I learned early in 2008 that a little preparation goes a long way to making your caching day much more enjoyable and successful. Here are some tips that might help you prepare for a great day caching.

A few days before heading out for a day of caching, my family and I discuss which part of the state we want to visit and frame our caching around the trip to and from that location. One of the best tools to pre-viewing which caches are on the way is the Geocaching.com Google Maps. When viewing a cache detail page, there's a link to view the cache in Geocaching.com Google Maps, once navigating your web browser to this page, you can zoom in and out, pan the map, and view where caches are on the map. This is how I create our cache list for our day out cachin'.

I know Geocaching is all about getting outside and hiking around finding caches in either rural or urban settings, where exactly does street navigation fit into all of this? It can actually make your day a whole lot more enjoyable and stress free as you drive from cache to cache. I use the TomTom Navigator on my PocketPC with a small BlueTooth GPSr for my street navigation. GSAK has the ability to export caches in the database into TomTom POI files and this is one of the keys to a great day of caching.

Using GSAK, I export each type of cache into it's own TomTom POI file and created icons to represent each type of cache. The TomTom software has a great itinerary feature and I setup all of the caches we wish to visit in a list. Having an itinerary setup really makes getting from cache to cache really easy and completely stress free.

Although listed last, this is probably the most important thing to remember to pack before heading out for a day of cachin', especially if you have kids. We enjoy packing granola bars, various crackers, and the assorted drink mixes. One tip is selecting the right water bottle for yor drinks. For months we kept purchasing various water bottles that had different kinds of seals, but they all seemed to leak (usually on me). Until we found some Camelback bottles that had a built in drinking tube with a soft rubber bite. This is the only water bottle we've had that doesn't leak and the kids can use without spilling; it's well worth the money.