CachingCentral

Vacationing near Cannon Beach, Ore., my brother stopped at the world’s largest Sitka spruce because there was a geocache near the tree.

While searching for a hidden object, he found a wonderful creek he never would have seen if he wasn’t strolling along with his hand-held Global Positioning System unit.

For me, a good poker game is a preferred hobby, but I could see the appeal for families who wish to search for treasure with their children. Janna Lajoie of Stanwood has found more than 350 caches, many with twins Morgan and Spencer, 9, and Parker, 7, and her husband of 15 years, Dan Lajoie.

“They are on little islands, on top of mountains, some are underwater in Florida,” Lajoie said. “It keeps the kids busy. It introduces people to beautiful places you would never find.”

Another hobbyist, Dave Baumchen of Camano Island, has more than 500 finds in his log. Semi-retired from the antique business, he keeps busy volunteering for wildlife organizations, Friends of Camano Island Parks, Shore Stewards and the Camano Island Backyard Wildlife Habitat Project.

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Argh, matie, time to walk the plank!” says Jim Wellington, doing his best pirate imitation.

They had met earlier at the site of the Dominick family’s first clue — called “Profundities in Peterswood” — that leads fellow geocachers to their hidden treasure. As they come within 30 feet of their skull-and-cross-boned target, Mackenzie races down the hill to investigate a fallen tree.

“I think I remember where it is!” he cries.

Wellington lifts a piece of bark to uncover a metal canister wedged between the wood. After tugging and pulling, it comes loose and Mackenzie peers at the items inside — wooden coins, a novel, trinkets and children’s toys — which had accumulated over the year.

“It’s really addicting,” says the Finleyville resident, who claims he can find 10 to 12 caches in one day with his $300 Magellan GPS. “Geocaching is worse than crack.”

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Looks like Garmin is updating the current popular handheld GPS units (60, 76, Legend and Vista) with new models. From what folks can tell from the initial info, all units seem to use a TransFlash card for memory. At least the 60 & 76 units seem to indicate they use the SiRF chipset which is the latest GPS receiver chip offering faster time to fix and improved reception.

A post with links to the units on the Bass Pro Shops site is at the gps tracklog blog.

Info on TransFlash media can be found on the SanDisk site.

As more info becomes available, I’ll post updates here.

The St Louis Area Geocachers Association (SLAGA) has a web site at http://www.geostl.com. They are producing an audio podcast and already have 5 episodes recorded and available for downloading at http://podcast.geostl.com.

If you aren’t familiar with podcasting yet or are interested in other geocaching related podcasts, check out previous posts here on CachingCentral.com at http://www.cachingcentral.com/index.php?s=podcast

Latitude and longitude have never been so cool before.

Roby Hamilton spent an afternoon last week teaching classmates in Heritage Christian School’s middle grades to use handheld devices to track where on the planet they were.

Roby, a 12-year-old from Lawrence Township, recently launched a school club devoted to geocaching — the international scavenger list/treasure hunt game where participants track down hidden stashes by using their Global Positioning System coordinates.

Eventually the club, which has about a dozen members, plans to seek out caches off campus, although that may wait till after the winter, said Susan Hamilton, who is a Heritage Christian employee.

They may also hide their own cache for people to find.

Geocaches may contain coins or other trinkets.

Ami Gieselman and her fifth-grade son, Kyle, also participate in the club. The Noblesville family has been geocaching for several years and has made finds in Florida, Ohio, Virginia and West Virginia, among other places.

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In a different sort of geocaching article, this one focuses on TBs as a way to have fun when you just can’t get outside.

We haven’t had time this past week to enjoy the outdoors much. The kids have been busy with school work and various other activities and I’m still getting over a cold.

But we have been living vicariously through our geocaching Travel Bugs (TB) in New Zealand, both of which have been quite active since being released last month.

Hiking Doggie looks like he’s had the most fun, having gone to a wedding at Tongariro National Park on the northern island in New Zealand.

I love the TBs because even when we can’t get outdoors, we can still enjoy mapping our travel bugs’ adventures around the globe.

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When I heard I was going to be doing a story on geocaching, I thought I’d be doing a story on some sort of environmental group cashing checks. Needless to say, I felt a little dumb when I found out that geocaching is a high-tech game of hide and seek. To get a better feel for the subject, I contacted the Coulee Region Cachers and asked if I could get a crash course in geocaching. Mark and Michelle Davis, two of the founders of the group, were kind enough to take me on a hunt for a few caches.

With a determined look on my face I started trudging through vines, brush and prickly bushes to find the hidden cache. After about 15 minutes of random searching I began to feel like a child does during an Easter egg hunt. It’s a feeling of knowing that your parents know where the eggs are hidden and they can’t believe how far off you are.

Well, after being thoroughly amused with my completely off-base searching, the Davises said that sometimes walking away then walking back helps. I gratefully took their advice and this time before I get to the prickly bushes I notice a fallen tree right in front of me that I somehow missed the first time. Yup, that’s where the cache was hidden.

My kind guides took me on two more hunts and I found both without too much trouble.

When it was all over I found myself wanting to get involved in geocaching. It is part walking, hiking and searching, but then it’s also part cool GPS gadgets. Geocaching is quite possibly the best blend of nature and technology around.

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“Found it!” shouted the Mercury photographer as he shuffled around in the undergrowth.

The other staff members ran over to look, and sure enough, he had found the cache – in this case, a former Altoids container that held a tiny logbook. We pulled it out and signed it “Team Mercury!”

After putting it back, we picked up our GPS receiver and continued on along the creek toward the next cache.

To those who were watching us from the bike path, we must have looked rather silly, tromping around in the creek bed on the east side of campus. Actually, though, we were trying our hand at a relatively new – and surprisingly fun – outdoor sport.

The half-dozen caches sought by the Mercury staff were placed along Cottonwood Creek on Sept. 27 by Will Nienke, a geocacher known on the website as “9Key.” (Unfortunately for us, they had all been found within a day or two of being placed.)

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After circling the wooded area for nearly 20 minutes, one of the three called out, “I think I’ve got something.”

The others rushed over, eager to see what’s inside. As the three huddle around the base of a tree, the finder flips over a piece of bark, unveiling the hidden ammo box.

The three quickly open the box to see what prizes lie inside.

“I just do it to get myself off the couch,” said geocacher Mike Goetz. “It’s something different to do.”

Goetz said he’s been geocaching since 2001.

According to Goetz, there are only a few people in Sedalia that regularly go geocaching.

“There’s about three or four of us in Sedalia that I know of,” he said. “Tons of people in Kansas City, and there’s tons of people in Columbia.”

For Goetz, geocaching is a seasonal thing, and the season is just starting. Goetz said he prefers to hunt in the late fall through spring, when poison ivy isn’t around and the grass is short.

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Calling it “exercise for the mind and the body,” Rebecca Hendrikse explained one reason she’s been enjoying a new outdoor activity: geocaching. Another is it gives her and other students a chance to socialize with each other and some faculty members from the University of Wisconsin-Sheboygan, as well as just broaden her horizons.

When my husband Karl, a geographer by trade, first started playing around with the GPS unit, I teased him as being geeky. Then I got so interested, I didn’t want to give it back.

It’s about the size of a calculator and lets you know exactly where you are on Earth at any given second — longitude, latitude, and elevation. You can track how fast you’re going and more. It even calculates what it considers best routes (though Karl has proven that he’s still better at route finding than it is).

Before our drive to Yellowstone, Karl downloaded information about restaurants and more, so we could order a pizza before we got into a town if we wanted. We looked up accommodations on the GPS to find a great campground in the Black Hills.

Given that this technology is now fundamental in the study of geography, Karl brings it into his Physical Geography class, along with the more traditional methods of map reading and orienteering. It was natural to slide it into the activities of the UWS organization he advises, the Geographical and Environmental Outreach (GEO) Club.

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