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Group Plays High-Tech Game of Hide-and-Seek: Members Try to Find a Treasure

Posted on: Monday, 13 March 2006, 12:00 CST

By Jane Schmucker, The Blade, Toledo, Ohio

Mar. 13--John Miller devotes about three full days a month to searching for hidden treasure.

The "treasure" he's seen - and he's made more than 1,500 finds, many of them in small plastic containers hidden in parks - has been rather mundane. Happy Meal toys are common.

It's the search that has Mr. Miller, 28, a manufacturing engineer who lives between Elmore and Genoa, so hooked that he often spends $300 a weekend on fuel, food, and a hotel room for pursuits far from home.

He's one of hundreds of northwest Ohioans and thousands of people around the world who use hand-held global positioning devices to hunt for treasures hidden by other members of a loosely knit group. They refer to themselves as geocachers, which is pronounced "geo-cashers."

People hide a treasure and then post a single clue on geocaching Internet sites. The clues are often a riddle or a cultural reference and reveal the global positioning coordinates of the place where they left a treasure.

Once they find the treasure, some finders leave a card with their e-mail address or an Internet site address for a geocaching club. Others leave a small toy. If they do so, geocaching's code of conduct allows them to take a similar toy - their prize for successfully completing a search.

Geocaching is a glorified scavenger hunt for people who own global positioning devices, a high-tech piece of hardware about the size of a television remote control that sells for $65 to $600, depending on its features.

"It plays to that little kid mentality of 'Oh my God, I'm going to find the treasure!' " said Jason Slagle, 26, a computer engineer from South Toledo.

But it's led to some complex questions for officials at parks, preserves, and other similar public areas. Tonight, leaders of the Metroparks of the Toledo Area are to meet with the Northwest Ohio Geocachers to discuss developing a policy for geocaching in the metroparks' nearly 9,000 acres.

A draft of the parks' proposal was distributed yesterday at an introduction to geocaching at Oak Openings Preserve near Swanton, where enthusiasts have hidden and sought "treasure" boxes for several years.

The parks' draft has 10 rules for geocaching, beginning with the requirement of a permit for anyone wanting to leave a cache or treasure box in the park. It also says caches shouldn't be hidden more than 30 feet off of trails.

That's a concern, Metroparks naturalist Tammy Snowberger said, because Oak Openings in particular has endangered plants that could be trampled by geocaching enthusiasts.

The Metroparks' draft would prohibit geocachers from leaving treasure in metal containers or "anything that might cause public alarm."

Elsewhere in the country, bomb squads have been called to investigate treasure boxes hidden in public places by geocachers, Mr. Slagle said. Some preserves and forests prohibit geocaching completely.

Many geocachers, not surprisingly, see such rules as a limitation on a popular activity for all ages that is bringing more people to public parks.

Mike Buchele, a geocaching enthusiast from Grand Rapids and a Bowling Green parks employee, said he considers such prohibitions especially inane in forests that allow hunting: Killing a bird is OK, but looking for a small box is not?

But most geocachers are nature-lovers who took up the game largely because they enjoy exploring the outdoors.

"One of the universal things about it is it takes you to places you never knew existed," said Bob Solon of West Toledo.

Contact Jane Schmucker at: jschmucker@theblade.com or 419-337-7780.

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Copyright (c) 2006, The Blade, Toledo, Ohio

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Source: The Blade

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