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March 22, 2006
Cold, Hard (Geo) Cache
Now that it is starting to get a little warmer, I would like to start taking advantage of Columbia, MD's pathways and trails again. When Columbia was first built (by Edward Norton's grandfather, no less), they purposely planned to have these pathways throughout the entire city. It makes it very easy to walk from one place to another and also allows me to get some much needed exercise.
Since I am also a technology buff, I have recently started getting into Geocaching, which allows me to exercise and use technology at the same time.
In the activity of geocaching, someone hides a 'cache', which is typically a plastic container full of a few trinkets and a log book. They then post the latitude and longitude of the location of the cache (found with a GPS) online at a site like geocaching.com. Other people will then plug the coordinates into their own GPS and try to find it. Once found, they can sign the log book, swap out a trinket for one of their own, take a picture, etc. They would also post online that they found the cache.
There are many variations of geocaching and they are found all over the place. For instance, there are 64 caches listed that are 5 miles or less from my house. The closest one was about a 10 minute walk.
I highly recommend this activity and hope to find about one cache a week for the duration of the Spring and Summer. You can track my progress by looking up user ChuckCaplan on geocaching.com.
Here are some other links that I recommend:
Maryland Geocaching Society
Reading a GPS using Java
Posted by Chuck at March 22, 2006 12:23 PM
Comments
As Chuck's wife and walking partner, I can honestly say it is a pleasure walking with Chuck now since he started geocaching. It definitely makes our walks more enjoyable regardless of the GPS's constant beeping:-).
Posted by: Stephanie at March 22, 2006 01:51 PM
As Chuck's friend and hiking partner, I can honestly say it is a pleasure to have a good friend hiking along with me, which he enjoys because he's still doing techmology. I am also glad to finally get some use out of my handheld GPS!
Posted by: Chris at March 24, 2006 02:17 PM