I had a very busy weekend last weekend. I was all over central Texas photographing assignments, so when I got the chance to shoot at a state park, I was glad for the change of pace.
Buescher State Park in Smithville hosted a Goecaching 101 class, and the Statesman was working on a story about how state parks are targeting a more tech-savvy generation.
“Geocaching is an outdoor recreational activity in which the participants use a Global Positioning System (GPS) receiver or mobile device and other navigational techniques to hide and seek containers, called ‘geocaches’ or ‘caches’, anywhere in the world.” – Wikipedia
That’s the best way to describe it. Basically, people go out and hide small items – anything from stickers to money to art – in containers, usually the size of an ammo can, and record the GPS coordinates for other people to find at a later date. When a cache is found, the finder takes whatever is in the container and replaces it with other items, and so on.
I was assigned to cover a geocaching class for children and families. They started by learning how to use a GPS device, and found a practice cache entitled “Tree.”
After another practice cache called “Sand,” short for sandwich bag, they were on their way to a hiking trail where a real cache was stashed.
They found the cache fairly easily, and raided the ammo can. Then they replaced the items they took with new items and put it back where they found it for the next group to discover.
It was a nice little getaway assignment for me. I would’ve stayed longer to enjoy the outdoors on a nice day, but duty called and I high-tailed it to Starbucks to edit and transmit my work.
Click here to read the Statesman’s story by Brad Barer.
Click here to view a 2 min. instructional video, and find out more about geocaching.
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