Alternatives to GeoCaching

My Journey

Back in the mid noughties, I’ve acquired my very first GPS receiver and discovered GeoCaching. And it was a great hobby to have. There were various elaborate Multi-Caches and even the bog-standard “Traditional” Caches often were properly sized Tupperware boxes and contained exciting gewgaws. One memory I cherish was a box buried between 4 stones (“X marks the spot”) that contained a CASIO digital data bank. GeoCaching was really great back then.

But once you had cleared your usual areas, you had to find other areas, plan how to get there and which caches to do that day. Also, as technology advanced, GPS made it into phones and the user base grew. Several great Caches got plundered or outright destroyed which in turn caused many people to only place simple photo film canisters with only the log book inside. And finding these gets old very quickly. Later, Groundspeak, the company behind it, tried to milk money from their users by hiding the good caches behind a paid membership.

I then had a quick foray into Munzee, but scanning QR codes that may or may not be there is a stupid excuse to go outside. Add to that users that place one code on each and every lamp post and any bit of excitement left for this game is out the window.

Then, there was Niantic’s Ingress which looked very cool (and basically set the grounds for Pokémon Go), but without actually dedicating time (and money for travel) to it, you didn’t stand a chance at progressing much. And – as always – there were people that took it WAY too seriously.

Through a friend I found OpenCaching (not Garmin’s version of it!), which – at least in Germany – has a good amount of Caches that are (mostly) cared for and often reminded me of the early days of GeoCaching. But it very much depends on the country you’re living in. While Germany with currently about 24,000 active Caches is pretty active, the UK only has 667 active Caches listed. And, depending on where you live and travel to, the availability of Caches to find may vary a lot.

Alternatives

OpenStreetMap

This is my preferred “outdoor entertainment” these days. OpenStreetMap is an “open-source” map of the world that can be edited by anyone – similar to Wikipedia. It takes a bit to get into it and learn the basics about how to tag what you’re seeing in the wild. But whenever you improve the map, you’ll see your changes reflected in many, many products that are all using this very map you’ve just added some details to.

While I prefer editing on a big display using either the “iD” editor integrated into the website, or jOSM for more advanced things; I’ve also done a lot of edits on-the-go using Go Map!! for iOS/iPadOS. (For Android users there’s Vespucci. There are also some more editors.)

These edits are often just adding trivial things not yet on the map, e.g. benches, rubbish bins, information boards and guideposts. Often, details from businesses are outdated or incomplete – so I correct them if possible. Or, I’m drawing in some buildings and fences, marking entrances, gates and similar things. Sometimes, even complete paths are missing from OSM – so I’ll be either using a GPX track I’ve recorded or draw them based on the aerial imagery provided in those editors.

There are so many ways to improve the data and thus help millions of users of products like e.g. OsmAnd, Scenic, Kurviger, MAPS.ME, and lots of websites where components like LeafletJS are used. Just, by going somewhere and comparing what you see with what’s shown on OpenStreetMap.

For OsmAnd, Scenic and Kurviger, these kind of changes even influence how these apps calculate routes from one point to another. E.g. if Kurviger sends you onto some track that’s barely rideable, you can update details such as material, condition and smoothness. A few weeks later, after your changes have been processed on their end, it probably won’t send you there again.

If you are not ready for the full-blown experience yet, there are several apps that make it very easy to contribute specific details:

• StreetComplete (Android)
• Go Map!! (iOS/iPadOS) – while being a full-blown editor, its “Quests” feature provides a similar experience to StreetComplete
• OsmoTagger (iOS/macOS) – capable editor similar to Go Map!!, but can also be used to easily edit metadata only
• MapComplete (web-based, works great on mobile!) – easily add objects of various categories
• OsmAnd (Android/iOS) – mainly a map/routing app, but has editing features as well
• Every Door (Android/iOS) – simple editor for business/shop opening times/websites/verifying they’re still there; house numbers, gates, etc.
• OnOsm (web-based) – lets you add businesses by adding a note to OSM for some more experienced user to add it properly later

For a more complete list of all apps that either make use of or allow you to edit the data on OpenStreetMap, check their wiki.

OpenPlaques

If you’re more interested in memorials, statues, or other things with text on them, there’s OpenPlaques where you can upload a photo to Wikimedia (or Flickr) and then link it to a location. And then link it to an object on OSM.

OpenBenches

On OpenBenches you can upload a geo-tagged photo of a bench that has a memorial plaque on it. The goal of this project is to get transcriptions of all those plaques for easy search. While OpenStreetMap allows to add the inscription directly, you can also link benches to OpenBenches.

Public Toilets

For when you really need to go – there’s the Public Toilet Map. MapComplete has a similar theme.

(In the UK there’s also Toilet Map, but that one uses its own database and doesn’t feed the data back into OSM.)

Other Useful Projects

If you often visit graveyards, why not take a camera with you and upload the photos to Find a Grave? While not related to OSM, it helps genealogists with finding their ancestry.

However, graves of famous people are something that can be added to OSM (there are even detailed instructions for mapping graves in Germany) and there’s the GraveMap to query them.

Conclusion

As you can see, there are many opportunities to go outside and contribute to The Greater Good.

This is worth far more than just increasing the number of “Finds” on your GeoCaching profile.

And even on rainy days, you can still improve the map by using aerial and street-based imagery (StreetView, Look Around, Mapillary, photos you took) to verify, edit, correct and/or add features to the map.

UPDATE: Here’s an example of how doing edits on OSM can even help correcting issues on Google Maps:

Nikita

@kytta@polymaths.social

The street that my mum lives in is a one-way street, but wasn’t marked as such on #Google Maps. This caused many drivers to drive the wrong way. I have tried to edit it on Google Maps (there is such functionality), but to no avail. No matter how often I submitted a change (with photos of street signs!), Google said “Sorry, we could not verify it”.

Solution: Edit the street on #OpenStreetMap! A few months after I did this, Google seems to have stolen the data, as it regularly does, and now the street is correct in both datasets!

22 Jun 2025, 10:02