Another installment of Thankful Things. Geocaching. Many people have told me that my interests are rather eclectic and border on the downright bizarre. Fair enough, but these activities are kind of cool. Take Geocaching for instance. Hide ‘n’ Seek on the planet earth, the cool factor is pretty high.
In case you are not familiar with geocaching, check out the web site www.geocaching.com as it is at teh core of the activity. You get a whole bunch of coordinates for caches, load them into your GPS and you are ready for some adventuring. I have been doing this, off and on for 4 years. I found my first Geocache with a friend from Grande Prairie in Regina on June 20, 2004. Since then, I have found approximately 190 caches in various places: Saskatchewan, Alberta, British Columbia, Nova Scotia, Manitoba, New Brunswick, Tennessee, Scotland.
Quite often the cache will take you to a great little spot you have often driven by, but never taken the time to visit. Lots of discovery occurs that is quite collateral to the activity of geocaching. It is a wonderful, wholesome family activity. Young ones are thrilled with the thought of a treasure hunt.
The ingenious nature of some of the cache hides is quite an allure as well. I marvel at the creativity of some people. A few of the caches are a real challenge to locate. There are ratings for the terrain and the difficulty for each cache. Something for everyone.
I chose this to be thankful for as I am re-discovering the sport. I ran into a technical mishap with my PDA last fall and got busy and never got around to addressing the issue. I use a Palm Pilot to load all of the cache descriptions and hints so I can go completely paperless when I go geocaching. I recently loaded CacheMate on my Palm Pilot and it is a wonderful piece of software that lets me cache without taking notes off of the website or printing of the cache pages. Once I started back up, I notices that there is a great proliferation of caches in Saskatchewan. There are 196 withina 25 mile radius of my house. Quite incredible. Some of them are very challenging, so I know I have my work cut out for me.
If you are looking for a reason to get off the couch, give this activity a try. All you need is a GPS. Better yet, join me for an evening of caching, the activity is fun and easier with a few more eyes….