By ANNE KAZMIERCZAK
pics
There’s treasure hidden in them thar trees. Or graveyards. Or grassy meadow along an Allen County road.
With geocaching, the treasure can be almost anywhere — providing it’s public land or the cacher has permission of the land owner to place his or her stash.
“Geocaching is a high-tech treasure hunting game played throughout the world by adventure seekers equipped with GPS devices,” states the official Web site, www.geocaching.com. “The basic idea is to locate hidden containers, called geocaches, outdoors and then share your experiences online.”
In Iola, the heart of geocaching is the Iola Public Library.
Librarian Lesa Cole began geocaching in 2007. At the time, she said, there was only one geocache in Iola. Now, she said, there are many.
Geocaching is simple. “You take an airtight, watertight container,” Cole said, and in it put a small notebook and pen, plus some small trinket that would be interesting for others to find.
Next, you camouflage your cache, and hide it on public land. Cemeteries are popular spots for caches in southeast Kansas.
Once hidden, cachers log their stash’s coordinates onto the geocaching web site, plus add clues for finders to use. But you don’t place the exact location, Cole noted. “The GPS will take you within 10 to 20 feet of the item. It’s not going to take you to the item itself,” she said. “That’s the fun — looking.”
Between the clues and the coordinates, most caches are found.
Once located, a seeker opens the cache. “You trade out what you fin for something of equal or greater value,” Cole said. Then you sign the notebook with your name and date, and seal the box back u for another hunter to locate.
“You have to place it back in he exact location,” she said, “or the next person won’t find it.”
One thing you don’t o its take the entire box, she said.
“One of the first ones we place disappeared the next day. I posted on line that the cache was missing, and the next day it was returned. They just didn’t know,” she said of the finder.
That’s why, Cole said, many geocaches also contain a short etiquette guide, explaining what geocaching is and how to go about continuing the practice.
It’s rather like a worldwide scouting club.
The global popularity of the hobby has even touched Iola caches.
“We placed one travel bug that ended up in Australia,” Cole said.
Travel bugs, she explained, are identification tags attached to an item, asking that the item be moved on to a new cache.
In that way, some items travel quite far.
In addition, some people place objects particular to them, “rather like a calling card,” Cole noted.
A family from New Mexico that came through Iola recently found the Library cache and placed a tile made from their native clay, Cole said. Others place business-related items, or personal identifiers. “My parents placed little colored cars,” she said.
Her mom, who passed on last year, now has a geocache in Paola placed in her memory.
“It’s called Patty’s Pink,” Cole said, “because everything in it is pink.”
Other caches have similarly descriptive names. There’s “Wishing Well #2,” “Echo Chamber,” “Lillie’s Heart,” and of course, the library’s cache, “Shhhh.”
NAMING THE caches is part of the fun of placing them, Cole said. She said any container, as long as it is weatherproof, can be used.
“We use gallon coolers we get at yard sales,” she said. Tupperware is also popular, she said. So are ammo boxes, or even large tubs.
Cole, with her husband Larry and son Matthew, have placed 27 caches in and around Iola since taking up the hobby three years ago. And, she said, “We have a couple we’re supposed to place this weekend.”
Caches can range in size from micro to very large. “There’s even one that’s a 55 gallon drum,” she said.
“Our first one was a micro,” she said if her family’s stores. It was the size of a pencil ferrule, Cole said. “Obviously that was too tiny to have a notepads in it,” she smiled.
Caches in the Iola area include ones in Humboldt, Gas, LaHarpe, and Iola cemeteries.
Cole said there are many people in the area geocaching, as evidenced by the online logs and variety of items that come and go through the boxes. She has found a 1904 penny, jewelry, pocket watch, blue glass slipper and Rubik’s cube, she said.
Some caches have themes, like one her family placed out of town with doggy supplies. Cole’s family often takes their Jack Russell Terrier with them, and she has heard back from others that were appreciative of the effort to include canine companions in the chase. Another stash Cole knows of is full of children’s toys.
“We really stuff them,” she said of her family’s caches. “We like to make them something that kids like to find.”
What Cole would really like to do is place an underwater cache, she said. “I saw it in a movie. It was great,” she said.
Another idea she has is to use a disposable camera as a travel bug, and have the last person to shoot pictures post them to the Web site. “It would be great to see where it has been,” she said.
“PEOPLE GEOCACHE all over the world,” Cole said. That bodes well for travelers, or families looking for inexpensive entertainment.
“One weekend we went through Oklahoma and Arkansas and back up,” Cole said. “That was on purpose. We went online and found geocaches along the way, and spent the weekend looking for them. It was a lot of fun.”
Caches range in difficulty from easy to hard to find, making locating them truly an adventure.
“I got one 14 year old into it,” she said, “and he got a bunch of his friends involved. Now they all look for them.”
Standard geocaching requires a GPS unit. As prices of the handheld mapping devices have come down, more and more people of all ages have been able to participate in the hobby, Cole said.
“You can get a good GPS unit for about $120 ,” she said.
Sometimes, though, that isn’t enough.
Occasionally, a cache is removed or destroyed.
Cole noted a cache elsewhere in Kansas that was found by the community’s sheriff. Unfamiliar with the sport, he had the cache, which had been stashed in a PVC pipe, destroyed as a potential bomb threat.
“That’s why you’re supposed to properly label them ‘Geocache’ and have the geocaching Web address on them,” Cole noted.
Other caches have been destroyed through road work or brush clearing, she said. “Sometimes, nature takes them,” she added.
Cole recommends being sure caches are placed above high water lines, and are invisible even after foliage dies back in the winter.
“Some are made to look like rocks, but they’re not rocks,” she said. “Sometimes people get quite inventive and hanging them from trees.”
The hobby has really opened her eyes. “There are roads in Allen County that I never knew existed,” she observed.
A few communities even have geocaching events, she noted.
“Miami County did one where you went on a run to different farms,” she said.
LOCAL TREASURE hunters can find caches by checking the Web site, and inputting their zip code or town name. The site lists GPS coordinates near the cache, plus clues to help locate it. Once found, geocachers log their data, leave comments and then, like prospectors of yore, head back out in search of more hidden treasures.
11/20/09
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