Beyond Tiki, Bilge, and Test / Beyond Tiki / Anyone here go Geocaching?
Post #107279 by tikifish on Mon, Aug 9, 2004 4:29 PM
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Mon, Aug 9, 2004 4:29 PM
There's lots to discover here ROBERTA AVERY It's a kind of scavenger hunt with a technology twist, and it's taking people where they have never travelled before. Armed with a hand-held Global Positioning System (GPS), Ralph Schuessele and his 6-year-old son Tylor came to this pretty Georgian Bay town to find treasure troves, but they also found hidden riches more precious than any trinket. ``What an awesome view there is here. It truly is a wonderful place,'' said Schuessele standing on a cliff with stunning views of Meaford harbour with a backdrop of the Blue Mountains and the shimmering blue waters of Georgian Bay. Meanwhile, Tylor had taken a satellite reading on his father's GPS and was setting off into the nearby woods with his friend Tyler Meier, 7, to search a flowerpot rock formation for the treasure they knew to be hidden there. Within minutes, squeals of delight filled the air. The children had located the cache hidden — we won't say where — and were pulling back the lid to peer inside. ``Wow!'' said Tyler spying a pink action figure toy. Tylor, a veteran of 900 caches, who will be going into Grade 2 at St. Brigid School in Georgetown in September, was equally thrilled with his ``prize." ``Look at this dad,'' said Tylor holding a metal key ring aloft. Since May 3, 2000 when someone hid a cache of goodies outside of Portland, Oregon the ``sport'' — some call it "an activity" others "a passion" — has grown in leaps and bounds and there are now more than 125,000 caches in 208 countries worldwide. But you don't have to travel far to enjoy geocaching. Canada, with some 7,000 caches, has the second largest number of caches in the world, second only to the United States and there are 2,000 in Ontario alone, many of them hidden in city parks, along hiking trails and at scenic locations all over the province. Geocaching can also be educational as many caches are located at local historic sites, memorials, plaques and numerous places of interest. "It's not what you find in the container, it's what you discover while looking for it,'' said Schuessele. He should know — he's believed to be the first Canadian to have found more than 1,000 caches. Schuessele, 36, a software engineer from Georgetown, had never been to Meaford which is about 35 km west of Collingwood before, but armed with a GPS, longitude and latitude coordinates and encrypted clues downloaded from geocaching.com, he was able to find all the town's hidden gems in one afternoon. It was as if the satellites were acting as an invisible tour guide from above. After finding the first cache of the day at the town lookout and signing the logbook, sealing up the cache — a margarine container — and placing it back in its hiding place, they set off for Meaford harbour wall to look for the next treasure trove. Using the GPS readout, which will tell you where you are on the planet within a metre or so, Schuessele was able to count down the steps to where, if it was a traditional treasure hunt, "X" would mark the spot. This time the cache was a plastic box painted in camouflage colours. Inside was another treasure trove of dollar store trinkets. The two boys made their choices and Schuessele replaced them with hockey cards. That's one of the rules of geocaching, you take one prize and leave another behind. Next it was off to the town's sandy beach at Meaford's Memorial Park, where the hunt led them along a trail in a wooded area where the cache was hidden inside the a hole that a woodpecker had made in a tree trunk. Next they set off to Meaford's Beautiful Joe Park. Following clues, father and son walked along the Big Head River past fishermen trying their luck for the salmon and trout, until they spotted some driftwood on the riverbank, that was a clue that led them to yet another cache. Meaford alone has nine caches and there are dozens more in the neighbouring communities. Most people who get involved in geocaching start to set up their own caches in their favourite places and then post the coordinates on Internet, so the number of caches is growing fast, said Schuessele. At $300 to $1,000 for a new handheld GPS and $100 and up for a used one, starting out in geocaching involves an initial capital outlay. ``But once you've bought a GPS there's little or no cost involved and it's cheap entertainment for the whole family,'' said Schuessele. Geocaches in your area can be found by clicking geocaching.com and typing in your postal code. Another source of information can be found at the Ontario Geocaching Association site at http://66.207.113.44/oga/about.asp For more information on Meaford click on meaford.com |