Each at times something comes along that’s just plain fun. Geocaching is one of those things. If you’ve never heard of it. . . Don’t feel alone. I only found out in regards to it a couple of months ago.
Geocaching started in portland oregon. It evolved around the worldwide positioning system (gps) devised by the section of defense. Before the turn of the century, the military limit global positioning system accuracy available to civilians to in regards to 328 feet. President clinton change over that in may of 2000 so that now, anybody may find out their position to within roughly 30 feet, anywhere on the planet!
When dave ulmer hid a bucket of trinkets in a woods away from portland, oregon and announced its location on a usenet newsgroup- geocaching was born. He listed the location of this ‘treasure’ by its worldwide coordinates. Coordinates are calculated as units of latitude and longitude and these are broken down into degrees, minutes, and seconds. Which is what you can get when you read your location using a gps receiver.
Geocaching is in principle, a world wide scavenger hunt using gps receivers as the divining rods to find the treasure. Altho in most instances, the treasure has small or no actual monetary value. The fun is in the hunt.
Majority of you are probably thinking, “gps, isn’t that the device i use in my car that tells me in which way to get from one place to another? ” yes, that is a gps receiver, but it’s not the kind we need for geocaching. What i’m discussing are the hand held gps units that hikers and fisherman use. They are much fewer costly and may be found at walmart and most hunting and fishing outfitters. You might want to check on ebay too. I just searched for “gps explorer” (this got me in the area of hand held units) and found 11 employed hand held gps receivers for underneath $25, two of these were fewer than $15.
So, let’s say you’ve acquired a gps unit. . . And you’re ready to commence geocaching. What do you do next? Commence by logging onto http://www.geocaching.com. In the upper right hand corner of the main page or home page, you’ll find “search for caches. ” enter your zip code, state, or country. I started with my zip code (47591). This search devised several pages of caches hidden in and around my hometown of vincennes, in.
One was hidden at the sonotabac historical internet-site. Another was at the william henry harrison mansion. There was 1 at the kimmel park, and one at george rogers clark memorial, and quabache trails park. They were everyplace. When you click on one of the cache listings, it will fetch up a page with additional info. Here’s a live instance from the cache hidden by the sonotabac indian mound fewer than a mile from my house.
The cache is located at n 38 40. 213 and w 087 30. 431. These are the gps coordinates and may be converted to utm if necessitated. There’s also a street map showing the usual area where the cache may be found. If necessitated, additional “hints” are provided. Difficultness and terrain ratings give you a great thought if the cache is easy or hard to find. Once found, humans leave comments on the internet-site letting others recognise what they thought of the cache and the surrounding area. Example: “this is a smashing cache! Took rather a while to find the container – it’s exceedingly well hidden. The indian mound was outstanding to see. “
I found that the person leaving this particular post had found a total of 412 caches. Two other posters had found 250 and 317 respectively. Now that’s galore serious geocaching!
If you like the outdoors and get enjoyment from a good scavenger hunt, you’ll love geocaching. It’s a smashing way to spend an afternoon or a whole summer vacation!
Tags: find, Geocaching, gps, hidden, treasures