GPS for Dummies.pdf - Engineering Surveyor

Chapter 7: Geocaching119By the end of May, in a Yahoo! Group devoted to the new sport, member MattStum suggested that the sport be called geocaching in order to avoid some ofthe negative connotations associated with drugs and word stash. (A cache is ahidden place where goods or valuables are concealed.) Geocaching had a nicering to it, and it didn’t sound like a bad Cheech and Chong movie.Today, geocaching has grown popular, and the rules are still pretty much thesame: Take some stuff, leave some stuff, record it in the logbook, and have fun!Relatively cheap and accurate GPS receivers and widespread Internet accesshave helped the sport flourish. As of November 2003, the www.geocaching.com site (currently the largest geocaching site on the Net) had over 72,500active caches in 188 countries listed in its database. That’s a lot of caches outthere to find! (Figure 7-1 shows a typical cache.)OFFICIALGEOCACHEPLEASE DO NOT DISTURB!Cache Name:Figure 7-1:Geocacheshold alogbook andgoodies.Getting Started GeocachingJust about anyone can participate in geocaching; gender, age, and economicstatus don’t much matter. The main requirements are a spirit of adventure, alove of puzzles and mysteries, and a sense of fun. This section discusses whatyou need to geocache, how to select caches to look for, and how to find them.What you need to geocacheGeocaching sounds pretty intriguing, doesn’t it? But before you can try it out,you need a few things. You probably already have many pieces of the required