Gather the troops. Study
the clues. Calculate the coordinates. And set off
to find hidden treasure.
Never mind that the treasure might turn out to include
a Maytag-repairman magnet, a rubber ducky, black-rimmed
safety glasses, and an assortment of McDonald’s
Happy Meal toys, crammed into a rusty metal box or
Tupperware container.
Cache
me if you can:
A guide to cache lingo
Geocaching—geo
for geography, caching for the process
of hiding a cache; pronounced geo-cashing,
like cashing a check; also known as GPS
Stash Hunt.
Offset
cache/Multi-cache—not
found by simply going to the coordinates
listed; published coordinates lead hunters
to a site, then the hunter must search
the area for the next clue or continue
based on Internet instructions.
Virtual
cache—cache is actually
an existing landmark, such as a tombstone
or statue; hunters must answer a question
from the landmark and let the cache owner/creator
know as proof that the hunter was there.
Hitchhiker—an
item that is carried from cache to cache
(or person to person) and hunters can track
its progress on the web.
Travel
bug—a new type of hitchhiker
that looks like a military dog tag with
numbers on it that hunters can type into
the www.geocaching.com web site to track
it; many bugs have a goal, such as traveling
to 10 countries (geocaches can be found
in more than 180 countries).
Cache
in, trash out—phrase used
to remind geocachers to help clean up,
and keep clean, parks and other cache-friendly
places; International Cache In Trash
Out Day was April 26, 2003.
Great
Plains Geocaching—organization
with the web site www.gpgeocaching.com,
dedicated to those people who enjoy geocaching
in the unique geography of the Great
Plains, including Iowa; site includes
information on public land-use policies,
upcoming events, and geocaching organizations
around the country.
(Sources: www.geocaching.com, www.gpgeocaching.com)
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It’s the thrill of the hunt that keeps bringing
Joe Reinhardt and his fellow searchers back for more.
Reinhardt, associate professor of biomedical engineering,
is among the growing number of weekend adventure
seekers and high-tech gadget lovers around the world
going geocaching.
Geocaching—one of those fast-developing “techie” terms
that hasn’t yet made it to the pages of Merriam-Webster—is
an adventure game for global positioning system (GPS)
users. People hide caches, or boxes filled with trinkets,
and share the location coordinates on the Internet.
Then, GPS users search the web for caches in their
area, plunk in the numbers, and head out in a hunt
for the cache.
It’s not as easy as it sounds. A GPS is a
hand-held, battery-powered device that uses satellite
coordinates to determine your approximate geographic
location in degrees, with the emphasis on approximate.
It’ll get you within, say, 6 to 20 feet. After
that, it’s up to the searcher’s keen
eyes and gut feeling.
Once they find the hiding place, searchers may take
one of the trinkets and leave another behind in exchange.
They also may write in the cache’s log book,
telling who they are, when they visited, and what
bit of the booty they stashed and snatched, before
placing the cache safely back in its hiding spot.
They might even log in to a web site such as www.geocaching.com and
describe their journey to a particular cache.
Reinhardt, a self-described “computer geek,” received
his first GPS from his wife for Christmas 2001 and
made geocaching a family affair.
“The treasure-hunt aspect of it is a lot of
fun. We went out as a group, with my wife Jennifer,
our two kids, and friends. It’s exciting to
discover lost treasure,” he says.
On family vacations, they take the GPS with them.
Not only can they use it to look for caches along
the way, they program routes and figure miles to
the next town.
“The kids love it. It’s a fun distraction
for them in the car,” he says.
Ann Freerks, designer in University Relations Publications,
and her family went along with the Reinhardts last
Mother’s Day for a geocaching excursion.
Freerks had heard Reinhardt mention geocaching before,
but other than that she had no idea what to expect.
The group ended up in Ryerson’s Woods Park,
south of Iowa City, where they found a cache, as
well as a bounty of morel mushrooms along the route
that they took home and cooked for dinner.
“It was a beautiful day, nice to get out and
enjoy the weather and let the kids run around. As
long as I didn’t actually have to do math calculations
to find the spot, I thought it sounded great,” Freerks
says.
“I haven’t been again, but I’d
like to go. It was a good alternative to swimming
at the pool or playing in the park,” she says. “It’s
a little more exciting for everyone.”
Geocaching may take off as the new pastime for University
retirees. Daniel Sheldon, associate professor emeritus
of curriculum and instruction, and his wife Sharon,
retired secretary for the College of Dentistry, left
the University in 1996 and now divide their time
between Wisconsin and Arizona—with some trips
back to Iowa City to visit relatives.
Sheldon has been geocaching for several years and
is amused by the similarities between it and a class
assignment he used to give his environmental studies
students. He required them to find their way from
point to point using a lot more brainpower and an
old-fashioned method—an ordinary compass.
Geocaching’s easier and more entertaining,
he concludes.
“What more could you ask for in an activity?
It provides physical exercise and mental exercise,
it stimulates creativity, and you can meet people
from around the globe who are doing the same thing,” Sheldon
says.
His next step, he says, will be to hide some caches
of his own. First, he’ll need to read up on
the rules, which are detailed on geocaching web sites.
For example, use your common sense (i.e., don’t
put explosives or other weapons in a cache). Also,
ask permission if you’re placing it on private
land and check with land managers if it’ll
be on public land. You’ll be in violation of
federal regulations if you put a cache in any area
administered by the National Park Service.
Even with rules and restrictions, the web lists
thousands of caches. A peek at www.geocaching.com in
mid-August revealed 327 caches within 66 miles of
the University’s zip code.
Several fyi staff members trekked around the Iowa
City area one afternoon, looking for caches in Hickory
Hill Park and near Carver-Hawkeye Arena. They left
copies of the August issue of fyi and numerous
happy mosquitoes who feasted on them.
One helpful hint: Remember the bug repellant.
Reinhardt expects the numbers of geocaching fans
to soar as technology improves and GPS units become
more affordable. A basic model can run $100 to $150,
compared to several hundred dollars a few years ago.
For now, geocaching’s still anything but a
household word.
“People ask me what I did over the weekend,” Reinhardt
says. “I tell them and they give me that look.
They sort of scratch their heads and wonder.”
by Amy Schoon |
