Geocaching: Getting Back To The Great Outdoors

Summary: Geocaching is a GPS (Global Positioning System) hide and seek game, where hiders hide containers (called 'caches' or 'geocaches') anywhere in the world, record the coordinates, and post a listing on a website for hunters to seek. Hunters can use a handheld GPS unit to get close, but then must use their wits to find the cache and log the find. A typical cache can be any size and may be camouflaged, in order to make the hunt more challenging, and usually contains a logbook for ...

Geocaching is a GPS (Global Positioning System) hide and seek game, where hiders hide containers (called 'caches' or 'geocaches') anywhere in the world, record the coordinates, and post a listing on a website for hunters to seek. Hunters can use a handheld GPS unit to get close, but then must use their wits to find the cache and log the find. A typical cache can be any size and may be camouflaged, in order to make the hunt more challenging, and usually contains a logbook for the hunter to sign and usually some small trading items of little monetary value. In May 2000 the government announced their decision to stop the intentional degradation of GPS signal accuracy. In effect, this made civilian use of GPS systems much more accurate and many times more useful than it had been previously. On the day following this announcement the first geocache was placed by David Ulmer in Oregon. Ulmer's idea was simple: The hider would hide a container, note the coordinates with his GPS unit. The seeker would locate the container using the given coordinates, make a note in the logbook, then trade items. It only took a few days for the cache to be found and reported online, and a new outdoor sport was formed. The sport has grown considerably since its humble beginnings. At this writing there are well over