Geocaching–Modern-Day Treasure Hunting

By Lilah Nick

What is geocaching? Geocaching is sort of a “global treasure hunt” where people look for hidden “treasure” or stashes. Geocaching can also be considered as a series of hide and seek games. People online will provide clues to where their cache is for other seekers to find. The seekers use a GPS to find the hidden cache. 

There are three main rules in geocaching:

• Take something from the cache.
• Leave something in the cache.
• And write about it in the logbook, which is inside the box.

The caches are usually in some sort of box, but they are usually small, waterproof, and made of something like plastic, metal, or wood. You might find things like a camouflage Altoids container, an old can of nuts, or an emptied ammo box. Caches are usually hidden, but cannot be buried or intrusive. 

          Photo credit: NPR

When Geocaching launched in 2000, there were only 75 caches, and now there are over three million around the world. There are also millions of players finding caches. Some people play to see how many caches they can find or to see how many new places they can visit. Geocaching is a great way to get outside and find some hidden places you wouldn’t have seen otherwise. A common way to search for caches is to go on to the official geocaching website geocaching.com. Once you make an account, you’ll get access to a map that has the locations of all the caches around you.

My family and I mostly went letterboxing (the older version of geocaching), which is the same thing just using a series of clues instead of a GPS. I mostly went geocaching and letterboxing in Northern California. When I would go, we would sign the logbook with individualized stamps. I had an owl stamp, and my brother had a palm tree. We also made our own stamps.

Overall, geocaching is a really fun hobby to try out this summer.

“I’ve been geocaching! And it was a blast!”

Luke Sonderman, sophomore

“Geocaching is a really fun to explore your communities, and I often find really cool areas in nature that I didn’t know existed.”

Indy Behr, sophomore

I say, try it, it’s a great way to get out of the house.