Join International Geocaching Day to Enjoy a Modern Day Treasure Hunt
Ever heard of geocaching? This family-fun activity is enjoyed all over the world, all you need is GPS. Join Geocaching Ukraine on 15 August and get hunting!
What is Geocaching?
Geocaching is a travel game using GPS, where players need to find an object hidden by other participants. It can be played as a family, group or alone. The basic idea is that some players prepare a hideout, use GPS to determine its geographical coordinates and report them on the Internet. Other players use these coordinates and their GPS receivers to search for the hidden storage. It’s like a modern day treasure hunt.
In some versions of the game,you’re encouraged to hide your objects in places that are of natural, historical, cultural, geographical interest to make the creation and search a learning experience at the same time. Multi-steps or difficult tasks are also encouraged.
At first glance, it seems that finding a hiding place with a GPS receiver is easy. However, GPS receivers aren’t always very accurate. They may only indicate a position with a difference of a few meters to several tens of meters. It only allows you to outline a small area of the storage location but you can use the storage description tips to find the container more accurately.
Geocaching began in 2000 on 2 May. The day after GPS became available for civilian receivers Dave Ulmer of Portland, Oregon, offered friends a new game called Stash. The essence of this new game was that one person created a hiding place, published its coordinates on the Internet, and others tried to find this place using these coordinates. The next day, Dave went into the woods and set up his first hiding place near his hometown.
Geocaching in Ukraine appeared in 2011. The Ukrainian game started as an independent project Seeker-Geocaching in Ukraine, shukach.com. Now Shukach is the largest Ukrainian site in this area. The largest international game platform is geocaching.com. More than 2 million caches have been published on the site, several hundreds of them in Ukraine.
International Geocaching Day is held every third Saturday in August this year it falls on the 15th. So get hunting!
