You can read about it here:
All you need is a Global Positioning Satellite unit :-)
(A geek’s dream.)
This is what it is. People take a plastic container and put a log book and usually some little trinkets. Toys, chochkys, knick knacks, dime store detritis, etc. in there and then they put it in a hiding place. Then they use the GPS unit to pinpoint it’s location and record the coordinates. Then they put this information on the web site. Then you can go on the site, find a cache near you and see if you can find it using your own GPS.
It is great fun. (Well, as long as they don’t hide it TOO well!) The container is supposed to be partially visible. It’s a great reason to get outdoors and have some fun bushwhacking and seeing obscure places you might never see otherwise.
Anyway, it had been quite a while since I had gone geocaching but the other day I went on the site and found that someone had hidden one very close to us. I hopped on my bike and went over there this morning with our GPS and found it. I signed the log book, took a blue plastic fish necklace and left a little bag of mini fabric samples. That’s what you do, you take something out, and put something new in the box. This cache had a little lego man on a motorcycle, a little plastic rat, a super ball, a silver sheriff’s badge for kids, a red pen and several other things that I don’t remember. Once I saw the fish necklace, I stopped looking at the rest!
I still have the first thing I ever took out of a geocache. It’s a little fuzzy gray stuffed monkey. I hang him from my backpack when we go out hunting for caches.
Now I have the bug again. I am ready to traipse through the brush, GPS in hand playing “treasure hunt” for grownups. We have never hidden a cache of our own, perhaps it is time to try that out.
If you have a GPS gathering dust somewhere, now is the time to get it out and learn to use it and go Geocaching. On the web site it says that there are ones hidden in 173 countries now. See if there is one near you!