GEOCACHING

Geocaching is a modern outdoor activity which is enabled by GPS Technology. It is the modern equivalent of a treasure hunt: people hide caches over the world, and post the LAT/LONG coordinates online. Other people seek these caches using handheld GPS receivers, and log their successes when they find them! People who look for geocaches are generally called cachers, and people who don't are generally called muggles (or geomuggles).

Caches come in many types and sizes; some simply are interesting places to visit and see something. If a cache is large enough, it will contain items for trade; if you take something, leave something, and always trade up (leave better than you got). Some geocaches are the temporary homes of travel bugs, small items which journey around the world from cache to cache, hitch-hiking from one cache to another via the goodwill of cachers.

Interested in understanding how GPS works? Here are two hands-on activities we designed (for use in classrooms) about GPS Position Determination, and GPS Speed Determination. These activities were designed for the Montana Space Grant Consortium's BOREALIS high altitude balloon program.

Coolest Caches We've Seen

1. North Pole Puzzler -- A neat little puzzle, but a freakin' COOL hide! Best I've seen!
2. Milton's Stash -- An extremely cool hiding place.

Caches That Look Like Fun!

ORIGINAL STASH TRIBUTE PLAQUE Traditional (Oregon) Location of first cache	Mountain Marsh Traditional (Washington) Oldest surviving cache	Diamond Island Monument Virtual (New York)
Indian Pond Underwater Railroad Multi (Maine)	Geo-Stationery Cache Puzzle (California)	Umbrella Rock Traditional (Pennsylvania)
The Postcard Cache Traditional (Travelling)

Our Caching Friends

graviton (Shane and Michelle) [Homepage]	Team Rubbo (Louis and Celeste) [Homepage]
Time Passages (Tom and Peggy)	snowgangstas (Brian and Staci)

Our Cache Record

The tables show the records of our cache finds in reverse chronological order, with some information of interest (date we were there, who found it, what we took and left, etc.). Click on the name of the geocache to open its online record, and click on the pix numbers to see the visual record of interesting finds and adventures! The notation ^TB means we picked up a travel bug, and vTB means we dropped off a travel bug.

TABLE 2: [Cache Finds Nos. 52-51 ]
TABLE 1: [Cache Finds Nos. 50-1 ]

Num	Date	Name	Waypoint	Type	Coords	State	Who	Took	Left	Notes/Pix
52	24 Nov 2006	Duck, Duck, Goose	GCZ5KH	Micro	N 41d 11.491 W 111d 56.866	UT	sll, mbl, ksl	---	Microcars, Terminator pin, Shuttle pin, stingray	Some tough searching, but we eventually turned it up. Still clueless about the hint.
51	24 Nov 2006	Sit Right Down	GCZ5ZR	Traditional	N 41d 11.195 W 111d 56.750	UT	sll, mbl, ksl	---	Green brooch, micro cars	Kate's old enough to easily cache, so off we go for some city searching! Pix: 1 - 2 - 3 - 4