CachingCentral

As part of a long list of activities for the Indiana County bicentennial, celebrated in 2003, a souvenir from the bicentennial was tucked away in a “geocache” in Yellow Creek State Park about 20 months ago.
Since that time, a series of strangers have carried the item – a photo of the bicentennial truck, used to transport merchandise during the year of celebration – from its home in rural Pennsylvania to Europe.

Because the photo included the bicentennial Web site, event planners hoped geocaching enthusiasts across the country would log onto the site to learn more about Indiana County’s celebration.

Geocaching’s travel power exceeded those expectations.

“In the last month, it crossed the Atlantic Ocean and landed in Germany,” said Indiana County Tourist Bureau head Jonathan Longwill. “It has really taken off.”

Geocaching is a game that in recent years has grown in popularity with hikers, bikers and those who love the outdoors.

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CARY, N.C. — If you enjoy the outdoors and you like finding things, there are two hobbies you’ll want to try: Letterboxing and Geocaching. Once you’re hooked you’ll be very busy.

Letterboxing is a scavenger hunt of sorts.

Clues on the Internet site Letterboxing.org lead the adventurous to a certain location, usually somewhere beautiful, interesting or at least remote. Often the clues involve map coordinate or compass bearings from landmarks, but not always.

At the location, the scavenger hunter will find a waterproof box containing at least a logbook, a carved rubber stamp and other goodies. The hunter then stamps the logbook with his personal stamp and stamps his personal logbook with the stamp in the box.

Jade Cress recently took up the hobby. NBC 17′s Donald Jones found him trekking what appeared to be a remote trail, but was actually Bond Park in Cary.

“The first one I found was actually here at Bond Park. I was like, ‘WHOA,’ they really do exist,” Cress said.

Twenty boxes are hidden around Wake County and there are more than 5,000 across the country.

“It’s interesting, once you see the little notebook in the box, to see how many other people from different places have been there,” Cress said. “It makes you go out and see places that you really haven’t thought of going to see before.”

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Students to use Palm Pilots, GPS tracking for treasure hunt
BY LAYLI WHYTE

RED BANK — A partnership between the Red Bank and Keyport school districts has been created by way of a federal grant aimed at using new technologies — like Palm Pilots — to teach math to students

The Math Achievement To Realize Individual eXcellence (MATRIX) grant has been awarded to Keyport, lead agency in the grant, with the borough, a high-needs district, as a partner.

The grant was announced at a meeting held last week at the Red Bank Board of Education offices.

Red Bank Superintendent Dr. John Krewer explained that the purpose of the grant is to “enhance each school district’s current math curriculum through the infusion of technology using a hands-on approach to demonstrate real world applications of math.”

The grant will be paid over a three-year period and will total out at close to $400,000.

The grant is federal, although it was awarded by the state Department of Education. The total federal amount awarded was $8.2 million nationally.

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ERIN ALBERTY
THE SAGINAW NEWS
Treasure is hiding all around Saginaw.

You don’t need a crumbling map or a rusty decoder to find it, and “X” doesn’t always mark the spot.

But a Global Positioning System device and Internet clues preserve the thrill of the hunt for searchers who prowl the streets, trails and parks for small, camouflaged treasure chests known as “geocaches.”

Part scavenger hunt and part chain letter, geocaching has expanded locally in the last year, with more than 80 caches now hiding within 25 miles of downtown Saginaw.

“I can remember when that number was eight,” said Michael Garlick, 42, who has geocached since 2001.

The game is simple in concept: A player hides a container with a visitor logbook and small trinkets in a public place, then posts the location’s GPS coordinates on the Internet.

Searchers use their own GPS units to navigate their way to the listed coordinates, which are accurate within about 20 feet.

That’s the easy part.

Hiders take great care to obscure their geocaches, rewarding only the most imaginative, curious and patient searchers. Hollowed-out logs, fake stones and holes in the ground are some popular hiding spots.

With some 290 geocache hunts under her belt, Darlene Elias, 50, of Saginaw has found containers in mock electrical boxes and birdhouses, hanging from ropes high in trees and buried under piles of rocks and sticks.

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Choosing the right GPS can be a daunting task especially if you’re purchasing one as a gift and don’t know much about them. But keeping in mind how the GPS might be used and some basic selections (such as color versus grayscale, mapping capacity, and battery life), your decision can be greatly simplified.

(PRWEB) November 17, 2004 — The Holiday Season is upon us and electronic gadgets always make popular gifts. GPS devices are a relatively recent addition to the consumer electronics group of gizmos. GPS devices can serve many useful and fascinating purposes, such as pinpointing your position, showing you which route to take, tracking your route, showing you how fast you’re walking/rowing/cycling/etc, and helping you find where the fish are hiding.

Like many electronic gadgets, GPS receivers are packed with interesting options. And there are so many features and varieties that choosing one can often be overwhelming. Here are some typical things you can consider before purchasing a GPS:

Grayscale versus Color -
Color is always easier to look at, but it comes at a higher price. Also grayscale-display GPS units tend to have longer battery life. If you can do without color, you can get a better value with grayscale.

Waterproof -
Handheld GPS units GPS tend to go on outdoor adventures, so they get wet when it rains or snows. Or they may even get dropped in the water. Many handheld portable GPS receivers are waterproof, but if you plan on anything other than fair weather use, check to make sure!

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by Kyle Peveto

HappyHunter kept his left hand on the steering wheel while his right held the little global positioning system (GPS) monitor that told him exactly where he drove, showing a bird’s-eye view of Morgan and Pearl Streets in Granbury. The numbers on the monitor’s screen tell his exact points of longitude and latitude, beamed to him from satellites developed by the U.S. Department of Defense.
He’s driving to check his stash of treasure hidden near downtown Granbury. Every once in a while he checks his treasure chest to see what is there and who has visited it.
HappyHunter is the pseudonym of an area geocaching (pronounced geocashing) enthusiast. He hides treasure in film canisters, ammo boxes, tin cans or anything else that will seal out moisture and can hold a log book and leave room for stuff.
The cache in downtown Granbury is a green ammo box purchased from an army surplus store filled with stuffed tigers, key chains, pins and a dollar bill. When you find a cache, you can take whatever you want out, but you have to put something back in.
“Kids go absolutely wild about this,” HappyHunter said. “Of course, they want to trade something out.”

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High-tech scavenger hunt gaining popularity among Catawba County residents.

By KIM GILLILAND
Record Staff Writer

HICKORY

They arrived to the park with a backpack, three hand-held Global Positioning System units and a set of clues.

Steve Hannah, Tim Como and Bruce Lyford spent Wednesday morning looking for hidden treasures planted in the urban sprawl of Hickory. Called geocachers, the three General Electric employees are part of a new outdoor activity that’s a high-tech cross between orienteering and a scavenger hunt.

“We’re using billions of dollars of satellite technology to find Tupperware in the woods,” Hannah said.

The activity is catching on in Catawba County. Today, Bakers Mountain Park will host a geocaching event. Dozens of geocachers from all over the state will scour the mountain for little containers full of trinkets.

There are more than 50 caches in the Hickory area, including a few in downtown Hickory. Every park has at least one, and some have a half-dozen or more.

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In Geocaching Game, Players Are Driven by Thrill of the Hunt
By Ellen Crosby
Special to The Washington Post

Two days after then-President Clinton granted civilians access to a Defense Department network of satellites in 2000, a man hid a notebook inside a watertight ammunition container in the woods near Portland, Ore., and posted the longitude and latitude coordinates on the Web.

Before you could say Lewis and Clark, the game — or sport — of geocaching was born. Players around the world were investing in a hot, new high-tech toy, a hand-held Global Positioning System receiver, checking clues on the Internet and searching for his container and similar hidden treasures.

According to www.geocaching.com, that single Web posting has morphed into a worldwide scavenger hunt encompassing more than 127,000 “caches” in 210 countries — and 64 in Loudoun County. Some hiding places are almost predictable. Others would frustrate Indiana Jones. Most of the stash in the cache is straight out of a cereal box or the Dollar Store, so the thrill of the hunt isn’t about searching for the Holy Grail. It’s about the thrill of the hunt.

“You get so used to looking at that indicator that you get to your destination and realize you don’t know where your car is,” said Ray Pfaff, a software engineer from Chantilly. He is speaking from experience.

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JAKE WEYER
Pioneer Press

For some people, there is nothing sweeter than finding an ice-cream pail or a pill bottle in the woods.

A rainy, cold morning is called a good day for this kind of activity.

“Actually, this is nice geocaching weather,” said Brad Janzen, 55, of Minnetonka after finding a tiny metal container in a signpost near the Minnesota River Valley on a recent gloomy Saturday.

Janzen was thrilled with the find.

“I got out, looked down in the thing and … I’d say the mojo was running,” Janzen said.

Geocaching is the sport of hiding real or virtual objects, called caches, to find with Global Positioning Systems. Geocachers post the coordinates of caches online at www.geocaching.com.

The name geocaching comes from “geo” for geography and “caching,” a term that refers to hiding provisions. A relatively new activity, geocaching has grown in worldwide popularity during the past few years.

Caches usually consist of ammunition cans or plastic containers with small toys or trinkets in them. They also contain logbooks so geocachers can sign their names (or their handles) and write a message about the cache. Virtual caches are coordinates that take geocachers to interesting or scenic places.

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By Charles Hoskinson

HAVRE DE GRACE, Md. — If you hide it, Lynn Black will find it. It doesn’t matter whether it’s an old ammunition box hidden in a cemetery or a rock made famous by the movie “The Blair Witch Project.”

Mrs. Black, of Middletown, Pa., has logged more than 7,000 finds with her Global Positioning System receiver since she became hooked on the sport of geocaching more than three years ago.

“She was the type that you could never take her outdoors before, and now I can never keep her at home,” says her husband and sometime geocaching partner, Kevin Black.

And here at Susquehanna State Park, where the Maryland Geocaching Society has assembled 50 to 75 avid cache-hunters for its annual fall picnic, Mrs. Black is on the hunt again.
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Geocaching is a high-tech scavenger hunt that uses the Global Positioning System and the Internet to direct geocachers to a stash. Players “cache,” or hide, items in various locations and publish coordinates so other GPS users can find them.

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