2 weeks ago, Jan and I read an article in the newspaper about Geocaching. I'd heard plenty about it over the last few years, but for some reason, this time I became more interested.
For those who don't know, geocaching is a hobby where people use a portable GPS unit to find hidden caches (stashes) just for the heck of it. On the surface it sounds pretty lame, but after 2 weeks, we've found about 50 caches and I've even geocached on my last trip to Talladega.
Here's how it works:
Someone takes a waterproof container of any size and finds a good hiding place for it. If it's a super-small container, then it will only contain a small piece of paper which is the log. If it's a larger container (like a painted pickle jar) it will contain some goodies (take one - leave one), a log book, a pen and other various things.
Once the hiding place is picked, then the person hiding it signs onto www.geocaching.com and lists it on the global list of caches. Anyone can then go onto the website and look up caches near them and then go find them. Some caches will be miles off a main road on a trail - and many of them will be within arms length of thousands of people walking by each day. After finding it and signing the log, the finder then goes online and logs the find on the website
Part of the game is to retrieve the cache without other non-players (muggles) noticing. An example of this was the 'off your rocker at 200mph' cache that I retrieved today. It was located at the Cracker Barrel restaurant (rocking chairs) near the Daytona Speedway (200 mph). It was a magnetic key holder with a small log in it. It was hidden under one of the permanent old fixtures that they have on the porch. While I was retrieving it, I had to wait for people to walk by and not be paying attention to my looking for it. I then took it to the car, signed the log and had to put it back without being noticed as anything other than someone waiting for a table.
The thing that was noticed on the first day was that this hobby takes us to place we would not have gone to without a reason. We have been to more parks already in our county than we knew existed because of this.
I know many of my friends have handheld GPS's and a good number of them travel to other states and counties quite a bit. I highly recommend giving geocaching a try. It has a high degree of geekdom in it, but it's really fun and even addicting.
Here's a photo of one of the wooded paths we went down while caching
Some caches are VERY small and known as a nano-cache. Here's an example of one. This was in Alabama. The name of the cache was 'Handicapped Sports'. (The name is often a clue to finding it). It took me 2 trips to find it. It is a magnetic container about the size of 3 shirt buttons stacked on top of each other. It was hidden up inside the post that the 'handicapped' sign was attached to in front of a 'sports' store. Probably 200 people a day walk within 10 feet of it.
Here's a screen shot from geocaching.com of the Winston-Salem area. This screenshot shows 193 caches in just this area. They're everywhere!!
