Tupperware and Ammo Cans

Geocaching is a fun activity where folks go out and hide containers of all kinds filled with a variety of nick-knacks and a log book, then tell people to go find it and sign the log. Sounds simple enough, right? You couldn't be more wrong. See, this game is played in over 200 countries, so you'd need a lot of information in order to find these hidden "caches" of trinkets.

To play one needs a GPS receiver and the coordinates of the hidden container. You can log on to geocaching.com and search for caches in your area. Chances are, if you live in the U.S., that your area is peppered with them. Once you have the coordinates and have read the description of the cache, you're ready to go.

Sometimes a geocache is easy to find, but others are not quite so readily found. Most require little more than a vehicle to get to the area and your own two legs to get the cache location. There are some more difficult ones that require some special gear and/or training to go after, which makes it more interesting for those who are able to do them.

To some people, finding the most caches is thrilling. Others find a difficult hike through beautiful natural locations to be very rewarding. There's no "right" way to enjoy geocaching; it's all up to you!

So who geocaches? I was surprised to discover that people from all walks of life enjoy hunting for elusive tupperware full of doodads. I've seen bikers, school teachers, kids of all ages, computer geeks (like myself), soccer moms, park rangers, rock stars (like the drummer, Rikki Rockett from Poison), film/tv stars (like Wil Wheaton from Stand by Me and Star Trek: TNG), and people just like YOU!

I bring up this subject because July is turning out to be a month were I'll be doing a lot more geocaching than I have been lately. Starting with this weekend, Quinn and I will be heading up into the San Bernardino mountains to replace a cache that I hid up there last August. Some fellow geocachers reported that it was missing after trying to find it, so I'm going to be placing another one in almost the exact same spot. We'll also try to find some of the new caches that others have placed up there as well.

For our birthdays, about two weeks later, Quinn and I (and my son Rece) will be going to San Simeon State Park to enjoy some camping and geocaching. The trip to this location has become an annual thing for me and my son, which makes this the 3rd summer in a row we've camped there. I've got pictures from our previous 2 trips on my web site.

One of the nice things about geocaching is that I can do it whenever I feel like it, almost anywhere I go. As long as I can access the web and pull up a list of caches in an area I'll be in, I can go hunt for them. If I plan ahead, I can even download all the geocache information for an area and pre-load the info into my PDA and GPS receiver and I'm ready to cache if the mood hits me. Check out the geocaching page on my web site to see pictures from some of my caching experiences.

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