CachingCentral

By Jane Weaver

The sun was setting as the wind whipped through the trees. In the distance was the Chesapeake Bay. Birds flew overhead as feet traveled carefully over a thick carpet of leaves punctuated by dead branches and fallen trees.

Just another adventure for The Dam Trolls, an intrepid group of “geocachers” from Perryville. Robert and Sheri Marley and their daughter Stacey are The Dam Trolls. Geocaching is their hobby, or their passion.

Geocaching is a treasure hunt of sorts. The treasure isn’t so much collected as recorded. The caches are usually a sealed container with a log book and a pen inside. The finder will record that he has found the cache. He will then report his find to the Web site from which he received the clues which led him to the cache. Then he puts it back where it was found.

Full Story at Cecil Whig

Taking from an article at:
http://www.bayweekly.com./year04/issuexii17/dockxii17.html#dock03

A new pastime sweeping Maryland has hikers trekking and navigating through field and forest with a fresh purpose.

Geocaching, or using a hand-held GPS thats Global Positioning System to find specific sites set up like a treasure hunt, puts a sense of mission into hiking. For these hikers, geocaching (say geo-cash-ing) is more than just an Easter-egg hunt in the park.

Basically, its like looking for a needle in a haystack, says Erin Cole, public relations officer of the Maryland Geocaching Society.

Using GPS, geocachers can pinpoint their location to within six to 20 feet. The point, however, is not to locate themselves but to find a hidden cache.

It helps to be familiar with using a GPS and to have a sense of direction. Such blessed people looking for their first cache usually find it, says Cole.

by BECKY HIRN

Last week I wrote an article for the Delphos Herald on a popular new sport called geocaching, a sort of outdoor treasure hunt for hikers. From the interviews and research I did for the story, I found geocaching to be an intriguing way to get outdoors and use problem solving skills. I havent bought my GPS yet, but Im seriously considering it. The whole idea of finding hidden treasures reminds me of my youth, when my friends and I would set out with a metal detector in hopes of finding buried treasures or at least a few quarters so we could buy a soda. Here are some other similar activities that could bring out the child in me.

www.geocaching.com – Heres the site to learn all you need to know about the sport of geocaching. Visitors can get the coordinates of hidden treasures then take their GPS and start searching.

www.letterboxing.info – This activity is another mix of treasure hunting and navigation. In letterboxing someone leaves a waterproof box with a log book, a rubber stamp and a stamp pad. The hider distributes clues to the location of the box. Then a finder, carrying his own stamp and pad, locates the hidden box, stamps the log book with his imprint and stamps his own book with the hiders imprint. In a way, its like stamp collecting. The history of the hobby goes back 150 years, with roots in England.

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By Karl B. Hille

During this Saturdays Jim Barnett Park Spruce Up, you may see a number of participants staring at small computers as they travel the park grounds picking up debris.

A local geocaching group, Morgans Marauders, supported the Spruce Up by inviting other geocachers to the Winchester park in a cache-in and trash-out event.

Geocaching is a relatively new sport where individuals use sophisticated global positioning systems, or GPS, to locate sealed containers hidden outdoors. Once they find a cache, they may trade goodies and log their find on notebooks included in some caches, said Carol Morgan, who organized the geocachers participation.

At least seven adults have confirmed they will come to the Spruce Up, she said, and many will bring their children.

Its a chance to come see the park and find a cache and talk to people about other caches we have found, Morgan said. Geocachers care about the park and they want to help clean it up.

They will also add a new cache to the two already hidden in Jim Barnett Park to memorialize the Spruce Up, she said.

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By Connie Cartmell

Some people like to ride bikes, while others play golf or tennis, bowl or go boating. Many camp, hike, hunt, fish, or crochet afghans.

Meet the “new kid” on the block – geocaching.
Never heard of geocaching? Join the crowd. It’s a new and growing phenomenon.

“It’s like a big treasure hunt,” said Cathi Sayre, 43, of Davisville, W.Va., just east of Parkersburg. “I like being outside, it’s something we can do together, and it’s a great way to get exercise.”

They search for “caches” hidden almost everywhere – mostly public areas, state and local parks, and nature preserves. There are close to 50 in this region alone.

It’s all tied to the Internet and a high-tech gadget called a GPS (global positioning system).

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By Michael Babcock

Last fall we told you about the sport of geocaching, a high-tech treasure hunt in which “cachers” use global positioning satellite units to track down “treasures” hidden by others. After they hide the cache, the cachers then post clues as to its location on the geocaching Web site.

The sport has grown. As of today, there are 93,217 active caches in 202 countries and at least 226 newspaper and magazine articles have been written about the sport.

And, spring is the time when the sport really takes off.

According to geocaching.com, more than 14,538 account holders have written more than 71,403 new logs in the past week.

In Cascade County alone, there appear to be more than a dozen caches, according to the geocaching.com map.

Geocaching was born in May of 2000 when the Clinton Administration ended the practice of degrading the signals from Department of Defense satellites. The new, sharper signals made personal GPS units 10 times more accurate. To celebrate that, someone hid a cache near Portland, Ore., and within three days someone else found it. The sport was born.

By LINDA STAHL
The Courier-Journal

So you thought the Easter egg hunts were over?

Be at the Jefferson County Memorial Forest Welcome Center at 11311 Mitchell Hill Road near Fairdale at 9 a.m. sharp Saturday, and you can enjoy a CITO event.

CITO stands for “Cache In, Trash Out,” according to Tom Bennett, a longtime volunteer trail ranger for the forest and avid geocacher.

Trash cleanups have been held at the forest before, but this time, a morning of cleanup will be followed by a 10-cache event along the 6-mile Siltstone Trail.

Transportation will be provided at the end of the trail to get people back to their vehicles.

The general rule for CITO at the Jefferson County Memorial Forest is: If you don’t come early in the morning and participate in the trash cleanup, you won’t get any credit for any caches you find in the afternoon, Bennett said.

In case you’ve been hiding under a rock somewhere, geocaching is an adventure game for users of Global Positioning System (GPS) units. The game is so popular that there are caches in all 50 states and more than 190 countries.

Full story…

Delphos residents use GPS to find hidden treasures
by Becky Hirn

DELPHOS Gene Sadler and John Kramer dont know exactly what the weekend will bring, but theyre hoping it will be full of prizes.

The Delphos residents are part of a virtual club of high-tech treasure hunters who use a Global Positioning System (GPS) to locate geocaches hidden by other members of the worldwide club.

Its part treasure hunting and part map orienteering, Sadler said. Once you get into it, its really fun.

Geocaching is an outdoor activity that combines hiking and technology. Hikers hide small containers, often filled with a small prize and a log book for finders to record their name and date, in out-of-the-way places. The containers geographic coordinates are then posted on the Internet, tempting other hikers to find it with their GPS.

This relatively new outdoor sport originated when GPS technology, once only used by the military, became available to the public in 2000. Now, according to the official web site for geocachers, www.geocaching.com, there are nearly 92,000 caches in 201 countries.

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SARAH JACKSON THE OLYMPIAN

There’s an expression among environmentally conscious geocachers: Cache in, trash out.
It’s like an ethics code among the many people in South Sound who use GPS (Global Positioning System) units to find hidden treasures around town — and in the wild — using longitude and latitude coordinates from www.geocaching.com.

In other words, if you traipse all over the place, pick up trash along your way to beautify the route.

“It’s kind of a motto,” said Michelle Davison of Aberdeen, who regularly does geocaching in the Olympia area with friends and her four children. “It just seems like a good thing to do.”

On Saturday, geocaching enthusiasts around the country — from Tennessee to Texas — will celebrate a national Cache In, Trash Out day with special events.

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By Kevin Saleeba / News Staff Writer

Keith McDuffee glanced up from his hand-held electronic device and scanned an area just off to the right of the wooded trail near Snake Brook in Wayland.

“We’re right on top of it,” said McDuffee as he held up his tracking device called a GPS unit. “You really have to look carefully to see if there is anything out there that’s out of the ordinary.”

McDuffee, 32, was searching for a hidden treasure — called a cache — with his GPS unit. The unit uses satellite technology that triangulates a user’s position on the ground.

McDuffee, a Framingham resident, was participating in a hide-and-seek game called geocaching, pronounced geo-cashing.

It’s a growing hobby where caches of items are hidden in discreet places — usually off a trail in the woods — and their location is posted for others to find on various Web sites. According to one popular site, www.geocaching.com, there are 92,404 active caches in 201 countries. Many are scattered through MetroWest and the Milford area.

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