Geocaching is a great pastime, and a fantastic adventure for the entire family…both Diana & I like the hunt. You don’t have to be a gps geek, just someone that owns one, and is interested in getting outdoors. As of today, (1 Apr 06) there are 250,296 active caches in 221 countries. In the last 7 days, there have been 181,082 new logs written by 28,413 account holders. Just go to
http://www.geocaching.com/ and type in your zip code and see what’s available in your area. The idea is that someone hides things in a container, sometimes in plain view of everyone, and then they publish the latitude and longitude coordinates on the web site. You enter the coordinates in your GPS and then hunt for the cache. When you find it, you usually sign the log book and take something from the container, and leave something you brought with you. There are also special items called travel bugs that people put in the caches’ with a specific goal, usually getting from one part of the country to another, you log your “finds” on the web site. The actual hunt is the interesting part, sometimes the cache is in plain site, right in front of you but you can’t see it. Sometimes people around you look at you and wonder what the heck you are doing. We had a mailman in Lubbock, TX stop us one time asking if we were lost…did we need some help getting somewhere…you do look suspicious some times. We usually carry a clipboard with some paper and a camera, people look but leave you alone thinking you have an “official” purpose with what you are doing. All in all, I would not wait until the rally to get into geocaching, do it now. We started by printing a couple of pages from the website and finding the first one. Look us up on the site,
http://www.geocaching.com/, our name is Have Trailer Will Travel. We are not experts in the sport but have found a few. Hope to see you all at the rally, Diana & Rich.