A treasure hunt, the high-tech way

Geocaching is family fun, but it requires various skills and provides unexpected rewards.

By Mary Hay Davis

from the July 16, 2007 edition

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"Where is it?" That refrain echoed in two places – from the golfers on the course below us and from our group on the ridge above them. The golfers were looking for a ball that a duffer in their party had sliced into some adjacent brush.

But our party of eight – my husband and I, our two sons, two friends, one of their sons, and a dog named Betsy – was searching for something entirely different. We knew we were getting close ... our little instrument told us so. The adults in our group eyed the area, while the two youngest boys im­mediately honed in on a nearby fence post.

"We found it!" they shouted triumphantly.

Our quest was not for a round white orb. No, we were hunting for something far more eclectic and concealed – a geocache.

Earlier that week, my family had logged onto www.geocaching.com (the official geocaching website) and selected some caches to hunt on Saturday.

We posted an invitation in the chat room for others to join us, and on the appointed day, we met up with them near the site of our first cache.

Using a handheld global positioning system (GPS) device, we let the signal guide us to the coordinates of the cache. These brought us within a nine-foot radius of the cache, so we still had to actively search the nearby terrain to locate our first treasure.

This cache yielded some trinkets as well as the usual sign-in log. Most caches have items of nominal value, similar to things you would find at a 99-cent store.

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