Geocaching - A Great Excuse for a GPS
Posted by Richard Cunningham on 07/5/06 in GPS
It was a great 4th of July holiday, and now that it’s over, it’s back to work, back in the saddle again, back to the salt mines, you know the drill. But over the holiday I talked to my brother, and he told me about a new hobby he has, and it seems to be pretty wide spread.
It is called geocaching and it is essentially a web-based treasure hunt using GPS technology. You use the information on the site to find items that others have left, and then replace it with something of equal value when you have found it. It has been around since 2000, ever since the "great blue switch" was thrown and the GPS accuracy improved tenfold. There is an interesting history on the website, as well as instructions on how to join and get started. There are two levels of membership, one is free and one isn’t. You can do everything you need to with the free one, the premium one adds some more functionality and makes some processes easier to accomplish, such as automatically downloading the GPS coordinates to your receiver.
I gave it a look over the weekend, and entered my address, and gave it a one mile radius to search. I was surprised to find over ten items within that radius, some as new as a few day previous. Never having owned a GPS (since I really don’t have a need for one), this seems to be a good excuse to go out and get one. Check this site out, since it seems to be mobility oriented.
Written by Richard Cunningham · Filed Under GPS
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