In May 2000, 55 year old Dave Ulmer hid a bucket filled with CDs , a can of beans and logbook outside of Portland OR and posted the coordinates to a usenet news group. Two days later the cache was discovered and a new sport was born. There are now more than 3,000 caches hid in all 50 states and in 59 other countries. http://www.geocaching.com is the game's official atlas. Gaarmin estimates that 30,000 to 50,000 people are "in the game". In June, 20th Century Fox upped the stakes by stashing props from Planet of the Apes in 14 locations aaround th world and posting the coordinates on geocaching.com. You can log on to projectape.com or geocaching.com and enter your zip code to see if there's a cache of treasure near you.

Oooh, sleuthing is on and I want my beans and logbook. It might be nice to replace the bean can you find with a new one when you bury your cache. Just a thought. A Can of Spam HAS to be in the Hawaiian cache! Thanks, Terry. This is most curious. I am off to see where my closest beans are waiting.

Bummer. All of ours in Hawaii are somewhere on Maui. That means I might plant one of my own on this Island. Who do I know here who has a GPS... hmmm...

You're absolutely right about replacing the cache, that's a fundamental groundrule of this game.

you know, i heard about that one. one family hides treasures for their kids and then takesn them out with the GPS to locate it.

Unless he finds us far too boring, I think I have found a man for caching. He lives on Oahu and I just told him about this. Aloha Woody. Want to consider this island instead of yours? So many more options on this island... E Komo Mai *;)

Think of the options. On Mauna Loa or Kilauea we could bury baked beans. On Mauna Kea we could bury frozen beans. In Puna there are herbs we could include (though I know nothing of this.) Decisions... Decisions... Now I AM going to have to get a GPS. I already have the laptop to do the mapping. *Wheels whizzing inside my head* I think I am going to go hide somewhere!

testing.

Working! I wish I could go on one of these hunts. This is really exciting -or sounds like it would be!

Hi Marci Well, I moved over to here from gps since this is more applicable - not sure what I would hide - I wish I had some meteorite bits to hide but those are so rare, I dont even have any myself - guess I'll have to find something astronomical yet more earthly to hide.... 73 de Mike

Make cure the beans are fresh. Despite the fun of their after-effects, you probobaly don't want to add food poisoning to the list. Too bad beer does not last longer buried. The ramifications of bad beer and worse beens has all of the ingredients for a Mel Brooks movie! Do take photos and let us know how it goes. I love the whole concept.

Wine would age better. I think it would be more fun (or mischevious) to hide something in a public place like in downtown Chicago - then you have all these people wandering about - staring at their gps which would definately freak out the locals or 'normals' as the case may be.... Mike r-c-i

OH DEAR!!! I am laughing thinking of the uptight officialdom watching people with little walkie talkies and hand held gps pausing around trash bins and mail chutes. There is so little room for sense of humor anymore, alas. This might end with you spending a bit of time at the public's expense in one of the better slammers in your area. Still, that is brilliant and worthy of a Monty Python sketch!

Hi Marci Oh, yea... I completely forgot about the uptights... Yep, in this rather humorlous day and age, that type of activity would be frowned upon. Oh well guess Ill just pick somewhere less edgy. I did get an idea from this topics original post - I could hide cd's and have the take a cd-leave a cd rule - the cd's that appear can be used for radio material at the station. 73 de AA9IL Mike r-c-i

CDs are a fantastic idea. Non-perishable and easily transported and it can even be on of stuff you photographed yourself. Think of the possibilities!!!