High-tech Hide And Seek
10/1/2003

Matt Hagengruber

Geocachers Use Gps Units In A Sort Of Treasure Hunt This article was written by Matt Hagengruber and published in the Sunday, August 24, 2003 edition of the Wisconsin State Journal

As Jeff and Bonnie Little approached the abandonded railroad tunnel, the spookiness set in, almost on cue. The temperature dropped, the skies went gray and the thunder echoed in the steep rock walls leading to the tunnel. And finally, greeting the Littles as they approached the tunnel, a fog crept out from inside.
The Littles – a 50-something couple from the Baraboo area – are geocachers, and they were hunting a cache hidden somewhere near the tunnel. They’d already found two caches that day at different sites in Dane County, but with this one, with a name like “Tunnel of Terror,” they knew it would be a good one.

They scrounged around the loose limestone rocks looking for the Tupperware bin that contained the treasure. One of their dogs, a Cocker Spaniel named Madison, was busy chasing bugs in mud puddles. The other dog, a Gordon Setter named Murray, seemed more intent on finding the box than the Littles.

Finally, looking at a tall pile of rocks, Jeff raised his hand. “I have a find.”

Inside the bin was a good mix of junk: pencils, plastic bugs, Halloween toys, some stickers, a log book. That’s it. No jewels, alternate film endings or anything worth more than a buck or two.

Geocaching is one of those new hobbies that blends high-tech with hiking boots and poison ivy. Cachers use their global positioning units – GPS – to track down plastic bins that other cachers hide in the woods. They mark the spot on their GPS unit, log on to www.geocaching.com and write up their hide. Cachers like the Littles, who call themselves weekend hunters, then simply type in their ZIP code at the site and a list of caches pops up.

The Littles, cachers since January 2002, stumbled onto the sport when Jeff ran into two cachers at Mirror Lake State Park. It also gave them a good reason to use that GPS thing Jeff bought for Bonnie.

“Jeff came back and told me what they were doing, and I said, ‘We’re doing this,’ ” she said. “I asked Jeff for a pedometer and he buys me this GPS.”

The Littles took a sticker from the tunnel cache and left a wooden train whistle and two plastic hot dogs. Their caching handle is “Hot Dogs Off Trail,” so they leave the little plastic sausages at every cache they find. They always sign the log book in the cache and repeat their entries on the Web site.

They say the philosophy is simple: if you take something, leave something. Don’t leave food, knives, drugs or any other junk that could spell trouble. And when they “claim” a cache on the Web site, they often leave a little note telling of the cache’s condition.

“People find a neat spot that they want to share with others, and this is their way of getting you there,” Jeff said.

Ken Braband, president of the Wisconsin Geocaching Association, said the sport is about three years old and picking up steam.

“When I started doing this in February of 2001, I think there were only about four geocachers in Wisconsin,” he said. “Now I’m guessing there’s about 500 or 600 of us. It can be like a walk down a sidewalk or a mountain climb or even a scuba dive.”

The tunnel cache was the Littles’ 209th cache. They have plenty to go. A simple zip code search of the Madison area returns more than 1,000 caches in Wisconsin. The Web site lists more than 60,000 caches in 180 countries, from a mountaintop cache in Bhutan to one in downtown Monrovia, the capital of Liberia.

Wisconsin’s Web site, www.wi-geocaching.com, boasts more than 200 registered members, and they plan to get together today at Devils Lake State Park for their annual picnic. First-timers are welcome.

Caches can be hard or easy to find, depending on who hides them. They can also hide virtual caches, which just lead people to a cool bluff or riverbank or something worth seeing. The Littles hunted a virtual cache at a park in southern Dane County that slowly took them uphill to a prairie that celebrates America’s bicentennial.

Cachers also pick up travel bugs, which are special little items that make their way around the country. The bug wears a little dog tag with a code number so it can be tracked as it travels to different caches.

The Littles sent off a plastic George Washington that they hope will tour the original 13 U.S. colonies. Right now it’s on its way to New Jersey, the last colony it needs to visit.

Both Braband and the Littles agree that geocaching is the next big hobby to sweep America. Local sporting goods stores say they get a lot of GPS queries from first-time cachers, and the Wisconsin group’s annual picnic is expected to draw a few hundred people.

“It used to be under the radar. You’d go out and hide things in parks and wouldn’t ask permission, but now it’s become so well-known that you can’t do that anymore,” Braband said. “We’re no longer under the radar.”