|
Geocachers -
Geocaching
|
|
Tuesday, 31 July 2007 16:27 |
If you're in a local park and you hear some rustling in the woods, it might not be a critter rummaging through the leaves. In Minnesota there are more and more folks taking a few steps off the beaten path, looking for a treasure of sorts.
It's called geocaching and it's a craze across the country.
Hundreds of people find GPS coordinates on the Internet and then go searching for what's known as a cache.
"I've heard some people call it a garage sale in a box," Kate Stenso-Miller of the Three Rivers Park District explained.
"What's your hobby? Mine is I use billion dollar satellites to find Tupperware in the woods," geocacher Tony Gilbertson said.
Gilbertson is what many call a passionate cacher. He always has his GPS on him and he gets text messages whenever a cache is placed within 25 miles of his home. Gilbertson says caching gives his entire family an opportunity to have fun. His four-year-old daughter likes to trade the trinkets found in each hidden box or bottle.
"It's just been so fun to get out and enjoy nature and get out, walk, explore, and discover things," Julie Gilbertson told us right after she called her husband a geocaching addict.
"We started off doing this as a family. That was the reason for doing it. Then we started meeting people at events," Tony said.
The "Wednesday Night Crew" is a group of dedicated cachers who met online. They share the same excitement for caching. The night we tagged along, Tony was hosting the search party. A team of 20 coordinated the GPS directions and headed out into Anderson Lakes Park.
Once you find the cache, you sign a log book so other cachers know who has been there. The next step is to trade a token, they're just small personal trinkets that cachers leave behind.
Some of the tokens, called travel bugs, carry an additional challenge - moving the token long distances. For example, the people we interviewed created a KARE 11 travel bug that they wanted to send to Thailand. The Geocachers who picks it up will leave it someplace else - usually some distance away at another geocaching event. Slowly, in no predefined route, the token will make its way across the country, and hopefully across the sea. Each person who moves the token enters information on an Internet site, so everybody who has touched it can keep track of the token's progress.
First Timer
Carol Yunker from Eden Prairie is a first-timer with the Wednesday Night Crew.
"I've only seen their names online, so it's really fun to meet them in person. I've never met a cacher I didn't like," Yunker said.
Dave Ratisher met the group a few months ago. He was in the metro area from Biloxi, Mississippi on business.
"People who you meet here are wonderful, these folks make me feel welcome," he said. This month, his cache click didn't recognize him. "Down about 100 pounds, because you come out here and get good exercise."
Ratisher wasn't lying. The walk, through the heat and humidity, is grueling at times.
It is important to note there are rules regarding the caches. If you place one and then post it online, it must be registered with a park official. Three Rivers Park District has embraced the geocachers. There are more than 150 caches spread out in the district's parks. The most important rule is they must be within 25 feet of a trail. They're often hidden in hollowed out logs, under brush, or up in trees.
"I have a hard enough time finding it in the daylight," Tony Gilbertson's 62-year-old mom Barb said, as we met on a street corner around 10:30 p.m. in South Minneapolis. The group wanted to give us the experience of a "night cache."
This particular cache was placed somewhere beneath a bridge over Minnehaha Creek. It's called the Penn Avenue Shuffle, and it required one unlucky cacher to get his feet wet.
A night cache is for the true diehards.
"You know it's there, you've got to find it, it's the challenge of that ." Barb Gilbertson explained.
If she would have finished, she might have said "it's the challenge of that, that keeps the cachers coming back, day or night."
|
