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| Genna Hill shows off a treasure she and her mother, Jennie, found while geocaching up Grouse Creek. |
One night while taking care of my newborn daughter, I flipped the TV on to PBS and caught part of a show about geocaching. I thought it sounded extremely interesting, something my family would enjoy.
Then, in my state of new motherhood, I promptly forgot about it. A couple of years later I stumbled across an ad for geocaching and was reminded of the show I had watched, which motivated me to check out the website www.geocaching.com.
So what is geocaching? It's the use of a hand held GPS to find caches that are placed throughout the world.
Think of it as a treasure hunt, you get your coordinates and go in search of a Tupperware, ammo can or something similar containing trinkets. Once found, you sign your name to the log book, swap out a trinket if you like and then replace the cache in it's hiding spot. Most are hidden under rock piles or in rotted out stumps, some are magnetic and hidden behind signs. Caches come in all sizes, too, from tiny pill bottles to five gallon buckets.
Logging onto the geocaching website shows that there are 6000+ geocaches in "my" area, which includes parts of Montana and Washington. Signing up as a premium member will gain you access to roughly 300 more caches than the basic membership, which is free.
Once signed in you can search any area you are interested in going to.
A GPS, or Global Positioning System, receiver is a must for this sport. There are a few different brands, many different styles, all in a wide price range.
After looking and looking I ended up buying a very low end, no frills, no bells and whistles unit. Two years later, I am still very happy with my purchase.
Sure I wish sometimes that I had a GPS with terrain maps or that I didn't have to hand enter all my coordinates, but my Garmin works great and can be as accurate as eight feet at times.
Since geocaching is all I use it for, it doesn't need to be fancy. With the increasing popularity of Smart Phones, some may choose to use their phone and yep, there's an App for that, but I found that my phone tends to be about 35 feet off from my hand-held GPS unit.
My kids love finding the caches, and I'm pretty sure they feel the trinkets are specially placed for them!
Geocaching offers a great way to get out and explore Boundary County and to revisit some of your favorite areas!