Geocaching is delightful because of the people who play it — adventure-seekers, makers, parents, astronauts and (sometimes) celebrities. Read their stories.
Geocachers hoping to log a smiley for Salar de Uyuni (GC2M6GC) encounter one of the world’s largest salt lakes. Werwolfi created the difficulty 3, terrain 4 EarthCache at the beginning of 2011.
The cache page reads, “Driving across it [Salar de Uyuni] is one of the weirdest and most fantastic experiences anywhere on the continent, especially during June and July, when the bright blue skies contrast with the blinding white salt crust and in the rainy season they turn into a gigantic mirror.”
To log the cache, adventurers must explore the geological site and answer two questions on the cache page. The answers must then be emailed to the cache owner. A photo must also be taken at specific coordinates.
Travel to the salt lake region will take geocachers to an altitude of 3650m (11,970ft). As one geocacher noted, not all equipment can endure the harsh environment, “We had a great day on the Salar de Uyuni and the Islands, but the engine of one of our Land Cruisers gave up.” So far, at least six geocachers have made the voyage and logged the EarthCache.
Geocachers logging 'Salar de Uyuni"
Continue your exploration of some of the most engaging geocaches from around the globe. Explore all the Geocaches of the Week on the Latitude 47 blog or view the Bookmark List on Geocaching.com. If you’ d like to nominate a Geocache of the Week, send an email with your name, comments, the name of the geocache and the GC code to pr@groundspeak.com.
A cable car delivers geocachers to one of the most visited geocaches in Africa. Table Top Trove (GCMYYZ) was hidden in 2005 by Richter Family. Geocachers with more time and a thirst for mountain climbing adventure have made the 500 meter (1640 foot) ascent by foot.
The cache owner recently posted this note on the cache page, “Out and about on the mountain with my dog. Wow! Fantastic memories! I placed this cache over 6 years ago and it has been ticking over on it’s own ever since with no maintenance visits required. Cache doing well. The memories of spending every weekend up here climbing in a by-gone era came flooding back with a smile.”
The cache location shares those smiles. The difficulty two, terrain two geocache has been logged by more than 500 geocachers. The geocachers have arrived from more than a dozen countries. They share their thanks for the geocache in their logs. One writes, “A wonderful winter’s day up on table mountain. No wind, no rain, and no clouds! I had a fantastic time exploring. Many thanks from Sweden!”
View from the Table Top Trove cable car
Continue your exploration of some of the most engaging geocaches from around the globe. Explore all the Geocaches of the Week on the Latitude 47 blog or view the Bookmark List on Geocaching.com. If you’ d like to nominate a Geocache of the Week, send an email with your name, comments, the name of the geocache and the GC code to pr@groundspeak.com.
Louie Bliss and Foxfire working the Geocaching Booth
Teachers say geocaching can be a powerful learning tool that involves critical thinking, hands-on learning and active engagement.
Over the past few years, geocaching has become more commonly used in the world of education. Now Geocaching.com offers more help to teachers who incorporate geocaching in the classroom. Geocaching.com just released a Geocaching and Education page to provide educators with a range of useful resources. Geocaching.com employees, known as Lackeys, are also attending education conventions to spread the word about geocaching in the classroom.
Teachers have traditionally created their own material to incorporate geocaching into geography, math, science, history, English, and physical education curricula. The passion to use the activity in school has become so great that we over at Groundspeak are now actively partnering with teachers to better support geocaching and education.
Just this past week, Lackeys smelly_kelly, Foxfire, Louie Bliss, Katie-b, and bethany_b attended the National Science Teachers Association (NSTA) Convention in Seattle, Washington. The conference featured more than 50 booths and hosted more than 3,000 attendees. The Geocaching.com booth proved to be a great success as geocachers and non-cachers alike stopped by to learn about the activity and how it can be used as a teaching tool.
Geocaching and Education
Those working the booth were pleased with the number of teachers already using geocaching in their classrooms. It was equally encouraging to see how many teachers plan on incorporating geocaching into future lessons.
According to Lackey Louie Bliss, “people were really impressed that we have a brand new section dedicated to Geocaching and Education. Most people had heard of geocaching and done it themselves, but many had never thought to teach it to students. They walked away really excited to try it.”
Lackey’s found that both students and teachers are using geocaching to teach a variety of subjects. “We had a number of science teachers discuss how they plan to co-teach with social studies or geography teachers,” said Louie Bliss.
smelly_kelly and Louie Bliss with a 10-foot astronaut
Check out the education forums if you are interested in posting questions, ideas, sharing curriculum, and more. The forums are a fabulous way for teachers to learn from one another and for Groundspeak to learn from teachers.
Resources available on the Geocaching and Education page include educational screencasts, geocaching videos, a link to the Intro to Geocaching PowerPoint Presentation, and a link to the education forums.
The iconic village of Pella, Iowa in the United States boasts a quaint downtown, a working wind mill and the geocache with the most Favorite Points in the entire state. ’49 and Holding the Cache – A Gold Miner’s Delight’ (GC202RG) has more than 100 Favorite Points. jstrout & cjandbj created and placed the cache in 2009. The special instructions on the difficulty 2.5, terrain 1 geocache page are written as a poem:
A GOLD MINER’S DELIGHT
NO NEED FOR A SHOVEL
NO NEED FOR A MULE
NO NEED FOR ANY SPECIAL TOOL
A NICE ALL WEATHER PARK AND GRAB
The creative cache draws adventure seekers from around the region. Geocachers often choose ’49 and Hold the Cache’ to celebrate milestone finds. Cachers log about the challenge of the hide and the unique cache container.
Celebrating milestones at the geocache
A geocacher who logged this cache writes, “To say this is the best geocache I’ve ever seen would be an understatement. This is mind-bogglingly fantastic! The creativity, work, money, craftsmanship, and awesomeness that has been put into this cache is just plain amazing… I’ve seen and made a few pretty darn cool caches, but this one takes the cake.”
Check out this Geocaching.com Presents video to see inside the cache. The video was shot with cache owner permission. You can see the “49 and Holding Cache” at 1:00 into the video.
Continue your exploration of some of the most engaging geocaches from around the globe. Explore all the Geocaches of the Week on the Latitude 47 blog or view the Bookmark List on Geocaching.com. If you’ d like to nominate a Geocache of the Week, send an email with your name, comments, the name of the geocache and the GC code to pr@groundspeak.com.
The nominees for the December featured “Geocacher of the Month” hail from three different countries. But they collectively represent the best of the geocaching community: being helpful, innovative, and creative. Now it’s your turn to help select one of them as December’s “Geocacher of the Month.”
Rokman4
Write a comment on this blog post about which of these three geocachers you feel should be the “Geocacher of the Month.” Those whose nominees were not recognized here are encouraged to submit their nominations again next month.
Last month, Rokman4 was chosen as the November Featured Geocacher of the Month. Rokman4 is well known for helping to create the first ever geocaching training ground and for going out of his way to help geocachers in need. Congratulations again to Rokman4 and all those nominated in November.
Nominated by Cashub, “AbbeyAckbar have gathered people for such events as: WWFM VIII – Dublin, Ireland and a mega huge International Geocaching Day (IGD)01: CITO Burrow Beach, Dublin, Ireland and later that day another event: IGD01: Dublin, Ireland and recently 11.11.11 – It’s all about the numbers They are great planners, everything is always under control with them. It’s AbbeyAckbar who organizes the best events in Dublin, who are always willing to help any newbies, and who make things happen in Ireland. Their caches have the most amazing containers, and are very tricky, making another cache find an unbelievably fun experience!”
Nominated by geocite and PTBL, “He is always happy to lend a helping hand when you have a hard cache that you haven’t found. ElectroQTed takes his time to walk around the room to meet fellow cachers old and new and have a talk. He has been to a lot of events where he does speeches on geocaching. He is also at all of the CITOs that we have in the Waterloo Region of Canada and has helped plant many trees. Ted has helped organize numerous of the events that have occurred in southern Ontario. Ted has been caching well before a lot of people probably even knew what geocaching was. He has been caching since June 15, 2003 and has over 7400 finds. Ted is one of the first geocachers in the Waterloo Region and this past summer was in our local paper talking about the sport of geocaching. ElectroQTed is a good roll model for the geocaching community.”
Nominated by LoudmouthLee, “Jeremy is responsible for the vast majority of caches in the Queens borough of New York City. As well, he has taken time out of his busy schedule to help a lowly geo-newbie like me to get involved in the caching community, giving me great advice when I need it, and offering to help always. I know for sure that I’m not the only newbie who Jeremy has helped. I just know his kindness is peerless and he is a fantastic representation to what geocaching is all about.”
Comment below to tell us who you think should be the featured December “Geocacher of the Month.” A panel of Lackeys will use your comments to help decide which geocacher is awarded the honor. Each featured “Geocacher of the Month” will receive an exclusive special edition featured ”Geocacher of the Month” Geocoin along with a Geocacher of the Month hat and a certificate acknowledging their contributions signed by two of the founders of Geocaching.com. We will be accepting comments for December’s award through Monday the 26th.
If you know an outstanding geocacher who should be the Featured Geocacher of the Month, send an email to geocacherofthemonth@groundspeak.com.
Every nomination must meet the following requirements:
Please include your name, the name of your nominee, their username, at least one picture of the nominee and a description (500 or fewer words) explaining why he or she deserves to be the Geocacher of the Month. Please inform your nominee that you’ve submitted them for the award. Nominations for the January Geocacher of the Month must be received by January 3rd.
Once we have received all of the nominations, we will choose the top candidates and post them on the blog. You will then get a chance to champion your favorite. Our goal is to involve the entire geocaching community in this process so we might learn from each other.
