So there we were, two grown men, crossing a wooden plank in search of treasure. Our location (in normal person terms) would have been about 1500 North and 200 West, west side of the road where a wooden footbridge crosses the canal. In our language, we were at N 41° 45′ 34.6788″ W 111° 50′ 21.9012″ (pronounced “North 41 degrees 45 minutes 34 point 6788 seconds by West 111 degrees 50 minutes 21 point 9012 seconds). I hollered over to the other guy (somebody I have never met before and only know now as “6coondawgs”) that I found it. He quickly came over while I opened the treasure — a tupperware container filled with a notebook, a pencil, and dollar-store junk.

Why was such a find so exciting for us? A philosopher might say, “the thrill is in the hunt.” Much like pirates of old looking for buried treasure, we are 21st century pirates using 21st century maps hunting for buried treasure — except our treasure isn’t so much buried. The title of our game — geocaching.

Geocaching.com defines geocaching as follows:

Geocaching is an entertaining adventure game for gps users…The basic idea is to have individuals and organizations set up caches all over the world and share the locations of these caches on the internet. GPS users can then use the location coordinates to find the caches. Once found, a cache may provide the visitor with a wide variety of rewards. All the visitor is asked to do is if they get something they should try to leave something for the cache.

For the non techno-geeks of the world, GPS stands for Global Positioning System which Wikipedia defines as such:

The Global Positioning System (GPS) is the only fully functional Global Navigation Satellite System (GNSS). Utilizing a constellation of at least 24 Medium Earth Orbit satellites that transmit precise microwave signals, the system enables a GPS receiver to determine its location, speed, direction, and time.

A typical GPS receiver calculates its position using the signals from four or more GPS satellites. Four satellites are needed since the process needs a very accurate local time, more accurate than any normal clock can provide, so the receiver internally solves for time as well as position. In other words, the receiver uses four measurements to solve for four variables: x, y, z, and t. These values are then turned into more user-friendly forms, such as latitude/longitude or location on a map, then displayed to the user.

In short, I have this cool toy that tells me precisely and accurately what location and elevation I am currently located. I can program into the device precise locations of “buried treasure” and the GPS will give me turn-by-turn directions (in the case of street maps) or step-by-step navigation (in the case of walking, hiking, or biking) to the destination.

Enthusiasts throughout the world are working together to make this a fun game. Geocaching.com is the official home of such a hobby. Since the precise locations are known, geocaching.com can overlay the locations of the caches over a map of the area using tools like Google Earth. See Cache Valley screenshot below (with geocaches overlayed accordingly):

As you see in the map above, some of the locations have smily faces for the symbol. These are the locations that I have successfully discovered. I signed the log in the geocache and recorded the find at the website.

I actually introduced my dad to geocaching while we were on our vacation to California last week. Here are some pictures commemorating our finds:

For those that decide to join our grown man’s hobby, where we track through urban areas looking for hidden treasure chests of junk, you can create a free account at geocaching.com. FYI, our GPS unit is a Garmin Nuvi 200. We actually bought this particular model for navigating roads. The GPS functionality is an added bonus. You can get GPS devices that are better qualified for geocaching than ours. 🙂