By: Tyler Hillard/Co-Editor-in-Cheif
On October 25th the Blue Ridge Geocaching Club aka the “GeoRaiderz” took their first field trip of the year to Merli-Sarnoski Park in Lackawanna County. The Club is led by middle school teacher Mr. Ben Orner, with help from Mr. Mathew Treible, and former biology teacher at Blue Ridge Mrs. Nancy Burkett.
If you’re not familiar with geocaching it is simply described by some geocachers as “using multi-million dollar satellites to find Tupperware in the woods”. Well yes, but technically, geocaching is an outdoor activity, in which participants use a GPS or mobile device and other navigational techniques to hide and seek containers, called “geocaches” or “caches”, at specific locations marked by coordinates all over the world.
When geocaching once you find the cache, you first will sign the logbook with your name or organization and return it to the cache. Then within the cache, there are usually items that you can trade for. To do so you leave something of equal or greater value in the item you traded for in its place. During the trip, I personally traded in my older trackable for a new one. Trackables are small objects that move from cache to cache that tracks the locations of where they’ve been. When I logged the trackable I found out that the trackable has actually been all around the world! Including places like Okinawa, Japan, Australia, Brazil, Germany, etc. (Full map is below)
During the GeoRaiderz trip, they found a total of 14 geocaches and hiked over 10 miles!
The video and pictures below are just a sliver of what it’s like to be geocacher on the GeoRaiderz! From the physical activity, technical skills, and many other techniques you use, geocaching is one of the best hobbies, and for some people professional activities you can be apart of.
