CachingCentral

By Mike Hazelwood
Staff writer

That new hobby leads a retired judge of 20 years into bushes along an In-N-Out Burger drive-through, searching for … who knows what?

“You kind of feel like an idiot with people looking at you,” says Dave Allen, 74, the retired Tulare County judge.

What hobby has a 29-year-old man tracking a SpongeBob SquarePants keychain that has hitch-hiked from California to Hawaii to Colorado?

“It’s traveled about 6,000 miles now,” says Robert Berge, the 29-year-old from Porterville.

What new hobby has fans of all ages chasing blips on a screen, roaming the globe for small goodies and the thrill of discovery?

It’s called geocaching, an electronic treasure hunt done with Global Positioning System coordinates.

And if you haven’t heard about it yet, you’re quite frankly … lost.

Full story…

Thursday, September 23, 2004
By Pam Bainbridge-Cowan

Special to The Argus

There are “treasures” in Hillsboro’s parks, hidden inside waterproof containers under tree stumps, rocks and other places.

They’re just waiting to be unearthed by a group of hobbyists known as geocachers. Geo refers to geography. Caching means to store temporarily.

Anyone with $100 to buy a basic hand-held global positioning system device and a bit of wanderlust can become one of these high-tech hunters.

Armed with a GPS device, a treasure map and a list, available from a Web site, of temporary hiding places in a specified zip code, searchers look for the grounded goodies.

The map guides searchers to a general location with a specific latitude and longitude. These numbers are entered into the GPS device, which uses satellites to determine the position of the cache, leading the hunter in the right direction.

Containers range from film canisters to large ammo boxes. Inside, there is generally an assortment of small, inexpensive trinkets, stuffed animals or CDs, a logbook and sometimes, a disposable camera.

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By Kathryn Dailey
September 09, 2004

Geocaching, a game for adventurous Global Positioning System users, is sending hundreds of Fort Collins residents on a treasure hunt.

Geocaching in the United States began on May 3, 2001, when someone hid a container of items outside of Portland, Ore.

By May 6, 2001, the cache was visited twice and the logbook had been logged in once.

A gentleman by the name of Mike Teague first found the container and built a Web site to document the containers and their locations.

In July of 2000, Jeremy Irish approached Teague. Irish had found Teague’s Web site and saw potential in the game. Together they developed a new site and used the name geocaching as a way to make the game easier and more accessible to GPS users.

As the game grows, individuals or organizations set up caches all over the world. Some caches are logbooks where visitors can read what others have shared, others are boxes hidden in the terrain with items inside.

“It’s like an adult treasure hunt,” said Jay Scarlett, an employee at REI, 4025 S. College Ave.

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LINCOLN, Neb. (AP) — A squirrel stops digging to stare with beady eyes.

People on the sidewalk peer over their sunglasses.

Tom Osborne and Bob Devaney seem to gaze out from their bronze plaque and wonder:

What on earth are those people doing, here on the southwest end of Memorial Stadium? Wandering in circles, snooping in the brush, they look like they’ve lost something — their minds?

Actually, they’ve found something.

More Nebraskans are discovering geocaching, a do-it-yourself outdoor adventure that gets people off the couch and on the town.

This father-daughter team of adventurers, the ones drawing the weird stares on a recent sunny Saturday, started caching about two years ago. The goal is to find as many hidden treasures as possible — and to hide a few good ones of your own.

First, they bought a hand-held Global Positioning System device — base models run about $100. The size of a cell phone, the tool picks up information from satellites and tells you exactly where on Earth you are.

Next, they used the caching Web site, www.geocaching.com, to find the latitude coordinates for dozens of well-hidden “caches” stashed nearby. There are caches in every state and in more than 200 countries.

With around 70 cache finds under their belts, they headed out to find one nestled in the brush by the football stadium.

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GPS devices and Web sites clue adults in to clever games

By JAMES A. FUSSELL

The Kansas City Star

Peering under rocks, stepping over stumps and knifing through overgrown brush, Brian Yonke inspects an urban jungle in his hometown of Liberty with near-surgical precision.

The thickly wooded area teams with ticks, spider webs and poison ivy. Near 100-degree heat causes sweat to drop from his chin in dime-sized droplets. He doesn’t care; his $400 GPS device tells him there’s something hiding here, and he and his wife, Carlin, aren’t leaving until they find it.

The Liberty couple is part of a growing group of modern-day Magellans, tenacious treasure hunters who scour the earth in what amounts to a global game of hide-and-seek for adults. The Yonkes’ passion is geocaching, a gadget-driven, Internet-assisted pastime that uses map coordinates and satellite signals to guide searchers to a world of hidden goodies.

It’s become an addiction, Carlin says.

In the last three years, the two have found more than 1,100 objects in more than 30 states. Like all geocachers, the Yonkes use handheld global positioning systems (they own five) to quite literally point the way. They check the main geocaching Web site, www.geocaching.com, to find caches to locate.

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By COLIN McDONALD
SEATTLE POST-INTELLIGENCER REPORTER

They sit on the carpet in a semicircle with their legs crossed, because that’s what the teacher asked them to do. But when the class of 8- to 12-year- olds at Lake Forest Montessori gets to talking about geocaching, there is no holding them back.

In minutes, they are moving in on a classroom visitor, rocking back and forth, rising to their knees and leaning over to get closer. They try to be polite and wait for each other to finish their sentences, but there is so much to say.

None of the stories gets finished.

The pupils spent the summer attending Adventure Club, a day camp at the Montessori school in Pinehurst where the main activity is geocaching, a technology-based, deceptively easy scavenger hunt.

The pupils download the coordinates and clues from a dedicated Web site, put them into a hand-held global positioning system unit and head out the door to begin the search for a “cache” of small treasures left by others, or just for the fun of finding the location.

This summer, they have been to parks all over Seattle, Whidbey Island and the Olympic Peninsula looking for caches. They go at least twice a week and can usually find two or three a day.

“I thought it was so much like ‘Ghostbusters,’ ” 9-year-old Marco Willis said of his first hunt, because the GPS unit reminded him of the device used by the characters in the popular cartoon. “I love it. It’s so much fun.”

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