Play a global treasure hunt with Geocaching for iPhone and iPod touch

All around you, in every state and over a hundred countries around the world, people have hidden boxes for you to find in a global treasure hunt called Geocaching. There are currently over 650,000 active caches and the number is growing rapidly. You probably pass right by a few of them every day and don’t even know it. Some caches contain prizes, others contain puzzles, and most contain log books for you to sign to prove you found it.

Geocaching is simply one of the best unknown hobbies and it’s absolutely free for everyone. All you need to play is a handheld GPS unit, but if you have an iPhone 3G, the treasure hunting is even more fun. The Geocaching iPhone app simplifies the process of locating targets for your adventure, and it gives you access to the entire database of caches while you’re out on the hunt. Any experienced geocacher will tell you that this is nothing short of remarkable.

What is Geocaching?

First off, we’ll go ahead and call geocaching a sport, but it’s only as much of a sport as, say, hiking. It’s played in the great outdoors, in both urban and rural areas. Almost all caches are located outside because GPS locators require connections to satellites for positioning and tracking.

There are many different types of caches, but most of them are called trading caches. These are usually army surplus ammo containers or Tupperware because of their durability and resistance to weather damage. Trading caches typically contain items for trading. You take something out, but you must replace it with something of your own.

Trading caches might also contain trackable items (aka “travel bugs”). A trackable item will have a tag attached to it that has a tracking number. Anyone who picks up a trackable item must take it with them, and drop it off in another cache. The finder then logs the pick up and drop off caches from the iPhone app or the Geocaching.com web site. You can also see a trackable item’s migration path as it travels across the globe.

Some trackable items will have themes or destinations. For instance, we found one trackable item that was part of a “Muppets Take Manhattan” theme. This little Muppet was one of six that were distributed into caches across the U.S. and their goal was to get back to a specific cache in New York by a certain date. Another trackable item we found was a small die cast metal Jeep that was dropped into a cache in California by a person who wanted to see how long it would take to get back to his home town outside of Denver. Trackable items are fun to find, and you can see which caches contain them from their listing in the iPhone app.

Other types of caches include micro caches, which are usually little containers like old film or pill canisters. These usually don’t contain items, but only a log for you to sign. There are also puzzle caches that contain hints to other caches which are all clues to some sort of solution. We’ve also found cameras inside caches with instructions to take a self-portrait that will end up on the Geocaching web site.

Caches are varied in their shape, size, contents, and location, all depending upon the imagination of the person hiding a particular cache. And yes, that means anyone can also choose to hide a cache. Think of a type of cache you’d like to create, put it together with a log file and pen and hide it somewhere. Now go to Geocaching.com and enter your cache’s GPS coordinates into the database and let people begin finding your cache and logging their visits. You can also start your very own trackable items by getting your tracking code from Geocaching.com, then placing the item into a cache and logging its starting point. Check the site periodically to watch your item move from cache to cache.

The iPhone App

Before the Geocaching iPhone app came along, you had to go to the Geochaching.com web site to look up nearby caches to hunt. This process required a little up front planning before the journey, locating target caches, entering their GPS coordinates into your device, taking notes, then heading out to find them.

There are times when you are out geochaching and cannot find a cache and you just want to move on to another one. This can be very frustrating if you haven’t pre-loaded enough cache coordinates into your GPS device, which is why this new iPhone app is so amazing. With the iPhone app you can find additional caches with just a couple of taps without having to go back to the web site.

The iPhone app works on any iPhone or iPod touch. It works best on the 3G because it takes advantage of the GPS support to guide you to your target. On older iPhones you can access the cache data, but you’ll still need a GPS unit to point the way. The app will also work on the iPod touch, but you’ll need to be on Wi-fi to find and save cache locations before going out to find them.

What’s the goal of Geocaching and how do you win?

Although Geocaching is a game, of sorts, there is no clear way to win. Caches rarely contain valuables, if ever, so there’s no financial gain to playing. The goal of this sport is in the activity of just plain doing it. And after you’ve found a few caches of your own, you’ll soon discover that the reward is not the cache itself. The real treasure is usually found in the journey to get to the cache, or something about the cache’s location that will inspire or move you emotionally.

This was never more clear to us when we set out several years ago to find a cache called “Lost but not forgotten” (this cache as since been archived, so don’t go looking for it). As we approached the coordinates we were surprised to learn that this cache was located somewhere in a large cemetery. After an hour of hunting, we found it hidden under a stone bench on top of a small hill near a little waterfall. Laid out below us were rows and rows of white tombstones, and in the near distance beyond that we could see the tall buildings of our downtown city.

This cache was filled with photos, flag pins, tokens, articles, and other items recalling the victims of 9/11, several of which lived in our area. At first this seemed odd for a geocache because they normally contain fun and frivolous trinkets. Yet, here was one that was trying to make us think.

Just then, a passenger jet roared over our heads at a very low altitude. We were directly beneath the landing path of our local airport which was not far away. As the plane passed over us and closer to the city, it created an optical illusion of crashing into one of the buildings. Our eyes fell from the plane to the meadow below, with the rows of graves and gleaming white headstones, and that’s when it hit us. This geocache delivered a powerful message to us that day, one that will stay with us forever.

Other caches have taken us into areas of our local town that we never even knew existed. We’ve found hidden parks, streams, bridges, and other items of interest that we would have never discovered otherwise. And that’s the beauty of Geocaching. It gets you out into the environment where you start to look at your world in a whole new way.

The History of Geocaching

On May 2nd, 2000, at around midnight, the government sent instructions to 24 satellites in a change that increased their GPS accuracy by a factor of ten. At the same time, they removed selective availability to these satellites which meant anyone, anywhere, could use this network to pinpoint precise locations using a GPS receiver, which by the way, were not very common at that time. Non-military GPS usage was limited to people requiring navigational tools such as sailors, hikers, or other travelers.

Internet message boards started to fill up with ideas about how this new technology could be used by the public. The very next day, Dave Ulmer, a GPS enthusiast, decided to mark this historic event by hiding a navigational target in the woods. He filled a black bucket with some items and placed it among the trees just outside of Portland, Oregon. He posted the container’s coordinates online with instructions, “Take some stuff, leave some stuff.”

Within three days, two different readers set out and found the stash. They shared their experience online, which piqued the interest of others to do the same. The “GPS Stash Hunt” mailing list was started to track the activity of this new hybrid of game and sport. The name, “geocache” soon replaced “stash”, and geocaching was born.

After reading a small mention of this in Wired Magazine that same year, we set out and found our first cache in California. There were less than 300 caches in the state at that time. Today, there are over 57,000.

Go Find a Cache

Like we said, caches are all around you. If you don’t believe us, go to Geocaching.com and do a search by your local zip or postal code. We have over 13,000 in our small town alone.

If you’ve got an iPhone 3G, go get the Geocaching iPhone app. It’s the best ten bucks you’ll spend this year. If you don’t have a 3G, you can pick up a GPS unit pretty cheap these days, for under fifty bucks. You’ll just need to do your planning up front, using the Geocaching web site to locate your targets before you head out.

Whether you use an iPhone or handheld GPS unit, either one will put you smack dab in the middle of the most entertaining sport played around the globe. It’s healthy fun for all ages and something you can do alone or with others. Geocaching is the only sport where you are the search engine.

• Geocaching iPhone App - $9.99 [app store]
• Geocaching.com [web]

 

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