Escapees September-October 2023

A modern-day treasure hunt is the perfect way to describe this excellent RV pastime. In 2000, excited by the possibilities of publicly-available GPS technology, Dave Ulmer hid a small container with trinkets and a logbook in the woods just outside of Portland, Oregon, with the instructions, “Take some stuff. Leave some stuff.” He posted coordinates for his new “GPS Stash Hunt” on a satellite newsgroup. Within a month, stashes were being hidden (and found), not only in the US but around the world. Enthusiast Matt Stum suggested changing the term “stash” to “cache” and tightening it up to what we now call a geocache. Later that year, Jeremy Irish launched Geocaching.com. Today there are a handful of geocaching websites. Irish and his Groundspeak, Inc. partners, Brian Roth and Elian Alvord, is the largest, with more than three million geocaches listed in over 190 countries. There’s something some where for everyone. Loot to Have and Hold Using the of fi cial Geocaching app on a mobile device, players visit Geocaching. com, register and select a nearby cache to fi nd. Then, they can strike out on a treasure hunt in search of a waterproof box, the cache, that typically contains a logbook for successful hunters to sign and sometimes a treasure to trade (usually of little value to anyone except you). Once the cache is found, treasure hunters log it on the site and can include comments and photographs. This hobby allows you to explore places, nooks and crannies, that you might never visit, aside from geocaching. To have a successful adventure, Geocaching.com offers some beginner’s tips: • Think like a detective. • Look for something out of place or disguised. • Search high and low. • Pay attention to cache hints on the cache’s listing/coordinates page. • Pay attention to activity log comments for further clues. • Be stealthy and respectful of your surroundings. • Always bring a pen to sign the logbook. • Return the cache to the exact same spot where you found it.

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ESCAPEES Magazine September/October 2023