Geocachers

You can spot them a mile away. Mostly two or thee in a group. They will be walking head-down, staring at a global positioning receiver (GPS). Stop, look at GPS, walk. Stop, look at GPS, walk, stop, push a button on GPS, stare at it for a while. Refer to a map. It’s the latest craze. I don’t get it.

I tried. There are several geocaches along the river. One is on the cliff not far from the Dogwood Rd. parking area.

I got the coordinates on-line, hiked to the spot with my trusty GPS, and easily found the canister under a rock. I took out the single sheet of white notebook paper, signed “PatapscoMike” with the date below the previous name. Then I walked back to my car, unfulfilled. I could have been fishing or wandering aimlessly. The last thing I want to do when I have free time is have to go look for something someone else has tried to hide from me. The whole idea of Geocaching seems to be that you give the GPS coordinates to a spot, but then you try to make the actual cache hard to locate within the 20 feet or so accuracy of a GPS receiver. WTF is that? I spend enough time looking for things in my house- why make it a hobby too?

Maybe it's just me, but geocaching reminds me of Mark Twain’s famous quote about golf- "a good walk, spoiled."

Maybe one day I’ll get into it, but I doubt it. If you think it’s for you, go to www.geocaching.com and read all about it. Maybe one day I'll see you down at the river. You won't see me though, you'll be staring at your GPS...