Garmin Geocaching: An Excellent Combination

Garmin: There from the Inception of Geocaching

Garmin geocaching is all about lightweight, durable, water proof/resistant, and extremely accurate portable, handheld GPS devices for use in paperless geocaching. Their models have long battery lives so you can hunt all day or night, plus; they have tons of memory to hold cache locations, routes, POIs and maps. As you may already know, geocaching is a popular and engaging outdoor hobby that involves finding hidden caches from the coordinates or clues you access on dedicated sites like Geocaching.com. In fact, Garmin has a partnership with geocaching.com which is even better for the consumer. Once you locate the cache, it’s customary to take the items and trinkets found in the container and replace them with your own stuff. In essence it’s a modern day treasure hunt with the assistance of GPS satellites in outer space and the handheld units that receive the signal which tells users exactly where they are located. For an intriguing look into the origins of this activity, read The Oldest Geocaches in the U.S.

Garmin jumped right in with this new and exciting hobby by developing and selling GPS devices that are very geocache-friendly. But their devices are also well-suited for hikers, hunters, kayakers, and fishermen too. That way, you’ve got a reliable GPS device you can depend on and abuse (somewhat) on all your outdoor adventures. In addition, Garmin geocaching GPS devices now offer paperless geocaching. Paperless geocaching allows the Garmin GPS owner to download cache descriptions, ratings, and recent log info stored directly on your device from your computer. With older models, you had to do that manually.

Best Garmin’s to Geocache With

So what is the best Garmin unit for geocaching? We’re glad you asked because in The Best GPS for Hiking and Geocaching, we chose the Garmin 550t for all the stellar features and functions it has to offer. With this unit, you’ll get a built-in compass, altimeter, Topo maps, a bright touch screen, and Micro SD memory storage (in addition to what is already preloaded) all wrapped up in a slim, light, and rugged housing. It’s got an intuitive interface that’s easy to master and it supports Geocaching.com (the premier geocaching website covering caches all over the globe) GPX files. But many of the lesser expensive eTrex models (the lower end models are inexpensive yet quite capable), along with the GPSMAP 60 CSx, will work very well for you too.

The Garmin Nuvi series is designed more for vehicular navigation, but people do use it for geocaching too, especially for caches that aren’t far from roads. Since it’s not as rugged and durable, you’ll just have to be more careful not to drop it or get it wet. But what’s nice is that newer Nuvi models enable paperless geocaching, which means that you can upload many geocaches that you might want to find from your computer to your device without hassling with a lot of paper and printing. Since your Nuvi is always in your car, you can be prepared to geocache anywhere. Here’s a great tutorial explaining everything you’ll need to do, to get your Nuvi geocache-ready at Geocaching.totaltechworld.com. Good luck cachers, and be advised that we have tons of articles on our site about geocaching in specific areas, countries, and U.S. states. Just use our search feature to find what’s available near you by typing in “geocaching Michigan”, as an example, and click on the article about that. Good luck caching!