Let’s Go Geocaching!

By John McKinney

As you hike along the edge of a meadow, you check your GPS: 0.5m. A half-mile to go.

You look up from the screen to see a deer and fawn cross the meadow and disappear into the tall grass. Playing this game and being out in nature—awesome!

The trail leads by a stream and you spot a swimming hole. Very inviting. You way-mark the location on your GPS so you can find it on the way back and keep hiking. You’re on a mission and there’s treasure to be found.

In your day pack, you’ve got treasures of your own to trade. Because that’s the way the game works: when you find a hidden container with treasure, you take a prize and leave one behind for the next person.

GPS reading: 300 feet. You cross the stream on a footbridge and on the other side you spot a metal gate and an old falling-down barn.

80 feet.

The treasure could be in a magnetic box stuck to the metal gate. Or hidden inside the barn. Excited, you hurry toward the barn.

120 feet. Whoops, it’s not that way. Must be the gate.

140 feet. No, not the gate, either.

You remember to read the clue: Where fire came from the Sky.

What? That is a weird clue.

You look around. Nothing but an old oak tree. But wait, it’s an unusual oak tree, split in two with a black trunk. That’s it. A lightning bolt hit it—the fire from the sky! You hurry toward it.

80 feet, 50 feet, 20 feet...

What is Geocaching?

Geocaching (pronounced gee-oh-cashing) is a fun, low-cost way for kids to get outdoors, get some exercise, and use the latest technology to meet a challenge and find containers, or caches, hidden by other geocachers.

To play this high-tech adventure game, you use a GPS (Global Positioning System) receiver to hide and seek caches. A cache is small, medium or large container with a logbook for you to sign and some small treasures.

Geocache is really two words put together. Geo comes from the Greek word meaning “earth” and a cache is a place for hiding something. Long ago, explorers, gold miners and pirates hid things in caches. Your computer has memory stored in a cache.

Kids who like playing outdoors really like geocaching. It goes great with hiking, biking, and camping trips. Kids who like computers, computer games and electronic gadgets also get a kick out of geocaching.

Geocaching can take you to some terrific places in towns, cities and out in nature. You can go geocaching close to home or faraway. Some caches are easy to reach and to find—just a short walk from a parking lot. Other caches are difficult to locate and you need to take a hike to reach them.

Getting started is as easy as buying a GPS unit and doing some internet research. Geocachers first use the internet to find the coordinates (latitude and longitude) numbers) for a cache. You then enter the coordinates on your GPS receiver. You find the cache by following the directional arrow or map.

The person doing the hiding chooses the location, the type of cache, and provides clues to where the cache is hidden. Caches are hidden by individuals, clubs, park workers, school and scout groups.

After the cache is discovered, the finder signs a logbook, swaps treasure, and carefully returns the container to its hiding place.

Geocaching seems very simple—at least at first. A GPS unit can pinpoint your location (to within 6 to 30 feet) anywhere on the planet and you start the hunt with exact coordinates, so you should know where the cache is hidden, right?
Not so fast. Knowing where a cache is and getting to it is an entirely different matter. Finding a cache is a challenge and finding a cache that’s well hidden and difficult to reach is a big challenge. Learning the skills to become a good geocacher is fun, and so is discovering a hard-to find cache.

How Geocaching Began, Orienteering, Letterboxing,

Before Geocaching was invented, orienteering and letterboxing were popular activities—and lots of people, including school and scout groups, still enjoy them today.

The goal of orienteering is to get from one central point to another with the aid of a map and compass. Orienteering can be enjoyed with a group of friends, a map, a compass and a picnic lunch or as a route finding/trail running competition at top speed.

Orienteering is appealing because it offers a great outdoors experience and requires lots of thinking and concentration. Success in orienteering depends on the ability to read a map, being able to read the terrain, and relating the terrain to the map.

Letterboxing is a mixture of treasure-hunting, hiking, orienteering, and even arts and crafts. The object is to follow a set of clues in order to locate a letterbox hidden outdoors. A typical letterbox contains a notebook, a one-of-a-kind, hand-crafted rubber stamp and an inkpad.

Clues range from the simple and direct (Follow the summit trail to Inspiration Point and look under the rock by the bench atop the peak) to challenging riddles and puzzles. Hikers who find a letterbox, stamp their own notebooks with the box’s stamp and stamp the box’s notebook with their own personal stamp. Victory!

Letterboxing got started in England about 150 years ago when a gentleman left a message in a bottle by a remote pond in a place called Dartmoor. Today, more than 10,000 letterboxes are hidden in Dartmoor National Park!

Letterboxing came to the U.S. in the late 1990s. Most clues are in a database posted on the Letterboxing North America web site, www.letterboxing.org  Some organizations, such as hiking clubs and scout troops also post clues to find letterboxes.

Letterboxing has a lot in common with its high-tech cousin, Geocaching, especially the fun of hiking along on a treasure hunt through the natural world. Sometimes the two activities are combined. A letterbox hybrid cache requires a GPS to find and has a rubber stamp and logbook instead of tradable items.

Geocaching Today

Until the year 2000, the most accurate GPS technology was used only by the U.S. military and other government agencies. Soon after the decision was made to allow everyone access to the best of GPS, Dave Ulmer, a computer expert from Oregon, got a great idea: hide a container out in the woods and record the coordinates with a GPS unit. Soon people were hiding “stashes” (later to be called caches) in the backcountry, and starting the sport of Gpstashing (later to be called geocaching.)

Kids and adults from all over the world go geocaching. At last count, caches were hidden in 222 countries! With many, many thousands of caches hidden across the U.S., you’ll probably be able to locate some close to home.