GEOCASHING thrills in hunt
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.