Tuesday, January 19, 2010

Have you gone on a Treasure Hunt lately?

Recently, I have taken an interest in what is called "Geocaching".

This is a world wide game of hide and seek. Now this geocaching (pronounced geo-cashing) involves a geocacher hiding a geocache out there in the wide, wide world, then pin-pointing its location using GPS (global positioning system) technology.

Next these GPS co-ordinates (longitude and latitude) and shared online with anyone who wishes to seek the treasure.

The technology and signing up to play are free, the only cost is for the handheld GPS device and these can be purchased for anywhere from $99 to $999. All do the same fuction, but may have more added features.

Janet and I (and Coco our pomeranian) have been playing this grown up hide and seek since just after Christmas. So far we have found 9 caches of the 11 we went looking for. They can range from a cache the size of a old 35mm film canister to a 1 gallon plastic mustard jar.

Basically, you find the cache (usually after some sleuthing and maybe lots of hiking), you record your geocaching name on the paper record in the cache, you may exchange small items located in the cache, you return home and record your find online.

Check it out at geocaching.com.

We have had some great hikes to places we did not know were there. Sometime soon we will begin placing our own caches and then we can follow on line as other geocachers find our caches and record their comments on the site.

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