Geocaching--"Where YOU are the search engine"--is a sport that the WT's have come to enjoy. Geocaching ("Geo" for geography and "cache" for hidden stash) makes use of the multi-billion dollar satellite system that the government has in place. Once the Defense Department stopped scrambling these signals beamed to GPS receivers from the military satellites on May 1 of 2000, owners of a handheld GPS (Global Positioning Satellite) receiver could hide "treasures," post the information on the Internet (see our link at the right), and others would flock to find them. Once they found the cache (pronounced "cash"), the finder would write in the logbook, exchange a trinket in the container, and then later log the find on the cache site. There are now caches in over 220 countries in the world and during a typical week tens of thousands of people log in "finds" on the site.
The WT's have taken advantage of this. Jodie has two of the handhelds now and plans outings for the group. In addition to finding caches, we have also hidden some in our area. We have developed Travel Bugs which travel from cache to cache and are logged on the site. In fact, one travel bug which we started in 2004, the year of the Centennial of our town, is now in New York!
One of the most fun aspects of this is that many of us now have our adult offspring and grandchildren interested in the sport. We love to hear them say, "Our grandmother is the one that first got us interested in it!" We love it when we learn something "techie" before they do!
Photos: Jodie with her GPS on a "find" in Arizona. The group near a cache that we hid at a drill site. The group at a mine viewpoint near another cache that we hid.
