Here there be caches: California's Redwoods, one of 15,300 potential treasure troves (PhotoDisc).
We beings of adventure are a curious race. We'll create new paths to the highest points on the planet, find rivers to navigate through remote corners of the globe, and seek ways to spin our wheels along mountain trails with ever greater efficiency, all in the quest to pursue new variations on timeless fun. But that entertainment, unfortunately, comes with limitations, often tied to topography. No mountains in your area? Then skiing is probably something you do on vacation time.
Geocaching, the global hide-and-seek game of stashing waterproof boxes loaded with knickknacks and trinkets and then directing others to those goodie boxes via GPS coordinates, transcends those limitations. It's a perfect example of how creative we've become in our play by simply adding new layers of excitement to getting outside. Any place, no matter how ho-hum to the outdoor adventurer, can become a good hiding spot for a cache. There are two in my hometown in New Mexico alone—not in the mountains or in the woods—but off main streets I often use on the way to work. Then there are "virtual" caches (no box but you must prove to site’s creator you've been to the spot by answering a question only a visitor would know), multistage caches where finding one box leads you to the next, and "travel bugs," or tags that hop—or "hitchhike" in geospeak—from box to box as people find them.
The sport's nerve center belongs to www.geocaching.com. There you learn about the equipment you'll need to start your own hunt, find chat forums for connecting with other cachers, and post the latest news about your own stashes. As of early September, there were nearly 120,000 caches hiding in 210 countries, including three in Afghanistan and about a dozen in Iraq. Colorado has something like 1,500 caches and California has a whopping 15,300. Even places challenged with adventurous geography can have a thriving geocaching community. Take Kansas, for instance. More than 1,000 caches lie in wait there.
Just because you have the coordinates to a particular cache doesn't mean it’s going to be easy to find it (I'd bet many of those in Iraq won't see a lot of visitors). Some stashes might require you to rock climb up a face or paddle a river to get to them. Visit the geocashing.com Web site and lock your sights on a cache near you. Buy a map, make sure your GPS unit's batteries are fresh, grab your boat or boots, and head out a quest.
