Subject: I met one...
Author:
Posted on: 2012-07-26 01:40:00 UTC
... which was embedded in an abandoned bike-lock alongside several others. I spent several days occasionally staring right at it and wondering if it was a button of some sort before I realised what a microcache looked like...
hS
Geocaching - a sort of self-sustaining crowdsourced treasure hunt, where people hide tradeable items at specified GPS coordinates and everyone goes looking for them to put in new items and maybe take one out.
Geohashing - saves on all those 'Where shall we go today?'s by giving a random location every day for each degree-square of latitude/longitude. Which you then try to reach, in an epic adventure trek and/or stroll down the road. Exists because of XKCD.
I'm curious - how many PPCers do either of these? It seems like our sort of thing... myself, I've done a little geocaching - I once had a travelbug which, er, got sidetracked on the way across England and ended up going missing somewhere in New York - but never geohashing. I'd quite like to, but it's difficult to sort out - also Kaitlyn thinks it's ridiculous, but as long as I don't mention I want to on a public forum she's a member of, I should be okay.
Either of them seem like the sort of thing we'd do at a Gathering (although more so -caching, it's a bit more local), but I don't think it's ever happened. So... anyone?
hS
There was a travelbug called Puddles the Duck. He was a rubber duck that wanted to go to places with water. He started his journey in New Jersey. He ended up drowning in the Netherlands because the cache he was in was at the bottom of the river and it got swept away in a storm. They never seem to survive.
Anyway, my family's really big into geocaching but I hadn't hear of geohashing until now. There are some really creative ones out there; I've found one that looked like a rock in a pile of other rocks and another that was dangling from a tree limb over a river. The only restriction is that you can't bury them.
... which was embedded in an abandoned bike-lock alongside several others. I spent several days occasionally staring right at it and wondering if it was a button of some sort before I realised what a microcache looked like...
hS
I've been Geocaching since 2001, which is around when it started, and I have to say, I really like it. I'm an avid hiker, so Geocaching kinda gives my walking around a purpose. I've seen people get really creative with the caches too; there was one hidden under a fake sprinkler, and I helped my dad make one that looks like a pretty convincing beehive. People have said that they were afraid to go near it.
But I really like letterboxing, which is a similar idea. People hide little boxes with stamps and a notepad, then other people follow clues (posted at letterboxing.org) to find the boxes. They can range from simple directions to devilishly complex puzzles. Each letterboxer carries their own unique stamp, and when you find the letterbox, you stamp your stamp in the box's notebook and the box's stamp in your notebook.
Oh, yes -- a lot of geocaches are influenced by it; they have clues and such rather than just the coordinates. I think I've also noticed a couple listed which are straight combinations - they have coordinates for geocaching, and clues&stamps for letterboxing. Don't think I ever ran into one, though.
hS
From my own knowledge, I think that originated on Dartmoor in Devon, England. Supposedly there are some hidden on various tors there - well hidden. I believe the tradition there is to leave a postcard addressed to yourself in the box and to post any of the postcards left there by previous people. Then you go home and see how long it takes to arrive in the post.
The first ever such letterbox was apparently at Cranmere Pool according to Wikipedia.