Eaton said once a geocacher in the Capital Region built a replica of the Tin Man from The Wizard of Oz out of an old furnace and hid a cache inside of it. Some geocachers take pride in creating such clever hiding places. One year, he and Barbara put created an innovative cache that involved a small boat on a pulley system. When putting out caches in the historic site, Brooks likes mixing the environment and history of Schoharie Crossing, which focuses on the history of the Erie Canal. He decided to try it with his son after being inspired by a volunteer at his historic site named Barbara, who used the hobby to spend more time with her son. As more geocaches came to his site, he became more interested in the hobby. David Brooks is the education manager at the Schoharie Crossing State Historic Site and serves as the park’s liaison for this year’s Saratoga-Capital District Regional Geocache Challenge. Adventurers who find at least 45 caches (at least 35 in a specific region, and up to 10 in either of the other two regions) will receive a geocache challenge geocoin representing the primary region.Įaton and his companion, Sadie, out on the trail.īut most geocachers start with smaller beginnings. Volunteers and New York State Park workers have concealed more than 230 geocaches with items like stickers, toy cars, and figurines in 56 State Parks and Historic Sites in Central New York, the Saratoga-Capital Region, and the Hudson Valley. Strangers had been snooping around the area to try to find it and I hadn’t even noticed them! Luckily, the 2021 New York State Geocache Challenge is here this summer, so I will have plenty of time to hone my skills. After examining the map on the official geocaching app, it turned out there was a cache hidden close to my home. She stopped her car, watched me, and didn’t continue driving until I left that section of sidewalk.Īfter this inauspicious start, I was in awe of more experienced hobbyists, known as geocachers or cachers. While I was doing this, a woman in an SUV noticed me and I could tell I was acting a bit too suspicious for her taste. On my first go at it, I found myself lifting low-lying tree limbs and creeping around bushes in search of tiny containers along a busy section of the Empire State Trail, the new 750-mile multi-use trail that connects New York City to the Canadian border, and Albany to Buffalo. For example, the website above indicates there are more than 2,800 caches hidden around the Albany region. Cache-seekers then use those coordinates with their own GPS devices to locate the caches, and can take some trinkets and leave some of their own for subsequent seekers to find.Īnd there are a lot of little hidden treasures out there. This outdoor activity relies on the use of Global Positioning System (GPS) technology, where participants place caches of trinkets, also known as “hides,” in various places, and record locations with GPS coordinates to the website. This is not new information, but I didn’t realize how sloppy I was at sneaking around until I tried geocaching-a worldwide game of locating some of millions of little hidden stashes.
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