Article in Oconomowoc Enterprise

[Lostby7]

Here is the text (draft copy) of a geocaching article published yesterday in town. Below is the article in it’s finished form. The author did a pretty good job getting his facts correct.

Gary Hammel has traveled across 13 states searching for hidden treasure, but despite his 3,000-plus finds, he has not made a fortune from long-forgotten pirate¹s booty or large chests filled with gold.

Instead, Hammel and many others in the area have spent entire days tracking down hidden items, writing their name on a logbook and moving on, finding enjoyment in the thrill of the hunt. It¹s called geocaching, and if you haven¹t yet heard of it, chances are you will soon.

It all begins on a website, http://www.geocaching.com, where users can browse a given region for items, or caches, that are hidden throughout the area. Once they find an interesting cache, they look up the coordinates, put the coordinates into a GPS device, then follow the arrow on the GPS device to the spot of the hidden treasure, or tag or some other kind of benchmark that will provide clues that lead to the hidden treasure.

Most GPS devices will take you within 20 feet of the cache, so at a certain point, geocachers find themselves kicking around a small piece of land looking for anything out of the ordinary. Sometimes the cache webpage will provide a hint about the location and size of the cache. Other times, it is up to the geocacher to figure it out.

A cache can be anything from a military ammunition box to a film canister to an item as small as your fingertip. Hammel said he has found caches from eight feet underwater to 60 feet above ground. Containers cannot be located within 1/10 of a mile from each other and cannot be buried underground.

³A cache could be anything. Someone will hollow a stump, put a cache in
there then put the top back on. I¹ve seen fake branches on trees, with a cache inside of a fake branch,² he said. ³Some caches I¹ve spent hours on.
Others I still haven¹t found.²

Geocachers have posted several caches around town, using local landmarks such as the Fowler Lake walking tour, Imagination Station, Nature Hill and the Wizard of Oz plaque outside City Hall.

Caches usually contain small trinkets, such as batteries, beads and pins. If they want, they can swap treasure and leave something new for the next person to discover the cache. They also write their website username in the logbook tucked inside the cache, then record their find on the website.

Sometimes they will add a ³travel bug² to the cache, which people will take from one cache to another. Travel bugs are given a destination, and other users try to take it there. Hammel said one of his travel bugs was set to go to ³all the places Lance Armstrong couldn¹t when he was riding the tour,² and it ended up in Europe, just 50 miles from another one of his travel bugs.

Since he began in October 2004, Hammel (who is known as “Lostby7” in geocaching circles) has found 3,064 caches, the 50th highest in the state. He has also placed 43 caches within a 20-mile area from his Oconomowoc home.

At the other end of the spectrum, Oconomowoc¹s Muffler family has only just begun to realize the fun, adventure and education that comes from an afternoon of geocaching. The family has been geocaching for two months, and so far, they have found 117 caches.

One of the more difficult caches the Mufflers have found was actually
created by Hammel. The cache site includes a story about the ³Belly of the
Beast,² which is actually an area lake that looks like a dragon. At another local place, the cache was actually a stuffed animal.

Mother Laurie Muffler said she and her three children have had a great time spending time with each other and seeing new areas of the community.
³It gets kids away from the X-box and gets them outside and doing things as a family,² she said. ³We¹re seeing things we¹ve never seen before right here in our own backyard. There are parks that we have driven by but didn¹t really know about until we found a cache there.²

[Mister Greenthumb]

Wow, must have been a sleepy news day in Cooney. Just kidding. Gary, it’s nice to see you get some credit for our game that you give so much back to. We’ve met the Muffler family and they have become fans of our hides. I’ve had several e-mails back and forth with Laurie offering a helping hand when needed. It’s nice to see some news out of Oconomowoc that doesn’t involve construction.

[Lostby7]

@Mister Greenthumb wrote:

It’s nice to see some news out of Oconomowoc that doesn’t involve construction.

I Hear that!

I was surprised to see this one actually get published (and so quickly)…a reporter from the same paper interviewed me a couple years ago…don’t think that article ever saw the light of day. I let the reporter try to find the OZ final….let’s just say he has some work to do before can can become a veteran.

[sandlanders]

Nice article!

[zuma]

Great coverage. Thanks for posting it here.

z

[Lostby7]

The reporter actually found and contacted me through this site.

[mufflers2112]

Thanks for posting the article, it was a fun interview. We had him find the “Imagination Station” cache, he had trouble finding it, my youngest had to help him after a while.

My kids and I were telling him about one of our favorites “Belly of the Beast” and what we went through to try to find it after 4 attempts – LOL Even after the email hint from Gary, it still took us a few more times, I can’t even post the places where we ended up before we “got it”, it’s quite comical.

I don’t know what we would do without Bill’s help too on a few, okay several caches, thank you. We’re hoping to find WP2 at “Old Tower” this weekend.

My daughter’s class will be Geocaching in October for part of their Social Studies class, she’s so excited. I’ll be helping out on all the outings.

[rcflyer2242]

That sure was a nice article. I am glad to hear that the auther actually went out and found a few of the caches. It gives them a better idea of the feeling you get in the find. Puzzle finds are the best in my book, after you do the work to solve it then actually make the find. I have pretty close to 140 on the solved, not found pile and belly of the beast is one of them. I guess now that the kids are back in school I will be able to find some of them. As long as they dont get archived. LOL

[Lostby7]

@rcflyer2242 wrote:

… As long as they dont get archived. LOL

Well as far as”belly of the beast” goes, as my favorite creation, it should be around for some time.

[Author]

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