Geocaching

Hiking not exciting enough for you?  Try Geocaching.

Geocaching is a sport in which you try to locate a specific destination using a GPS receiver.  It's sort of a treasure hunt.  You should start by creating a free account at the registration page of the Geocaching.com website. The destination is known as a cache.  The cache will be identified by clues and a longitude/latitude reference.  There are varying degrees of difficulty in both terrain to cover and challenge of locating the cache.   Normally, the clues are difficult to interpret, adding to the challenge.

When you succeed in locating the cache, you submit you success on the Geocaching.com web site which tracks how many you have "bagged".  In some cases, there is an actual container at the cache in which you write your name to prove you found it.  In others, your arrival at the cache will be verified by answering some questions based upon things at the destination.  More complicated cache hints will involve a series of locations, each of which is only found when the previous one has been located and new clues are interpreted.

Here are a few local caches:
The Real Price Of Freedom (an easy one to start, although finding the actual cache is a challenge)
Golf Course View (easy to find the location, but the actual cache is tough to see)
Out Of The Blue (a fairly easy one in a graveyard with specific questions to prove you were there)

Go to the Geocaching web site and search by zip code to see others.

If you want to learn more about geocaching, try this link, provided to the Club by Dakota, a student here in Loveland - Thanks, Dakota!

http://www.teletracnavman.com/gps-fleet-tracking-education/gps-geocaching-101

The students at Kingston schools found this link to be a good one, and wanted you all to know about it. Thank you all in Ms. Ashford's classroom!

https://www.titlemax.com/resources/guide-to-geocaching-road-trips/

The children at the The Brenham Community Center in Texas learned how GPS is used by freight companies. Here is a good explanation of that. Thank you Ms. Chapman for sharing the children's discovery with our Club.

http://expressfreightfinance.com/resources/maps-mapping-gps-geocaching/

And this one has a nice explanation and lots of pdfs to read! Thank you, Blake. And good success on your merit badge!

http://www.gentledentalwestchester.com/geocaching-fitness-and-fun/