Treasure Hunt!
Until yesterday I had never heard of Geocaching. What? You hadn't either? A good friend of mine forwarded to me the following explanation which I'm posting here with his permission:
"Geocaching is a new game sort of thing that requires the use of a GPS. It is like a treasure hunt, but also often requires problem solving and can be more like living out an adventure oriented computer game. Here is how it works:
All over the country (and all over the world now) people have hidden caches. Typically, caches are things like old ammunition boxes that are filled with various items (often cheap toys for kids or other trinkets, but sometimes more interesting stuff - books, cds, dvds, etc). These caches are all over the place - I think now there are over 100,000 or something like that. The idea is that you have to find them, and when you get there you take something and leave something. Amazingly, people actually do leave things and do not simply take the whole contents of the cache.
Some caches are easy to find, but others are much harder and require various puzzles and riddles to be solved. Also, some caches are in places that are easy to get to (like hidden off a path in a local park) while others require far more effort.
A good geocache is one that will involve a nice hike of about 20-30 minutes, and then be located at a place that is interesting, often because it has a great view or other natural beauty, and would be a place that you would not normally stumble across.
It is a great thing to do with kids, because ultimately they are
searching for treasure and get to keep a toy (you really can't beat that when your are under 10). And except for the initial investment of a GPS, it costs almost nothing to do, except for the item you leave behind, which is almost always under a $1 or $2 in value. The other great thing is that since geocaches are all over the world, it's a fun thing to do on vacation.
As for the gadget part, you need a GPS -a handheld one, as opposed to one mounted in the car, since you will need to leave the car behind. I bought a GPS to do this, and have found it incredibly useful to have, because it comes with built in maps of the country.
We have been doing it for about 6 months now, and it has been a lot of fun. Some geocaches blow, as they are located in crappy places (like near parking lots) but many have been in places of great natural beauty, that we would have never gone to otherwise.
You find the GPS coordinates of a geocache by going to the website www.geocaching.com and putting in your zipcode (or other search criteria)."
I checked out the web site last night and was blown away at how many of these caches existed close to my home. Now I'm froogling for a GPS. Click on the post headline to see the site. (Thanks Joel!!)
"Geocaching is a new game sort of thing that requires the use of a GPS. It is like a treasure hunt, but also often requires problem solving and can be more like living out an adventure oriented computer game. Here is how it works:
All over the country (and all over the world now) people have hidden caches. Typically, caches are things like old ammunition boxes that are filled with various items (often cheap toys for kids or other trinkets, but sometimes more interesting stuff - books, cds, dvds, etc). These caches are all over the place - I think now there are over 100,000 or something like that. The idea is that you have to find them, and when you get there you take something and leave something. Amazingly, people actually do leave things and do not simply take the whole contents of the cache.
Some caches are easy to find, but others are much harder and require various puzzles and riddles to be solved. Also, some caches are in places that are easy to get to (like hidden off a path in a local park) while others require far more effort.
A good geocache is one that will involve a nice hike of about 20-30 minutes, and then be located at a place that is interesting, often because it has a great view or other natural beauty, and would be a place that you would not normally stumble across.
It is a great thing to do with kids, because ultimately they are
searching for treasure and get to keep a toy (you really can't beat that when your are under 10). And except for the initial investment of a GPS, it costs almost nothing to do, except for the item you leave behind, which is almost always under a $1 or $2 in value. The other great thing is that since geocaches are all over the world, it's a fun thing to do on vacation.
As for the gadget part, you need a GPS -a handheld one, as opposed to one mounted in the car, since you will need to leave the car behind. I bought a GPS to do this, and have found it incredibly useful to have, because it comes with built in maps of the country.
We have been doing it for about 6 months now, and it has been a lot of fun. Some geocaches blow, as they are located in crappy places (like near parking lots) but many have been in places of great natural beauty, that we would have never gone to otherwise.
You find the GPS coordinates of a geocache by going to the website www.geocaching.com and putting in your zipcode (or other search criteria)."
I checked out the web site last night and was blown away at how many of these caches existed close to my home. Now I'm froogling for a GPS. Click on the post headline to see the site. (Thanks Joel!!)
posted by The Gadget Guy at 4:50 PM
1 Comments:
Cool stuff!
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