Geocaching Stats Added [sidebar]

I wanted to mention a great hobby my wife and I have been involved in for two years or so now, called Geocaching. Certainly you've heard of it, yes?

No? OK, in a nutshell, it's like a world-wide scavenger hunt, organized online the best by the folks at Groundspeak, via their website, Geocaching.com. Legend has it that, many years back, in Seattle, one individual was contemplating the idea that this new GPS technology could find practically any position on earth, if you knew the coordinates to punch in to your GPS receiver. He thought it might be fun to take a container with some trinkets in it, hide it out of plain site, post the coordinates on the internet, and have friends with GPS receivers try to find the cache. They did, and a new sport was born (please bear with me; this tale is from memory, and I'm sure greatly generalized...but the idea is the same). UPDATE: Read how it all got started in 2000 here.

Today, this sport has boomed, with caches hidden all over the country, in every state, and now around the world as well. The stated goal is to help folks get out, see the country, and travel to places you might not otherwise -- a scenic view, a fantastic campsite, a historical site. No digging is involved...the cache container is generally about the size of a Tupperware food storage container, something that is dry, and contains a log book for the cacher to log their visit, and occasionally toys or other trinkets to trade.

I am skipping over mountains of details here, and I really encourage you to visit the geocaching website and read all about it. Back to the point of this post, though...once you create an account, you can search for caches anywhere in the world to find (surprise yourself by searching around your town -- you'll be flabbergasted at how many are practically in your own backyard), and once you find a particular cache, you come back to the website, and log your visit online. Then they update your stats with how many you've found, and how many you've hidden yourself. They then have a way to generate the code to be able to post your stats 'banner' online, and that's what I did today ;)

You'll note that our total is rather low. One good reason for this...I use a power wheelchair to get around, so my wife and I try to filter out the caches that seem accessible to someone in a wheelchair like me. One method they employ is to rate caches from 1 to 5 in both difficulty of the hide, and difficulty of the terrain. I usually can get to most caches whose terrain difficulty is rated 1 or 1.5.

But enough about us...you can track our stats by the new little badge I posted here, but what's stopping you? If I can do it, anyone can! Get yourself a decent GPS receiver (some are available for $100 or so), and the forums on geocaching.com devote entire areas to discussing different GPS receivers. Once in hand, register yourself on geocaching.com, and then get out there!

In the words of Groundspeak..."Let's go geocaching!"

Groundspeak - Geocaching.com