/is) and your own ability in determining where and how a cache may be hidden (and this is something you will learn with experience.)
Final thought . . . we've all started out brand new to geocaching and we've all made plenty of mistakes or had questions . . . so if you start out and have questions, ask away!
"Courage is not the absence of fear, but the realization that there is something more important than fear."
"Death is only one of many ways to die."