Like gadgets, treasure hunting, and being part of a semi-secret society? I may have the hobby for you!
One of the risks of traveling to the same destination on a frequent basis is that eventually you run out of things to do. If that destination is Sault Ste. Marie Michigan it doesn’t take very long at all! (My apologies to city of Sault Ste. Marie but in my defense I recently asked a local what there is to do in the town. His answer: “The best thing to do in the ‘Soo’ is drive somewhere else.”)
On my most recent venture to the Upper Peninsula it was decided that the day’s entertainment was going to require a little creativity. Equipped with nothing more than an old GPS we set out on a literal treasure hunt. Our adventure began online at http://www.geocaching.com. After plugging in the local zip code, a map of the city and surrounding areas appeared speckled with treasure chest shaped dots. With a few clicks and the use of the hotel’s printer our day was mapped out.
Pretty sure we had the original GPS unit
Deeming myself the Navigator, my co-worker gave me a brief tutorial on how to plug in the our first objective’s latitude and longitude as described on the print out. (This part is by far the most technically difficult part of geocaching. If you can program a TV you’re definitely qualified!) Once the coordinates were entered the GPS informed us that we were slightly over 3 miles away and provided a large arrow pointing in the general direction.
Attempting to satisfy the GPS’ insistent arrow and monitoring how the distance counted down we found ourselves weaving and backtracking our way out of town. Eventually we were guided to the parking lot that served a trail head. Leaving our rental car behind we walked into the thick forest on a narrow, sandy path. We finally reached a point in the woods where the GPS and trail were in disagreement. The trail pointed directly North and the arrow pointed directly West. Taking the GPS’ word that we were 100 feet short of our target we shrugged our shoulders and walked off the path carefully placing each step. Navigating through the mud and undergrowth I watched as the distance ticked down from 100 ft….50 ft……25 ft…..10……5…….1 and to my amazement we found…..NOTHING. For 20 minutes we looked in the vicinity for some clue that would lead us to our treasure. As we were coming to the conclusion that this waypoint had been placed on the website by the mosquitoes that had begun to devour us, my walking stick made an uncharacteristic THUMP. As I looked at the tree stump I had struck, I noticed something unnatural. This particular stump was hollow and had what seemed to be a crease. As my fellow explorer appeared out of the brush I pushed back the top of the stump to reaveal…
THE GEOCACHE!!!!
Inside the compartment we found trinkets from various locations, a log book, some hand written notes, and a variety of laminated, homemade team cards.
Upon returning home I was able to spend a little more time researching the sport of Geocaching. I quickly realized that geocachers, like most hobbyist, range from the weekend warrior to the extremist who plan vacations around these tiny hidden boxes. With geocaches located, literally, around the world there is no shortage of geocaching destinations.
Interested in how connected the world really is? There are geocaching accessories designed with that in mind. “Travel Bugs,” are dog tag shaped medallions that have a website and serial number (blurred out in the picture) printed on them.
Simply place your travel bug in a cache and track its progress as it travels the world. One of the unwritten rules of the sport is, “take something, leave something.” With that in mind as you bid your travel bug bon voyage, pick up someone else’s and carry it to a cache somewhere interesting!
For those seeking an educational twist to the sport there is multi-caching. As the name implies, multi-caching is a geocache with multiple destinations ending in one big geocache. Recently my wife and I set out to complete a multi-cache in the downtown area of the city we live in. After discovering the first cache we were given clues to deciphering the coordinates to the next stop. This often included looking at a historical landmark or plaque and doing simple math with the various dates. We spent the better part of a day walking the collection of landmarks in our town answering historical riddles. We inadvertently learned a great deal about our town and were never more than a half a mile from a frosty pint. (Ironically, I learned that one of my favorite watering holes was, at one time, the largest hotel West of Chicago and East of the Mississippi!)
So if this sounds like any fun at all I encourage you to log on to http://www.geocaching.com and get started. You’ll be amazed to find that there are caches hidden in places you pass every day!
More Pictures from my first day of Geocaching, including the ones of the bomb bunkers in the previous post. (There was a geocache hidden inside one of them.)
Hidden Geocache
The Treasure
The Outer Marker 