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Peter started Geocaching in 2002. Back then caches were extremely rare in this area, and they are still not overyly plentyful. Gander (about 40 minutes drive east) is the local hotspot, whereas the larger Grand Falls-Windsor (about 45 minutes drive west) is almost a cache desert. Various friends and family members would come along on a hunt once in a while, but Roxanne has been a regular for the past couple of years. That has made it easier to go after caches when the family is travelling, and the number of finds has increased greatly since. Create your own personalized map of Canada or check out our St. John's travel guide.  Here are some pictures from various Geocaching outings. Click on the thumbnail for the larger version.
See more pictures on the Flickr website, or our own server's photo gallery. Many people pass through Lewisporte on their way to see the whales and icebergs at Twillingate, so we have created a few caches here to give them an excuse to pause briefly here to see what our town has to offer. A few of the local attractions are:
We started geocaching by printing out the page to take with us for reference, and manually programming the coordinates into the Lowrance GlobalNav 12 GPS receiver. Lowrance has a program called GPS Data Manager which allows communication between a computer and the GPSr through a serial cable. This makes typing and transfering coordinates easier, and also allows you to make backups. I could safely store my marine waypoints and routes, when wanting to load in a bunch of Geocaching waypoints, for example. EasyGPS can do the same thing, but in addition it can read the LOC and GPX files available from Geocaching.com, so no typing was required at all. Just DL the file, upload it to the GPSr, grab the binder full of print-outs, and go Geocaching.  After discovering GeoToad I was able to go totally paperless by using Plucker to transfer files to my Palm IIIxe (available for under $50). GeoToad can be configured to grab the caches that you have not found in a certain area, or just about any combination of search factors you could want. It then generates HTML pages and GPX files. Plucker puts the webpages on the Palm, so you have just about everything that was on the print-out, and EasyGPS uploads the coordinates to the GPSr. Notes on the hunt can be made in the Palm's Memopad. Everything is then in two electronic devices - no paper wasted.
While the previous solutions are free, they require a bit of work and knowledge to setup, and are not perfect. By spending just a little bit of money you can get a much better solution. If you are an active Geocacher, then you should support the website by becoming a premium member (just $3US/mo.) anyway. With that you get access to a bunch of additional features that are really handy. Pocket Queries is probably the main one for getting the easily taylored GPX files. These are used both by EasyGPS, and a great little shareware program called CacheMate.
"CacheMate is a database for tracking GPS cache hunts. You can store information about caches or benchmarks, decode hints, and transfer data between CacheMate and the MemoPad application." The Lowrance GlobalNav 12 is now over seven years old. It does not have WAAS or mapping ability, and lacks many other features found on even the most basic of newer models. It also requires four AA batteries to power it for maybe eight hours, where most now use just two AA for twenty-four hours usage. While the unit is still working well, it is time to consider upgrading. The main thing we want now is mapping. Currently, we are using a Toshiba Tecra laptop in the car to run Toporama maps on GPS Trackmaker to zero in on caches, and see what is accessable in the area. The system works well enough, but is is bulky, inconvenient, and not always with us when travelling away from home. 
GPS Game Resources 
Geocaching/Mapping Tools: Free 
Geocaching/Mapping Tools: Shareware/Commercial
Hazardous Plants in NL
Hazardous Creatures in NL
My Cache Stats as of 2007-06-07 (Get your own CacheStats at www.logicweave.com)
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