Recently I had to sit my son down and have him explain in detail what he was doing in Hallettsville on his delayed trip home from Baylor University. He often told me he was “geocaching” somewhere. Assuming this was not an illegal activity and had nothing to do with negative beverages, still, it was time to get this sorted out.
Does anyone remember the metal detectors? I remember as a teenager I was convinced that some Spanish vessel had sunk near our South Texas shores and surely gold coins had washed ashore and were buried under the sand somewhere on our beaches. These treasures were just waiting to be discovered by Mary Ann and her metal detector. While my metal detector only found metal soda tops, geocaching offers higher rewards.
Geocaching is a high-tech interactive treasure hunting game played all over the world by people equipped with GPS devices. The whole idea is to locate hidden containers, called geocaches, outdoors and then share your experiences online. People of all ages participate in this adventure of sorts from all over the world. So what do you do when you find a geocache? First, you sign a log which is located in the geocache. This shows that you were in fact there. Some caches also contain random bits of treasure. You might find a rubber duck, an Enron pen or even a quarter - you are free to take any of these items as long as you replace it with something of equal or greater value. Doing a simple zip code search for Victoria, Texas will result in showing quite a few of geocaches in our area. If you are traveling, you are bound to find possibly hundreds of geocaches in larger cities or even a single geocache out in the middle of nowhere. Some geocaches are super easy to find - a container hidden at the base of a tree in a park, while others are much harder to find - such as a cache hidden inside a fake brick in a wall.
Geocaching isn't just about searching for containers, there are other types of caches too, such as web-cam caches - where you might need a friend that can take a picture of you via the web-cam interface in order for you to "get credit" in finding this type of cache. One of the most famous ones can be found in front of the Alamo in San Antonio, Texas. Lastly, you might come across a Travel Bug, these “bugs” are items that have been tagged with a number and are tracked by their owners. Some of them have missions - such as a cat key chain that is traveling via geocachers/geocaches from Australia to South Texas.
Matt discovered this actvity a number of years ago and has found numerous geocaches in Victoria, as well as geocaches across the world. One of the greatest things about geocaching, my son says, "is the fact that you know about these caches hidden all over the place, that people walk by everyday and never know what they were passing. It's the adventure of discovering the unknown that makes it so fun!"
Geocaching can be a great family adventure, who knows what you might discover in a parking lot that you have parked in for years! Visit Geocaching.com to search for caches near you.