Nutter Newspaper Article!!!

[+Yamahammer]

Good article written about our past time. A couple of local guys (TOMAJE was one) made good on some quotes and information. ... Yamahammer

 

Online: http://www.marshallnewsmessenger.com/featr...GEOCACHING.html

 

Hard-earned cache

 

|By LESLIE BAILEY, Features Editor|

 

Sunday, May 15, 2005

 

East Texas is dotted with hidden treasure, but don't look for an "X" to mark the spot – longitude and latitude coordinates are used instead.

 

Geocaching, the name of this high-tech treasure hunt, is five years old this month. Players use Global Positioning System units to find caches that others have hidden.

 

The game was born in May 2000, when Congress made it possible by unscrambling the GPS signals used by civilians.

 

People who play log onto www.geocaching.com to get the waypoints (coordinates) of caches in their area.

 

The "treasure" they seek usually isn't valuable – sometimes a cache just contains a logbook – and if you take a trinket, you're supposed to leave one of equal or greater value. But the fun is in the finding, players say.

 

"The whole idea behind the (sport) is to get people to go places they wouldn't normally go and see sights they wouldn't normally see," said Tony Pate of Hallsville, a geocacher since November.

 

The first cache was hidden on May 3, 2000, in Oregon. The man who found it used his personal Web page to document caches and their locations. Jeremy Irish, founder of Groundspeak, the company that runs geocaching.com, took over the site, and the sport took off.

 

Bryan Roth, Groundspeak co-founder, estimates that 1 million people worldwide have participated in geocaching. There are more than 163,000 active caches in 214 countries.

 

"Once people get hooked, they become like evangelists," Roth said. "It's staggering how quickly it's grown."

 

Pate says the attraction for him is the time he gets to spend with his 14-year-old daughter.

 

"I thought it was neat because it was a good, clean family oriented thing," he said. "It doesn't cost a lot of money; it just takes some time. Me and my daughter have gone out quite a bit and just spent some good, quality time together. I think parents need to do a lot more of that in some cases."

 

Greg Barnett of Carthage has been geocaching for about three years. He and his son, Dallas, first played while on vacation in Hot Springs, Ark.

 

"We were hooked immediately," Barnett said. "This is big fun."

 

Pretty soon, he and Dallas were looking for caches every time they took a trip. You don't have to go far to find one, though.

 

Caches can be anywhere – from underwater to the center of a city – but people often hide them near historical points of interest or in scenic areas.

 

There are rules, of course: Geocaching.com recommends getting permission from landowners before hiding a cache, and caches that deface property or are hidden in national wildlife refuges are likely to be pulled from the Web site.

 

There are several hidden right here in Marshall, and even more in the surrounding area. Pate said a Caddo Lake cache called Goat Eyeland is the most challenging one he's found so far.

 

"All those roads between Highway 43 and the lake, they're just like spaghetti," he said. "You'd get to the end of a road, and (the GPS would) say you were really close to the cache, but obviously you weren't. You couldn't get there from where you were. That one was challenging and a lot of fun."

 

Barnett, who says he and his son were "hard and fast" geocachers for about a year, hasn't been quite as active lately.

 

He still likes keeping track of the caches he's hidden, though, and also has fun with Travel Bugs, "hitchhikers" that are carried from cache to cache. The numbered tags are registered online, then tracked with the help of the people who find them. One of Barnett's Travel Bugs ended up near Chicago, he said.

 

Other geocaching innovations include multicaches, where multiple caches give hints to the final location, and virtual caches, which are existing landmarks. To prove you've found a virtual cache, you have to answer a question about the site.

 

Roth thinks the game's next evolution will be "geolocational entertainment" such as DashPoint, a game that is similar to a scavenger hunt, except players "collect" waypoints.

 

Whatever new forms the game takes, it seems certain that geocaching will always be about the thrill of the hunt for the people who play.

 

"Most parents will say they like the adventure," Barnett said. "Kids like opening the cache. Once I find it, I'm through with it."

 

Don't be intimidated by the technology: If I can do it, anyone can

 

After talking with several enthusiastic geocachers, I thought it might be fun to try it – in theory, at least.

 

They assured me it was easy, even for a first-timer, but I was still a little hesitant. I've never used a GPS unit, after all. I was never even a Girl Scout. And then there's the fact that my questionable sense of direction is a long-running family joke.

 

If I can't find someone's house with a map and directions, how would I find a small, plastic container hidden in the woods, using only satellite triangulation?

 

Armed with a borrowed GPS, a MapQuest printout and my trusty Ford Focus, I set out to answer this question.

 

Groundspeak co-founder Bryan Roth offered this advice: "Focus on being prepared for where you're going. Make sure to bring plenty of water, good shoes, and tell people where you're going. Or go with someone who's done it before."

 

I prepared by first looking up caches in the Marshall area at www.geocaching.com. I found one near Stagecoach Road that was rated an easy find (one star out of five, with five being the most difficult), and figured this would be a good place to start.

 

Also, the log entries of people who had visited the cache praised the location's scenery and historical significance. Sounds nice, I thought.

 

So, one damp East Texas morning, I set out for Stagecoach Road with photographer Scott Brunner in tow. Scott was along to document my first cache hunt.

 

The GPS unit took us right to the cache's location, which I promptly drove past. We went all the way down Stagecoach Road, having long overshot the goal back on Pine Bluff, which runs into Stagecoach.

 

I hadn't yet found the nifty feature on the GPS unit that tells you how far from your destination you are. This story would be a lot shorter if I had.

 

"If you've played with a GPS at all, it's really pretty simple," geocacher Greg Barnett of Carthage told me. "The most difficult part is entering coordinates."

 

He's right; manually entering waypoints is tedious, and it would be easy to get one number wrong, sending yourself on a wild goose chase. At first I thought that's why I couldn't find the cache, so I double-checked my work.

 

By then I was getting a little frustrated. I had even read the hint, for crying out loud.

 

I felt better when I remembered geocacher Tony Pate's words: "I've spent literally less than a minute (looking for a cache) on some occasions, just walked right to it, and I've spent several hours on other occasions and still haven't found 'em."

 

At least I'm not the only one. Of course, I'm sure Pate wasn't looking for a one-star cache on those occasions when he spent several hours.

 

While triple-checking the waypoint, I stumbled on that nifty feature I mentioned earlier – it was like going from black-and-white TV to color.

 

After that, there was one little detour into the woods, but things went much faster. I was shocked when I finally found the cache – for someone who's directionally challenged, it was a great feeling. I took a pin that says "Fluke" – as in, it's a fluke I ever found this cache – and left a deck of cards.

 

The moral of the story? If I can geocache, anyone can. Just be sure to read the GPS instruction manual first.

 

On the Net

 

Ready to go on your own geocaching adventure? Visit www.geocaching.com for information about the sport. From the home page, click on "Getting Started" for resources such as frequently asked questions and a guide to finding a cache

[+AndrewRJ]

Thats a good article. And I really liked that the reporter went out and actually found one. We need more good press like this, especially in the wake at the SC fiasco.

[+Beowulf83]

That is a good article, and we need positive press right now.

 

And I really liked that the reporter went out and actually found one.

 

As far as the Greenville News is concerned, in the 2001 article, the reporter did travel with us (don't know if he ever went to find one on his own, though.)

[+Yamahammer]

Beo, What did the reporter do? What kind of report did he/she file? Did it lead to this lawmaking in SC? The power of the pen, blah blah.