Geocaching - a New Age Treasure Hunt

Wisconsin has many beautiful parks and trails to explore, but did you know there is hidden "treasure" there too? Someone hid the treasure with the intention that you WILL find it. Geocaching is a new age treasure hunt, using GPS (Global Positioning System) technology and hidden objects. For those of you who have not heard of Geocaching, someone hides the cache (pronounced cash) and it's up to you to find it. In total, there are over 965,000 hidden caches around the world. With numbers like that, there is one close to you. All you need to play the game is a hand held GPS and the great outdoors.

I'm going to ride the Sugar River Trail next week and a quick search on the web gave me the zip code for Albany, Wisconsin as 53502. Enter the zip code in the Geocaching website (www.geocaching.com)and there it is, just a little ways down the page, Sugar River State Trail. The site will give you a brief description of the cache, what type it is and maybe a clue or two. The exact waypoints of the cache are posted there too. You can write them down (as I do) or download them into your GPS. The Sugar River State Trail coordinates are:

N 42° 40.311

W 089° 24.763

These waypoints are the Latitude and Longitude for that cache The first number (N) is the degrees, minutes and seconds north of the equator and the second number (W) is the degrees, minutes and seconds west of the Prime Meridian. Simply put, if you picture the earth on a piece of graph paper they are the X and Y coordinates to that spot on the earth.

Hand held GPS units come is all price ranges. Some store coordinates and map your trail in a color display. Others are black and white units that show you where you are in the world. Check manufactures websites like Garmin, Magellan, Lowrance or Bushnell for deals. Many of the newer phones have GPS built into them. Check with your cellular provider to see if your phone is GPS compatible

There are a few different types of caches to find. Some are small or micro-caches while others are larger and can hold "treasure". A micro-cache is small and used to log when you found the cache. Micro-caches are small and do not have the room for writing utensils. Always bring a pen or pencil so you can log an entry. Other caches are larger and can sometimes hold "treasure". Be sure to bring something with you because the general rule is if you take something, you leave something. If you take nothing, leave nothing but always sign the log book. Some of the caches have travel bugs or geocoins. These are left behind so the next Cacher can take it to another location and leave it for another to find. The object behind these Travelbugs and Geocoins is to log their travels through the Geocache world.

When going on a Geocache hunt, practice Cache In Trash Out. Bring along a bag and while you are out, pick up trash left behind by others. We Geocache for two reasons, the first, is the thrill of the hunt and the second is because we love the outdoors. Geocaching and Cache In Trash Out lets us leave a behind a cleaner outdoors for tomorrow.