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GPS lovers zero in on
new source of fun
July 13, 2007
Fran, Jill and Tamra could have spent the day off shopping or
reading or lounging in the sun.
Instead, they spent a recent Monday hacking through poison ivy and swatting clouds
of gnats to find hidden containers in the woods. The trio are hooked on a pastime that's becoming an American obsession.
Geocaching, a pursuit combining high-tech gadgetry, travel and the challenge of the hunt, is becoming more popular
as people get hooked on finding hidden treasure.
It's a truly grassroots hobby without much formal organization
other than a few loosely organized volunteers and a Web site that cachers use to post and learn about caches.
Fran
Goins, an Air National Guard medic from Charlotte, and homemakers Tamra Johnson of Mooresville and Jill Read of Marion spent
the day using Global Positioning System units to locate caches planted by other geocachers and listed on an international
Web site.
The new friends -- they hadn't known each other before their adventure started -- arranged the outing
on a caching Web forum. Using clues, puzzles and math problems, they determined the coordinates, plugged the numbers into
their handheld GPS receivers and traipsed across three counties, finding hidden caches.
Their receivers usually
took them to within 30 feet of the "treasures," and then they used their eyesight and reasoning to find the exact
spots.
"I drove up from Florida Friday," said Read, whose geocaching code name is Flyingpita. "An
eight-hour drive was 13 hours because I stopped to find caches."
N.C. geocaching leaders say that about 900
caches are hidden within 60 miles of uptown Charlotte. The list is approaching 400,000 worldwide.
Read met Goins,
aka Chief Wings, at Charlotte/Douglas International Airport at 11:30 a.m., and the two set out for a day of geocaching, meeting
Johnson, aka KTNM8135, in Lincolnton as they made their way north to Catawba County.
As the day progressed, the
women found caches at Central Piedmont Community College, the Revolutionary War Battle of Ramseur's Mill park and in the
backyard woods of a Hickory geocacher, among other spots.
They found typical caches -- some simply logs crammed
into bullet-sized containers on which to sign their caching names, others old ammunition cases with trinkets inside for trading.
Most cachers, though, say it's finding the caches that appeals to them, not the swag that's left inside.
Their hobby -- many geocaching enthusiasts call it a sport -- can be traced to a single event.
In May 2000, the
federal government opened up public use of Global Positioning System devices by descrambling the military's multibillion-dollar
navigational system of satellites. GPS units now provide precise measurements of locations.
Car makers added navigational
aids to vehicles. Surveyors and civil engineers used the technology in their work. And regular people found a way to get fun
out of the new capability, hiding things for others to find. Geocaching was born.
Cachers, as players call themselves,
share a love of adventure, the hunt and the outdoors. They pursue widely different approaches, some sticking to urban caches
that keep them out of the woods, others going on extreme hunts that involve strenuous activities such as rock climbing.
Some caches rest under water, requiring scuba diving to get to them. Soldiers have even hidden caches in Iraq.
An array of people spend free time caching, among them computer geeks, athletes, families and retirees.
Johnson
regularly takes her children on expeditions. "I've got to where if there's a deer trail, I'll follow it,"
she said. "The same with park benches. I'll run my hand underneath to see if there's a cache."
"I do that, too," Read said. "To heck with the gum."
As the sport spreads, more people are
buying GPS units and starting to hunt. Many take the extra step of hiding caches, so the list of hidden treasures grows.
"When you go to (geocaching) events, you meet lots and lots of people who just started doing it last year,"
said Matt Busch of Raleigh, one of the state's volunteer reviewers who decide which caches go on the official geocaching
Web site.
"I used to go to an event and not only did I know everybody, but I'd been caching with nearly
half of them."
Busch's experience illustrates the extent to which geocaching has caught on. He's found
caches in the woods near his boyhood home in New Jersey and in the Roman Forum "underneath a bench that had probably
been there a thousand years."
The sport can become all-consuming. At one of the Monday trio's geocaching
stops in Lincolnton, the women started talking about GeoWoodstock 5, an annual national meeting of serious cachers held in
Raleigh in May.
Flyingpita sniffed: "I can't go," she said. "It's my stepson's graduation,
and I couldn't get out of it."
Source: charlotte.com
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