Today I went Geocaching. I discovered the activity a few months ago, right around when I was moving up to Covington, but I was too busy to try it. This weekend I decided I'd give it a shot.

Geocaching is a sort of game or sport in which strangers will hide a small 'cache' (varying in size from a film canister to a large chest) somewhere inconspicuous, note the coordinates with a GPS unit, and then post the information on a website. Other 'players' will read about the cache, make a note of the coordinates, and set out with their own GPS unit to try and find it. Caches always contain a small notebook that serves as a log, and each player who finds the cache is supposed to sign the log to describe when they found it, and what they thought of the experience. Caches also often contain random trinkets (they can be anything from dollar-store toys to CDs to computer hardware to action figures), and you're encouraged to take some and leave others in trade.

So in essence, it's a scavenger hunt you play with strangers. And it's fun as hell. There's several variations. One is called a multi-cache: the coordinates listed on the website only lead you to the first hint or clue; it might directly list the coordinates of the next 'stage' of the cache, or it might give you instructions or a riddle to solve in order to figure out where to go next.

It was just one such multi-cache that we sought out today: a pirate-themed cache named The Treasure of Pirate's Cove, only about 10 miles away. I mentioned the idea to Bryan and Cat the other day, and they also thought it sounded fun, so the three of us set out today. Finding the first waypoint was pretty easy: my laptop-based GPS led us to the lakeside marina in Mandeville, where we parked and used my handheld PDA-based GPS to find the clue: a cooler on one of the docks, which bore a sign containing the next set of coordinates and a warning: "Muggles Beware!" (Geocachers have adopted the term 'muggles' to refer to 'normal people' who aren't aware of the game).

I entered the new coordinates in my GPS and found that it was about half a mile away. We set off in search of it, and found our way into the woods, where we found a stone marker with an encoded message. Knowing that Rot-13 is used heavily on the Geocaching.com site to obfuscate information which people might not want to see (such as spoilers), we decided the message must be encoded with the same code, and the three of us set about decoding it. A few minutes later, we had our instructions: FROM THIS MARKER WALK ONE HUNDRED AND THIRTY FIVE FEET SOUTH EAST.

We had brought along compasses as well, so we identified the direction and started walking. We soon found ourselves at the water's edge, in the mushy swampland that tends to separate the water from the land in Louisiana. We spent a few minutes searching this unpleasant terrain with no success, before Bryan decided to go back to the stone marker and try counting off the 135 feet. On his way back, he noticed something suspicious, which turned out to be a wildlife camera strapped to a tree. Sure enough, following its line of sight Bryan found the cache itself, a large military-surplus ammo can hidden behind a tree.

We opened it and found a treasure chest (arrr) with replica gold doubloons, pieces of eight, a sailor's compass, jewels, and other pirate booty, along with several random knick-knacks like toy cars and action figures. We all signed the log (which was the coolest-looking notebook I've ever seen, and I was sorely tempted to take the log itself) and read past visitors' entries.

I didn't have much to leave, since I just moved up here and only shipped up my most important possessions, but I left an 8x10 print that I had lying around of a silly photo of mine (in a ziplock bag, of course), and took a gold doubloon and a Travel Bug (I'll mention that in a bit). Bryan left some of his old Pogs from Hawaii, dated 1992, and also took a doubloon and a Travel Bug. Cat took the sailor's compass, and left a small film canister in which she had poked holes in the bottom, so that when you hold it up to the light, you see the constellation Orion. She made sure to label the film canister 'Orion (The Hunter)' to give some hint that it wasn't just a standard, if leaky, film canister.

Travel Bugs are another cool aspect of Geocaching — you can order a tag with a unique serial number, and affix it to an item that you leave in a cache. You register the serial number on the Geocaching.com website, and provide a description of what the Travel Bug is hoping to accomplish (travel to a certain country, visit 10 countries, etc). When someone else takes the Travel Bug from the cache later, they're supposed to log it on the website (using the serial number), so that you can track its progress and see where it has travelled. They then leave it in another cache, or mail it to a friend in a different part of the world and have the friend seek out a cache in their area and leave it there.

The Travel Bug I picked up belongs to an organization called Unite For Diabetes. It started out in New York, and its stated goal is to travel to Higashiura, Japan. I'll have to figure out if anyone I know is currently in Japan — if not, maybe I'll send it to one of my friends living in Europe, to at least get it halfway there.

All in all, I had a great time, and I definitely plan to do this on a regular basis. Geocaching seems like such a great idea. It doesn't cost anything to participate, once you've got the GPS unit. You get to go out on treasure hunts (who doesn't like treasure hunting?). You get to take fun little things home. And you get to spend time outdoors, exploring areas you very likely wouldn't ever have seen otherwise.

As I started looking up nearby caches on the website, I was surprised by how prevalent they are. I found at least 40 caches within 10 miles of my house. I find it amazing that there's all these little hidden treasures surrounding us everywhere as we go about our daily lives, and we spend our days completely unaware of it.

The concept of Geocaching itself is very new — it arose only seven years ago, in May of 2000, when Clinton decided to stop degrading the accuracy of civilian GPS signals. Suddenly, the average Joe's GPS receivers were accurate to within a few feet, whereas before they had been restricted to an accuracy of only several hundred feet. Within days of the announcement, people were starting to wonder what they could do with this newfound accuracy, and someone came up with the idea of hiding a container and letting people look for it.

I'm amused by the idea of using billion-dollar satellites to hunt $2.00 tupperware. But I can't wait to get out and do it again.