| |
Home and Family > Crafts Hobbies > The New Geocache Craze
0
Reviews [ add review ],
Article rating : 0.00, 0 votes. Author : Sally Taylor
I see there is a new adventure sport emerging. It is called Geocaching.
Geocaching is a real world game that consists of people hiding caches, then others go to find it. Hide and seek for adults basically. There are some sites that offer prizes for finding caches. One asks that you trade a found cache for another one. It is becoming quite a trend.
Now forgive me for being niave - but if you are going to burn gas and energy looking for
treasure - why wouldn't it be REAL treasures that you search out? There is so much
actual bonified treasure out there to be found - old coins, pioneer artifacts, Indian
artifacts, actual lost mines and long buried treasures from yesteryear, and this is not to
even mention gem minerals. The attraction of hunting for planted "caches" just escapes
me somehow.
There are ghost towns all over, and in those ghost towns are many lost items just waiting
for the fortunate hunter to dig up and bring back to the world. Of course, this is just whole
towns. Anyone hiking in areas previously trod by early gold rush era prospectors or
pioneers is bound to stumble across lost homesteads at some time or other.
Where ever parties of pioneers, wagon trains, or stagecoaches came through, there rests
the possibility of real treasures. Pioneers were known to often bury treasures when they
were being pursued by those who might steal it, or when the load became too
encumbersome to be able to travel with it. I'm sure these people meant to recover these
treasures at a later date, but for reasons ranging from untimely death to just lost
directions, many of these caches remain buried and waiting for recovery to this day.
What about lost mines? No one yet has found the Lost Dutchman mine, now you want a
real thrill, be the first to dig that one up. That is only one mine lost in the archives of
history waiting to be retrieved.
The Lost Cement Gold Mine still remains lost near the
head of the middle fork of the San Joaquin river and the Lost Soldier Mine somewhere in
Arizona near the Gila River bend has thus far managed to alude hunters. This is only a
couple of mentions out of scores, possibly hundreds, of lost mines just waiting for
rediscovery.
Pirates and Bandits were well known to bury treasures as well. No report has been made
of the Lake George or South Mountain treasures in Colorado having been found yet.
Florida itself is not much more than a grand treasure cache, with hundreds of caches
having been dug up that were left by pirates, explorers, and people fleeing battles, and
who knows how many left to discover - and that is on land. For the adventuresome scuba
diver, the gulf is an explorers paradise, hiding wrecks of ships toren on reefs, lost in
storms, or sunk in battles.
The South Western portion of the US abounds with treasure stories of lost Indian
treasures, caches stolen by invading Spaniards and buried to be lost later, and stagecoach
and train robberies that resulted in burial of treasures. While some of these stories can be
chocked up to legend, historical evidence exists to support many.
So maybe the fact with the Geocache game is the competition and involvement with
others. Real treasure hunting does not necessarily negate these factors. Many a treasure
hunt that I have seen revolves around shared research and information, as well as teams
of hunters who report back to each other about progresses and failures. Some are
undertaken with the spirit of sharing a cache, while others involve shared information but
the actual discovery is pretty muchly a finders-keepers, winner-take-all proposition.
So simply speaking - while Geocaching sounds like an entertaining way to spend a
weekend - for me "ain't nothing like the real thing, baby."
©2005 Sally Taylor: Sal is an avid gem and treasure hunter, explorer, writer, and is the owner of http://www.rockhoundstation1.com
Article reviews
Post your review
[ Note : no HTML/URLs - will removed automatically ]
More articles from Home and Family > Crafts Hobbies
|
