You walk on this street every day, but today you have a purpose. With iPhone in hand, you check your compass on your Geocaching app and take a few steps forward, then a few steps back. When you’re within 10 feet of your target, you start examining spaces in signs, the branches of the tree, nooks in the building.
You finally find it: a small box with some free stickers and a logbook. You sign your name and look at all the other names of people who found the box. You take a picture and post it on the site, browsing through pictures of smiling strangers standing on the same street as you.
You’re geocaching, an activity that allows you to explore the real world and engage with an online community. Anyone can get involved, but it’s especially fun for adventurous collegiettes like you and your friends!
What is Geocaching?
Geocaching is an international, GPS-based scavenger hunt organized through the official geocaching website. Anyone can look up clues online and find surprise items (usually in the form of a container, such as a film canister or a box) left by other people who use the website. These items, called geocaches, can be anything from a fake hollow bird to a large plastic container. They’ll always contain a logbook so you can record that you found it, and sometimes they contain little gifts you can keep, such as pins, toys and even gift cards. Geocaches can be anywhere, but they’re typically in places that are public but oftentimes ignored, like highway signs near rest stops, or places where you might have to do a little adventuring, like going on hiking trails.
Geocaching started in 2000 as a way to test the accuracy of a new GPS signal. Dave Ulmer, a man from Oregon, hid a bucket filled with items like software and videos and posted the location online. Mike Teague, a man from Washington, was the first to find it and post his experience online. Shortly after, Geocaching.com was founded as a way to record and track geocaches. Since then, about 4 million people have gotten involved in hiding and finding 1.4 million geocaches around the world.
Here’s a video that sums it up pretty well:
What many people like most about geocaching is the strong sense of community among users of the website. The camaraderie amongst geocachers is so strong they often leave gifts for strangers in the geocaches. Geocachers have even developed their own slang. Fans of Harry Potter will recognize the word “muggle,” which in the geocaching world refers to people who don’t geocache (by the end of this article, you’ll know how to stop being a muggle!). Geocachers also use abbreviations, including things like “TFTC” (“Thanks For The Cache), FTF (“First to Find”) and DNF (“Did Not Find”). People post comments on the website so you can see what other people were thinking while they were searching. Once you find the geocache (or before, if you don’t mind spoilers), you can even see pictures of people finding the geocache and upload your own.
One more thing: make sure you say “geocaching” right when you tell your friends about it. It’s pronounced: “geo cashing.” (In case you were wondering—yes, it’s a real word. Merriam-Webster added it to its dictionary in 2012!)
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How You Can Get Started
Geocaching is fun, exciting and, best of all, free (unless you buy the app, which is $9.99 for iPhone and Android devices, but free for Windows Phone). Here are some tips to help you get started:
What You Need
You don’t need much, but here are some essentials:
- An account on Geocaching.com.
- Shoes that are good for walking.
- A pen or pencil. Some geocaches will be marked “BYOP,” which means you should bring something to write with in order to sign the logbook.
- Either a GPS or a smartphone (iPhone or Android) with the geocaching app. The app isn’t required to go geocaching, but geocachers strongly recommend buying it if you’re going to be geocaching a lot. It navigates you to the spot with a compass and allows you to read comments from other people. It also keeps track of what you find and gives you “awards.”
What to Do
The first step is making an account on the geocaching website. You can log in with Facebook or start a separate account. If you want, you can upgrade to Geocaching Premium for a small fee, but it’s not mandatory.
Once you’re logged in, search for nearby geocaches by typing in the address of your school or your zip code. If you have a car, simply drive to a location that looks interesting and start exploring. If you don’t have a car, narrow your search to geocaches within a mile or two of your school so you can walk (lots of college have caches on their campuses). If you want to really explore your area, though, see if you can find a way to get off campus, whether it’s taking a bus, renting a Zipcar or going with a friend who has a car.
Once you’re at the site, use the clues and your GPS or app to find the cache! There might be riddles to answer or clues to decode. If you don’t have a GPS or smartphone, look for the geocaches that are marked as easy to find.
When you find the cache, add your name to the logbook of people who have found it. You can also add your comments to others online from people who have found it before. Leave something behind for the next people who find it to take. We recommend a university sticker or pen so you can show your school pride!
Once you become a pro at finding geocaches, if you want to get even more involved you can set up your own geocaches for others to find. There are some guidelines you need to follow before it becomes officially registered with the geocaching website. We recommend putting them around your favorite spots on campus. Seeing the names of all the other people who have hung out under your favorite tree can give you a sense of campus community!
Why You Should Do It
People of all ages and interests get involved in geocaching. Here are some opportunities it provides that are especially exciting for college students.
You Can Use it to Bond With Your Family
Once you get lost in the college bubble, it’s easy to forget about your family back at home. Geocaching is a great way to reconnect with your parents and siblings when you come home to visit or go on family vacations. You’ll get to be the cool big sister who introduces your younger siblings to something new!
Lindsay Goldstein, a junior at the University of Illinois, looks for geocaches whenever she goes somewhere new. “I once took my little brother (he was nine at the time),” she says. “Watching him get so excited to find the little box and sign his name on the finder’s log made my day!”
It Can Be a Social Outing
If your group of friends is tired of going to the same restaurants or movie theaters, this could be a fun way to spice things up on the weekends. It can also give a group of people, such as a sorority or a student group, a chance to get to know each other.
Geocaching is also a great way to get to know that campus cutie better. It’s “such a cool and weird date with a boy,” says Jessi Walker, a junior at the University of Delaware. With pretty landscapes or hip urban scenes, it can be a romantic date, whether it’s your first date or your 100th.
Maybe geocaching will even become an important part of your relationship! “I know a guy who proposed to his girlfriend through geocaching,” says Elizabeth Varga, a graduate of Syracuse University and an enthusiastic geocacher. “They spent a day looking for geocaches. The last one was all these pictures of them and a letter and a ring.” Even if you don’t end up marrying the guy you go geocaching with, at least you’ll experience a different type of date!
You Can Become Familiar With Your College Town
Chances are you’re attending school in a city or town that you didn’t grow up in. There are several reasons to get to know your surroundings. For one thing, you’ll feel like you’re a part of the local community, which can help make your new location feel like home. Also, lots of collegiettes never go beyond their college campus and the closest bar, but geocaching will introduce you to new addresses and sites.
If you already know your college town very well (for example, you go to school in your hometown), geocaching can allow you to see it from a new perspective. Elizabeth finds that geocaching makes her think about her surroundings differently. There’s a geocache in a shopping plaza she frequently visits and she loves knowing “there’s something hidden in something ordinary. Hundreds of people walk by it and nobody knows it’s there except for people who geocache.”
Tell us about your geocaching adventures in the comments!