Modern family adventure

Saturday, June 25, 2016

Nevada Daily Mail

Baseball, barbecue, and Independence Day fireworks are synonymous with summertime. There is however, another growing pass time. It is a game of hide and seek where players use multi-million dollar satellites to find caches hidden in the woods. This is geocaching.

"My favorites are always watching other people try to figure out what on Earth you are doing!" said geocacher Crystal Burch.

If you have a GPS-enabled device or smartphone, and an adventurous spirit, you too can play.

According to the geocaching.com website, there are approximately 3 million players spread across 180 countries.

Geocaching is not just an intellectual hide and seek; it usually involves a certain degree of fitness as most caches in rural areas are not always on the beaten path. Parks, cemeteries, country roads -- all might be good places to hide a geocache. Odds are that you have walked past several and never knew they were there.

Geocaching is also a wonderful family activity great for getting the kids out from in front of the TV and presents a wonderful opportunity to promote science, fitness, and critical thinking.

Burch said, "One of our family's funnest finds was not too far from the Indian site by Walker. Our geocache app told us that we were getting closer to our find and as we walked along the fence row full of trees we suddenly came upon an ordinary-looking lamp post in the middle of nowhere, only to find a geocache inside!"

Numerous local, regional, and national events happen each year. One of the most common events is called Cache In, Trash Out, or CITO. Many geocachers practice CITO every time they are out.

Although the Global Positioning System the game is based off of is complicated, the game itself is really quite simple. A geocacher hides a cache and posts the location on Geocaching.com. The cache must contain at least a logbook for other geocachers to sign signifying they found the cache.

Don't think it is that easy though, some geocaches are smaller than a quarter. Some are rather large and contain items the geocachers can trade for on a take one, leave one basis. Other geocachers use the coordinates from the website, or a GPS-enabled device to pinpoint the location of the cache.

Not all geocaches are easy. Some will only lead you to other locations through a series of coordinates before finally taking you to the real cache. Some require solving a puzzle, intellectually or mechanically. Some are small, no bigger then the end of a pencil and have a magnet to attach them behind or under other objects such as stadium bleachers, a road sign, or a downspout. Large ones have included whole camping trailers as the geocache.

Geocaches can be found in many places from remote forests to downtown Kansas City. There are rules and guidelines to placing a cache and each cache is reviewed by moderators although the cache is not visited physically before it is posted live on geocaching.com. There are more than 100 geocaches in Vernon County, 14 of which are in Nevada.

Outside of our local area, geocaches can be found almost everywhere, including the bottom of lakes, and on the International Space Station. These are level 5 caches that require special equipment such as SCUBA gear or rope climbing equipment to get to them.

"I also accidentally drove the wrong way into a private subdivision in Tulsa trying to find one." Burch said, "Turned out it was hidden on the OTHER side of the fence in a ChapStick tube!"

In order to play, a person has to sign up for a free account on geocaching.com, which allows one access to the database that stores the cache locations. Once logged onto the website or into the geocaching.com app, players can search for caches by a number of criteria, or can view cache locations on a map.

Once the player selects a cache, the app will use a GPS signal to direct them to the posted coordinates. From there, it is up to the player. The cache may not always be in an obvious spot so a bit of searching is often required.

For more information on geocaching go to https://www.geocaching.com/guide/.

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