Geocaching

By Jacob Mankis 4/12/02

Geocaching is a game of hide and seek. You are the seeker (not referring to Harry Potter) and the cache is the hider. It is also a very fun hobby that can be played all around the world.

The G.P.S. is the global positioning system. There are 24 satellites that orbit 11,000 miles up in the sky. It takes a minimum of 3 satellites to tell you where you are. The satellites send beams (signals) down from space and then they tell you exactly at what longitude and latitude you are standing. The more satellites that can see you and send a beam, the more accurate your positioning will be.

The G.P.S.R. stands for global positioning system receiver. You receive signals. Your G.P.S.R. will give you coordinates from the satellites like a TV screen shows you your shows. It is a receiver so it picks the messages out of the sky like a radio picks out radio waves out of the sky. You can mark waypoints with your G.P.S.R. and you can also locate yourself or a location. You cannot use the G.P.S.R. to transmit a signal. It is like a radio that only picks up messages, but cannot send them.

Geocaching is an activity or hobby that people like to do. Someone hides a cache, (a treasure) and records the location so that people can find it. It is kind of like following a map, but the map is just the coordinates that they posted on the Internet. The person who is looking for the cache will put the coordinates into their G.P.S.R. and then they walk around with their G.P.S.R. until they are very close to the coordinates. Then they must look for the cache. You hide/find a plastic container with cheap little toys, a pencil, and a logbook inside. (You don’t need to put toys in them.) Anyone that can understand geocaching can go geocaching. People that like to use technology, hike a lot, go outside a lot, and don’t like to be a couch potato would like to go geocaching.

Geocaching is a fun game/activity that can be done by people of all ages.

When I went geocaching I looked for the geocache and watched someone trade something for something else. Finding the cache was like trying to find out a challenging puzzle that I had an experience doing. It was very easy because there was usually one geocache and five of us. I am still never the one that finds the caches.

I felt like I was doing one of my very fun hobbies. I have had this hobby for months and months but I still can’t find any caches. I am always very close to finding it, at least I think so when I am out looking for caches. Then someone else finds it!

We hid the “School House Rock” multi-cache by our school. The whole cache is stationed in the front of the school. The first part is in a film container and is a code written in rot13. The second part is Rubbermaid container, hidden from view.

We went and found a cache called “Metal Bugs of Mystery”. We had a rather hard time on it, though. Alexander found it. I thought the cache was up a tree and not on the ground, though. I climbed the tree to see if cache was up there, but had no success. I saw another place that the cache might have been in, but somebody shot down my idea. The cache was hidden in a patch of ivy that had already bean checked. I was sad that I had not found the cache and some one else had. I was positive the cache was there. I thought the cache wasn’t in the ivy because the ivy had already bean checked.

Geocaching is an exciting but hard and enjoyable puzzle. The more you geocache the better you get and the more fun and excitement you have. Once you get your 20^th cache you will be excited about a new cache. So remember geocaching is a fun, enjoyable, hard puzzle. Until about your 123^rd cache it will be a fun, enjoyable medium puzzle. This information was given to you by Jacob Mankis.