Geocaching – Our New Hobby

Five years ago, on a house-hunting trip to Austin, Jenny and I got a rental car with a GPS navigation system. It gave voice driving directions and was awesome (we named her "Fran") and it really helped getting around Austin, which as a side note, is a difficult city to navigate, especially when most streets have at least two different names! Being a gadget geek, I’ve wanted a GPS receiver ever since but I haven’t been able to justify it. On a recent trip up to Nebraska (NE) we borrowed a GPS receiver from a friend (thanks, Karl). Now for navigation on a trip home it wasn’t that interesting; after about 4 turns it basically said "Proceed north 800 miles". One of the days up in NE, though, Jenny had planned a playdate with some friends in Lincoln, so Red and I decided to try our luck geocaching. We found three the first day and then took the Lyons Den out to find one in Seward (photo). Now we’re hooked!

OK, so what is geocaching? Well first you have to know what GPS is. Basically, a GPS receiver listens to radio signals broadcasted by satellites and then is able to triangulate your exact position on the earth. We have a Bluetooth enabled receiver that we connect wirelessly to our Smartphone or Pocket PC. It can tell us where we are within about 6 feet. Geocaching is where someone hides a ‘cache‘ somewhere - generally in a park or near a trail - and then posts the latitude and longitude coordinates on a website like Geocaching.com so that others can try to find it. The cache is typically something like a tupperware container, an ammo box, or a film canister which usually has a log that you can sign and then depending on the size, you can trade small items. It’s a fun activity that gets you outside and one that you can do with a family of all ages, including pets. Now just getting to the right spot is only part of the fun. You then have to be able to find the hidden cache which is often camoflagued. They are usually in plain sight or covered with rocks or logs and don’t require digging or any extreme measures. So who does this and how many of these caches are there? Well lots of people do it; all you need is a GPS receiver and there are lots of caches all over. There are over 20 within 2 miles of our house in town (now Austin does have a lot of parks and trails)!

If you are into Geocaching be sure to check out the Google Earth KML. It shows geocaches in Google Earth which makes it really easy to see all of the caches in an area. Wicked cool!!!