Geocaching
Geocaching is a phenomenon which in Swedish is usually described as a "treasure hunt with GPS".
A brief introduction to geocaching
Geocaching is a fun way to see new nice or interesting places, even in areas where you live and where you think you know every stone there are probably places that you dident know exist.
Basically, geocaching is a hobby where a person hides a container with a logbook and pencil as the main content. Coordinates, description and additional information are published on a website on the internet to be shared with the world. When released, all interested people can get the information from the website and go to experience the same place that someone whanted to share by publishing the cache information. Many families have found that this hobby is a great way to get the kids activated and out in the nature to searching for hidden tressures.
I got hooked on this new hobby when I had an assignment at a company where several of my colleagues were Geocachers. I had just bought a car GPS and took the opportunity to test this newly discovered hobby and got stuck right away.
After a few month I had found over 300 boxes and placed a few for myself, and by now it have grown to many many more :-).
When a new cache is released the FTF-race (“First To Find”) have begun, it’s a special honor to be the first one to sign the blank logbook in a new cache. If a cache is released 23:01 on a rainy Friday night here in Trollhattan you will probably meet several geocachers at the coordinate’s within 10-30 minutes, so if you are first why not wait for a while and meet some geocaching friends.
Why not visit http://www.geocaching.com , get a free account and give it a try.
// T@J (my and my wife's geocaching alias)
More information it you are intresested
Geocaches are usually placed at some interesting places to offer visitors an experience or some type of challenge. It can also be the trip itself that is the interesting part rather than the cache itself, like if you have to solve puzzles or decipher a secret code.
There are so many caches in Sweden right now (and they we are getting more all the time) that you usually have at least one near where you are at the moment.
For me the favorite plan is to go geocaching whole days where I start too early in the morning, preferably before the sun rises, which in summer means before 4 am. This way you can experience wonderful early summer mornings, with the incredible light, birdsong, animals and lovely clean air. The day continues with an intense caching with a short break for lunch at some of the nice places that caches often offer and at the end, I always comes home at least one hour later than planned.
In the darker season it may instead be precisely the lack of light that is the thing, embark on small roads and paths in complete darkness and by using the headlamp and flashlight getting around in the dark woods can bring the most sluggish imagination to life. You can for example take the possibility to look for caches that is located in densely populated areas like under a bench in a public square.
I hope I will meet several of you on geocaching activities here in Sweden or even better meet you during the hunt.