Marine Corps Air Station New River, N.C. -- Sometimes it seems that you’ve exhausted the list of activities available to you in and around Jacksonville, N.C. You’ve already hit up all the bars, checked out all the restaurants and explored all the aquariums. It would seem that Jacksonville has nothing left to offer you.
Unless, that is, you’re interested in going on a modern-day treasure hunt.
Nowadays, it’s called geocaching, and thousands of people are actively participating in it. It’s not just in the United States – geocaching is going on all over the world.
So, what is geocaching anyway?
Geocaching is an activity in which participants use coordinates and a GPS to locate “treasures,” or caches. The caches can be anything from ammo cans to time capsules, and they can be hidden anywhere from a hole in a tree to a clump of brush in the middle of a pond.
Typically, within the caches are small notebooks and an assortment of random gadgets. Once you locate the cache, you sign the notebook. You can also take one of the gadgets, but if you do, make sure you leave something of equal or greater value in the cache.
Some special caches, known as Travel Bugs, require the geocacher to locate the cache, look inside it for new coordinates, and move the cache to a new location.
“Me and my wife were looking for something fun to do together, and we both kind of knew about geocaching, and we just went for it one day,” said Cpl. Christopher A. Torres, a cannoneer with Company L, 3rd Battalion, 10th Marine Regiment, 2nd Marine Division. “The feeling of figuring it out and finding caches and avoiding muggles (non-geocachers) is a rush.”
Getting into geocaching is simple. Just go to http://www.geocaching.com and sign up. It’s free, and it only takes a few minutes. Once you’ve created a user account, you can type in a zip code and all the coordinates for caches located near you will pop up.
There are also applications available for download for both the iPhone and Android that can be used to download coordinates and serve as a GPS.
Once you’ve got your coordinates and a GPS, it’s time to start hunting.
“Download the app, really explore to find caches, don’t give up, question everything and just get out and do it,” Torres said. “It’s all over the world, many cool people do it and it’s fun.”