The Museum at Campbell River will host an afternoon designed to introduce people to the adventurous world of geocaching.
The museum’s ‘Geocaching Day’ on Saturday, April 27 from 1-3 p.m. is open to novices and experts alike. Geocachers hide waterproof containers of various sizes in places accessible to the public, note the latitude and longitude with a GPS (global positioning system) unit, and post the locations online.
Using the posted coordinates, other players attempt to track down the hidden caches. ‘Caches’ are hidden in any spot and vary in scale. The world’s largest geocache is in Coombs. When found, players open it to sign their name in the logbook and find a potential surprise. It is these surprises where ‘Geo-Trackables’ come in. A Trackable is a form of physical geocaching ‘game piece’.
Each Trackable is etched with a unique code that can be used to log its movements on the website Geocaching.com as it travels in the real world.
Some of these items have traveled hundreds of thousands of miles thanks to geocachers who move them from cache to cache.
The museum is also looking for local groups interested in sponsoring their own ‘Geocaching Trackable Item’. These items, as they travel the globe, can be given an online profile that includes a history of your group, photographs, or an assigned ‘special mission’.
With over four million geocachers and over one million geocaches, this is a great way to put your group out into the world for explorers to see. Come to the museum on April 27 to get involved in the intriguing world of geocaching.