[thechat] Geocaching...

[Luther, Ron]

Hi Dave,

I've heard about it ... and even though it sounds like great fun to me
... I haven't tried it.

Similar (kinda) activities are things like some [excuse me] oddball UK
activity where you need to track down rubber stamps or something hidden
in out of the way places and stamp your 'book' with them.  {I think
there was an article about it in Smithsonian some months back - [maybe
this was a precursor to geocaching?] ... so a search there might turn up
something more coherent than this rambling.}  It sounded like fun to me
too!

Aha! It's called "Letterboxing!"  [... and it *Does* seem to be a
precursor to geocaching!]

"Geocaching was enabled by GPS, but the concept stretches back to the
19th century and a British orienteering sport called letterboxing.
Letterboxers hide a container with a unique rubber stamp inside and then
offer up clues to its location -- coordinates, or perhaps a cryptic,
coded message. Treasure seekers navigate only with a compass, and
instead of finding CDs, bouncy balls, books or Funyuns, they carry a
passbook in which they collect stamps. Geocaching is really the brashly
technological American cousin of a decorous and refined European
invention."

from http://www.salon.com/tech/feature/2000/12/11/geocaching/index1.html


Also ... although it comes in many different flavors ... orienteering is
a similar  kind of thing.  [Always struck me as kind of a
'walking/hiking' version of a road rallye! ... which, although sounding
like great fun - isn't something I've managed to find time to check into
yet.]  I understand some can be pretty physically challenging ...
although others can be held inside a covered shopping mall.  Quite a
gamut there.

I had some friends talk about organizing a 'road rallye' ... on
horseback .... once - but I never heard how that turned out.


RonL.
(I used to 'road rallye' ... does that count?  Hmmm ... I also organized
a 'photo rallye' or two that were pretty fun.  I'll have to talk to my
fiancee and see if she'd like to give this a whirl.)


-----Original Message-----
From: dave mclean [mailto:dave at members.evolt.org]
Subject: [thechat] Geocaching...

This weekend I tried out a "new" sport that is really fun and reminds me
of
the days when I was a kid and wanted to find hidden treasure. Geocaching
(http://www.geocaching.com/) is a sport wher you use your GPS to find
hidden
cache's of small toys, trinkets, CDs, etc. Basically you log on to the
Web
site and find a cache nearby that you want to find.  Punch it into your
GPS
and go hunting. It's great exercise.

The real challenge is once you've reached the location of the Lat. and
Long.
co-ordinates, you're still faced with trying to find a hidden container
full
of loot. Terrain can be challenging, so can snow cover and rivers. Some
co-ords are very close from one side of a river to the other, difficult
if
there isn't a bridge for many kilometres.

Apparently there are 10000+ caches world-wide in over 95 countries. That
means for me I've got 2 down and 10000+ to go.  Yikes.

Has anyone else tried this or something similar?