Because as anyone who does it knows, it IS an obsession.
If you aren’t familiar with geocaching, it’s a kind of treasure hunt played with GPS devices. You’re given a set of coordinates where some kind of container—the geocache—is hidden, and you use your GPS-enabled unit to get there. Once you get to ground zero, the real hunt begins. This game is played all over the world with over a million caches hidden (this is not an exaggeration), and chances are good that there is a geocache hidden somewhere that you pass by every day!
Although I remember reading about the game many years ago, it was my neighbour who got me really interested. She told me that there was a geocache hidden near a path that was part of our regular morning walk. I was fascinated by the idea that there was a secret treasure waiting, but only for those in the know. I HAD to find it. I’d recently acquired a Garmin unit for my car, so using that we started hunting.
Of course, the road navigation GPSrs (that’s “GPS receivers” for short) aren’t really meant for use off-road, and tend not to have the kind of accuracy needed for geocaching. It’s sort of like trying to hammer in a nail with a pair of pliers—you can do it, but it’s not the right tool for the job. (I’m now using an iPhone, which is great for most things but I still want to own a dedicated and more rugged GPSr.) It took us three or four trips of coming back to comb over the landscape, and finally a couple of hints from the fellow who placed the cache, before we found the cache. It turned out to be a small metal tube craftily hidden in the tree, and when you opened it up there was a small roll of paper that you signed to prove you’d found it. That was our first signed log.
I became a member at geocaching.com, which is the most well-known site for geocache listings. When I typed in my address I saw on the map that there were literally hundreds of geocaches hidden within ten miles of my house! And that, pretty much, was the start of the obsession.
Caches are hidden by other geocachers. Often they choose to hide a cache at a certain location in order to show people a particularly interesting spot. Maybe it has a beautiful view, or maybe it has some historical importance. One cache I found while visiting friends in New Jersey brought us to a rock formation with petroglyphs carved into the surface. Another that we found just this past weekend led us to a tree where you can see the local beavers have been hard at work. When you ask a geocacher what they like most about this game, they usually talk about all the wonderful locations they’ve visited. Often these places are right in their own town– they just never knew were there until they came to hunt for the geocache.
While some caches are just a small “micro” container with nothing but the log book inside, many are large enough to hold items to trade. This is the part my kids love. We bring little toys so that they can trade for new things that they find in the caches. Each hide is different. You may think—like I did, at first– that following your GPSr to a set of coordinates where a container is hidden can’t be much of a challenge, but even the best your GPS units only reliably get you within about 5 metres of ground zero, and then you have to look carefully. For difficult hides I can spend 30 minutes trying to find it, and sometimes I end up not finding it at all. But the feeling of elation when you finally discover the cache makes it all worthwhile.
I’m still a newbie at this game; I’ve been caching for only a few months and with less than a hundred finds to my caching name. There are still so many caches waiting for me! At my last comic convention (which was TCAF in downtown Toronto), I arrived early enough to grab a couple of caches within walking distance of the building before the show began. You can bet that whenever I travel to an out-of-town con, I’ll leave time to go find whatever is nearby.
You can find out more about the sport/game/obsession at www.geocaching.com. If you are already a cacher, you can look me up—my cacher name is SurveyContactTeam. I’d love to hear your stories and favourite must-find geocaches. And if you ever see this button in a cache, you’ll know I was there!
haha, I love the sound of geocaching..i’m SO going to do this! thank you for linking me to this..Love Galaxion too! thanx.
I too have become obsessed with Geocaching. It has been a fun activity to do on my lunch breaks and I too have went hunting after a con (Pittsburgh) and plan to do the same after my next show (Allentown). I am also using my iPhone to hunt for these and have been entering the Geico contest every week in hopes of winning a dedicated GPSr. In my opinion my favorite part of caching is the trackable items. I hope to seen release into the wild some laminated sketchcards to travel the world one cache at a time. I will look you up on geocaching.com, my user name is CaptainV45
I can’t wait to get trackables of my own! I’ve found a few and moved them along, but I want to see how far I can get one of my own to go.
I have three sons, and my girlfriend has three daughters, and they are all about the same ages between 10 to 16. We have spent many an afternoon on the bikes hunting out caches. The first time we logged in to GeoCaching.com we found there was a cache hidden just across the street from our house! It is fun, it is outdoors, it is a blast to play, and to the muggles out there we look like a mob of kids descending on unwary bushes only to trample them in our quest to cache. We love this — huge fans. In fact, for Father’s Day I bought my dad the iPhone app for GeoCaching.com so he can join in.
I wondered how long it would take Tara to blog about Geocaching – which she introduced me to last month. And now I’m hooked, too, and trying to get our kids, ages 8 and 10, to show interest and get out as a family and cache. I have been uncertain of hubby’s interest, until, while I was driving from the car rental shop to our camping destination on Friday, he whips out his smart phone, and says to me, “There’s a cache over there, and one at the BJ’s behind AAA, and one at the WaWa where we were waiting for the tow truck.” Yes, we did stop at the WaWa on our way back home yesterday, but it was so busy, we abandoned the idea. But you know, we’ll be passing right by it again later in July….
That’s awesome that he’s into it, too!
Hi Tara,
Congratulations on becoming addicted. (smiles) I’ve been caching almost 3 years. If you ever get to the St. Louis area let me know and we’ll find some caches here. I’m currently working on a couple of challenges. One is for a cache, to find a cache every day for at least 100 days. If I make the 100, I’m going to keep going to see if I can do a year around. The other is a personal goal, which I give myself every year. Last year was to average a cache a day. This year is average 10 caches a week. I’m a bit behind right now, but I’ve got some trips coming which should improve my count. I particularly enjoy doing the puzzles for the mystery caches.
Jerry
Pretty wild and crazy ! I just found out what these mysterious square pattern thingies are that I see posted in the strangest places (they’re like bar-codes that you scan with your phone- then directed to a website or further information.) I would guess that if you use a phone to GPS that there may also be tons of information that’s all INVISIBLE to normal human beings. I find that completely fascinating. Thank you for opening a little door into a larger Universe!
Found this comic a week ago am enjoying it. I am now up to the page for June 21, 2011 with the comment about geocaching. Great sport, I have ben doing it for 4 years.