Geocaching in Kentucky

Today my family tried something new. We took our brand new handheld GPS and headed out to find our first geocaches. I think we are hooked! What a great family activity.

We logged in to the Geocaching website and started our free basic account, put in our city/state combination and clicked on the locations. Because we have a Garmin Dakota 20 GPS, we were able to hook up the device via usb cable and just click on the ‘send to gps’ button. How easy is that!

Once we had our coordinates loaded into the GPS Dakota, we were ready to go hunting! We followed the gps to the location then hopped out, grabbed our camera and started following our GPS. I was amazed that it took us to the exact spot out in this field. There was an arrow pointing which direction we should walk and then a blue button showed up telling us we were at the right tree. The kids started looking around the tree and then we heard my oldest son yell that he saw the cache! We found a small plastic tube, but we were as excited as if we had found buried treasure.

Inside the cache was a list showing who had visited this particular geocache. The first visitor had logged this cache back in 2010. What a fun hobby.

About the Garmin Dakota 20 GPS
The Dakota 20 GPS is an affordable touch screen handheld GPS unit with many sophisticated features. The Dakota 20 housing is rugged and compact; waterproof to IPX7 standards, measures a mere 3.9” x 2.2” x 1.3” and weighs only 6.75 ounces with batteries. The high sensitivity receiver in the Garmin Dakota 20 has HotFix technology for the best possible GPS performance and reception. The main attraction on the Dakota GPS is the beautiful 2.6” sunlight viewable touch screen display which allows simple operation.

More Features
With the Garmin Dakota 20 you will even be able to wirelessly send tracks, waypoints, routes, and geocaches to other Garmin Colorado, Oregon, Dakota, and Foretrex handheld GPS units. The Dakota is even cable of paperless Geocaching. The internal 3-axis electronic compass for accurate heading and barometric altimeter for the best possible elevation reading round out the advanced features that will help you safely return from your next hunting, hiking, or geocaching adventure.

You can buy the Garmin Dakota 20 from the GPS Store.

Have you ever found any geocaches? Read more tips about geocaching. Then share you your best ideas, finds and stories because I know we’ll be going hunting again soon!

I received a handheld GPS device for the purpose of this review.