According to the Geocache website:
Souvenirs are virtual pieces of art that can be discovered and displayed on your profile.

More facts stated:

• Souvenirs are linked to a location
• Souvenirs may also be time bound (e.g. find in Oct 2010)
• A Souvenir is found through logging other geocaches in the area of a souvenir
• A Souvenir may also be found by searching the iPhone or Android app in the area of a souvenir

Where did this idea come from?

My guess is this is based off of Foursquare awarding badges for places and events you have visited. They got over 100,000 users in 10 days and are now over 500,000 people using this. Others soon copied like Yelp and Facebook where you can log your physical location using a GPS enabled device. People start comparing how many badges they have and the difficulty of obtaining the badge – sound familiar?

How many Geocache Souvenirs are out there?

So far I have 1 from my mountain biking trip in Otay Lakes. I switched on my iPhone geocache app and ta-da suddenly it popped up. It did add a new element of surprise in geocaching that I’m guessing is the intent. It shows up on your profile page to keep you hooked…

GeoCass UK had some interesting links to other possible geocahe souvenirs, but when I tried them they did not work, so maybe Groundspeak caught on and have removed to keep the surprise element.

Potential future geocache souvenirs?

• Halloween souvenir (logging on Oct 31st)
• Easy-peasy-lemon-squeezy souvenir (logging a 1-1 geocache)

I just completed the latest update to my geocaching statistics using a new geocaching tool called “My Geocaching Profile”. At this point I saw that I have a big gap in the hard terrain and hard difficulty area….this is the highlighted section below.

So what does it take to get a difficult geocache? I recently got a 1.5 Difficulty & 4 Terrain geocache at Sunset Cliffs Beach and thought I’d share the adventure….

We arrived at the site and were met with lots of Danger signs like this one? Does this mean you can’t go down there? The geocache logs state that kids are here all the time with their families…surely if a kid can do it, so can I? (I’m thinking I am terrible at peer pressure and this is just a really good example why!)

We decide to go down and boy is it tough. We have the GeoPuppy, Watson, with us which of course makes it more difficult. But if a kid can do this, so can I. That’s my mantra for this whole experience….Eventually we make it down and have to take a photo to show how great (or crazy?!) we are.

Then we have to find the geocache. The log stated that the GPS unit is not going to do very well and that you should expect it to bounce around a bit so if you get within 50 feet that is as good as it gets. Right then, so we are only left with this whole area here then?

The iPhone geocache app saves us as it includes photos from others and my Oregon 550t GPS unit only has the text. Without that we were going for a blind cache search (something you do find many cachers adamant about) but we take the hints and steer towards the wet, damp cave. Really, in there? Would they expect us to climb in all the way there? Of course they would….And I send in Bangers to save the day.

Hooray we found it and can add a find to the Terrain 4. Now we just have to combine with a Difficulty of 4 and we can get one of those quadrants marked off. There is another Terrain 4 further up from Sunset Cliffs Beach….but we’ll leave that for another day.

In case you want to go get this geocache, the GC Code is GC22A6Y Surf Rock. Have Fun!

This geocache blog entry is a quick lovers guide for the best iphone geocaching app by GroundSpeak. I did a full review of 3 geocaching units – Garmin, Blackberry and the iPhone here.

I pull out my phone, load up the application, and search the local area, find one and go!

The developers are making updates on a regular basis and welcome feedback in the geocache iphone forum

For instance, they added the ability to post the log file directly to the website and not store it as a field note, meaning you needed to take an extra trip to the web site.

This is soooo worth the $9.95!! Read more at official geocaching website

Summary

• Garmin Colorado 400t Unit the foundational tool for geocachers with great GPS accuracy, hide information, and fantastic features like “turn by turn driving directions to your next geocache”, but requires uploading queries and downloading finds that add an extra step the wireless devices no longer need. I still would take this one out for when I know I’m going geocaching (weekends, vacations…)
• Blackberry Trimble Geocache Navigator Application if you have the blackberry, worth adding this for those “wonder if there are any geocaches around here” moments. But as any wireless device – depends on being in an area where there is a signal. It does upload the log information straight away vs. just posting a field note which is what the iPhone does.
• iPhone Groundspeak Geocaching Application same comment as Blackberry for those ”wonder if there are any geocaches around here” moments and signal issues. But this is made by Geocaching.com and has some offline capabilities that makes this better for me than the Blackberry app.

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Garmin Colorado 400t

Here’s the link to Garmin’s store about this tool.

COST $599

I bought this one when I started geocaching just over 1 year ago. It was the newest release at that time and had special features for geocaching – like including the hints and the past 5 logs automatically.

When I bought the driving maps in addition (yes, that’s how they make money) for a trip to Europe – I discovered a whole new fantastic aspect of the Garmin tool for Geocaching. The “we’ll give you turn by turn driving instructions to get to your next cache” feature. This stopped a lot of those navigating arguments straight away and made geocaching so much more fun when we were driving to areas of geocaches….

as I get more experienced and use wireless devices, this tool will start to get outdated. I don’t want to have to spend the time and steps I do now. Mainly the posting of the logs on to Geocaching.com after I have geocached. The wireless devices can send the information “Live” so it’s done.

An excellent review from fellow geocacher and hiker Calpidder, another from GPS magazine on this unit, and a blog review for hand held devices.

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Blackberry Trimble Geocache Navigator Application

Here’s the link to Trimble about this application.

COST $5.99 per month (but FREE trial for 60 days available)

I tried this out for a week and loved the features and functionalities. It had a good interface, was easy to use, logged the caches straight away (the step I least like to do). But is is slow to load up and find – I had my Garmin out and loaded and found a couple of caches before the Trimble app had found local geocaches…

Worth trying out with the free trial…we had issues trying to download on 2 types of blackberries and had to call for support (not a good message for a little application)

I’ll refer to HeadHardHat’s review as he went over much of the good and bad ad was super thorough about it. He even has his classic GeoSnippet video tutorials to help you along if you use this tool.

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iPhone Geocaching Application

Here’s the link to Geocaching.com about this tool.

COST $9.99

I just added this application last week and planned to go out for a geocaching day on Friday July 3rd with the tool. But that was the fateful day of the Fisher Fire (Here’s the geocachers updates on this) that brought down the servers for the Geocaching site – and the downside of an app that relies on the Internet was shown.

But the servers were up the next day and July 4th was the big geocache day (30+ in 1 day!)and we used the iPhone app. The navigating part is not so good – hard to know where to go, how far away you are.. But the details of the geocache are great including an inventory of any Travel bugs! So you can target finding these. And the ability to post a field not live is super great! At the end of the day I still had to go online and load them up – but was simply a click of a button vs having to remember information about each geocache find.

The tool can take a little while to find local caches – but less than the Blackberry Trimble – and you can alos access your pocket queries so do ‘offline’ caching from your iPhone – another big plus!

Summary – not yet ready to go 100% iPhone but see this as a great partnering tool when the hubby and I are out together. we can each have a tool that adds a different aspect to our fun.

Here is a link to reviews about other iPhone geocache applications from “Let’s Go Geocaching” – did not even know there were others. I’m sticking with GroundSpeak as it ties to my account. And $10 is not a lot for a one-time fee for the great interactions it has.

Update October 2010 – The best geocaching GPS market is growing strong with the iPhone app vastly improved, new GPS units from Garmin like the Oregon, and the Android Geocaching app entering the market.