Some people may have heard of a fad called geocaching, however the international swell of cachers is just too large to call a trend a fad, any more than you’d call hiking or biking a fad. Companies are making products for it, there are multiple associations, and it is becoming a new “sport”, at least as much as hiking could be called a sport.

For those not yet “in the know”, geocaching is a new technology related activity where users go online to one of the websites like http://www.geocaching.com or http://www.navicache.com and they lookup various waypoints (points of interest) either around their area or around some place they’re going to visit. They then enter or download these into a handheld GPS unit (GPS’s use global positioning satellites to tell you exactly where you are, anywhere in the world), and then off the trekkers go. They drive or walk until they are in the area, and then follow the GPS, hiking or biking their way along. The GPS unit will get from with a foot or two, to about 30 feet away from the “cache”.

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