The Tiger Den Cache is a cache maintained by Pack 365 in Worthington Ohio.  When we take people to the cache, we give them a wallet card to help explain the activity.  Things to point out:

• The description of the cache is taken from this webpage at geocaching.com.  The webpage contains the coordinates of the cache and notes from people who have visited the cache.
• Waypoint:  GCVBYT  is a serial number that's used to look up Tiger Den Cache on the geocaching.com website.
• The GPS coordinates give you the location of the cache.  To find the cache, you walk around until the coordinates reported by a GPS receiver match the coordinates on the card.
• Cache In, Trash Out  is the geocacher's version of Leave No Trace. The idea is that when you hike down a trail to find a geocache, you bring along a bag to collect trash and litter along the trail.  You take the trash out when you leave.

What's in a geocache?

Geocaches are easy to set up.   Ammunition cans are popular because they're cheap and watertight.  The contents often have a theme.  Apache Cache (below) is one that I often use on pack campouts.  It contains scout patches and whatever debris my kids leave around the house the night before a campout.

Prescription bottles, tupperware boxes, peanut butter jars, and fake rocks are all used as geocaches.

Placing a geocache requires consideration and courtesy.   When you place a geocache and publish its location on geocaching.com, you're telling people that there's something interesting at that location and they should come visit.  Obviously you don't want to put a geocache in your neighbor's flower bed -- at least if you like your neighbor.  It's also important not to place a geocache in ecologically sensitive areas where foot traffic might damage vegetation or cause erosion.  Most parks have policies about geocaching and geocaching.com won't let you register a site unless you've consulted and received permission from park managers (e.g. see Columbus Metro Park guidelines).  Geocachers practice low impact recreation -- we stay on trails and try not to make a mess when we play with our hobby.

Geocaching program considerations:

About four years ago my cousin and his teenaged son were visiting from their home in Minnesota.  As soon as the boy was in the house, he looked up a website on my computer and started taking notes.  A half hour later, he left the house and we didn't see him for the rest of the afternoon.  There were geocaches within a mile of my home and he spent the afternoon tracking them down.  That evening I learned the bare essentials of geocaching.  A week later I purchased a basic GPS receiver ($100 at Target) which I put on a shelf and ignored until the night before our pack's spring campout.  I was a new cubmaster and had prepared way too many activities for the weekend, but you can never have too many things to do, so I looked up the geocaching website and found a geocache just 300 yards from our campsite.  Printed out the cache's webpage, stuffed it and my GPS receiver into my backpack.

Arrived at the campsite around 8:00 Friday evening.  The rain started at approximately 8:05.  The campsite was about 50 yards away from Kiser Lake and the wind was blowing off the lake right into our campsite.  Did I mention that the temperature was about 38 deg? By 10 a.m. the following morning the scouts were no longer amused by the fact that standing close to the campfire would make your soaked clothes steam.  All of the program activities (mostly cub crafts) were literally blowing in the wind.  We toured Ohio Caverns in the afternoon, but were back at the campsite at 3:00 p.m. with two hours to kill before supper.  

I gathered the cubs around, said "Hey guys!  Who would like to go geocaching!?"  Blank stares.  One kid said, "You mean, look for geodes?"  I thought quickly, "Why don't we go on a treasure hunt instead?"  The kids were much more enthusiastic.  We spent the next hour and a half wandering through the woods and eventually found a peanut butter jar wrapped in camo tape hidden in a tree stump.  About 15 kids and parents signed the logbook and spent the walk back to camp reviewing the treasure hunt and the contents of the cache.  Supper was waiting when we returned to camp and after checking the weather report (snow) we decided to end the campout early . . . but the weekend ended on a high note.

In the two or three years since, we've done several geocaching activities with cubs, some successful, some not so successful.  Some observations:

• Cubs have short attention spans.  It's often hard to sustain their interest for a geocaching activity that takes an hour and a half.  On the other hand it's usually easy to route a hike to pass near a geocache, so that the actual search takes 5-10 minutes.  It breaks up the hike and gives the kids something to do while the adults gather stragglers.
• Scout out the cache beforehand whenever possible.   The kids may need a hint or two.
• Bring a compass.   The GPS receiver will give you distance and bearing to the cache (e.g. 300 yards NE), but it's a poor substitute for a compass (i.e. we know te cache is NE, but what direction is NE?).  If you bring a bunch of compasses, then all the kids will have equipment.  

GPS:  Equipment

A GPS receiver uses radio signals from navigation satellites to generate a set of numbers, Latitude and Longitude, which identify the position of the receiver.  Just as it's not necessary to know much about internal combustion to drive a car, it's not necessary to understand satellite navigation to use a GPS receiver, however

• The accuracy of a GPS receiver can be affected by clouds, tree cover, and buildings.  If you're in the woods or near buildings, the GPS position may be erratic or less accurate.
• Bring a compass.  GPS will tell you how far you need to go and what direction, but it's a poor substitute for a compass.  Bring a compass.
• Most geocaches report their position in deg/minDec format, e.g. N 40 deg, 05.564 min.  Some GPS receivers (e.g. Boost Mobile phone) will report position in deg/minSec format, e.g. N 40 deg, 05 min, 34 sec.  You can convert between the formats, but it's a bother.  Make sure your receiver can use the deg/minDec format.

One comment about GPS vs Map and Compass.  These are complementary activities.  A GPS receiver is to a compass as a motorcycle is to a bicycle.   Map and compass is about navigating using skill and minimal equipment.  GPS, particularly when incorporated into cellphones, is about much more than just navigation.

I purchased my GPS receiver (Garmin Etrex) for about $100 4 years ago.  In good conditions it's accurate to about 6-10 feet.  This receiver can be purchased used on Ebay for $40 - $60.  Cell phones are often equipped with GPS capabilities.  The Boost Mobile phone on the left is about $50 on sale at Target.  Its GPS receiver is probably accurate to 40-50 feet.  It's not optimal for geocaching, but is popular for location based games.

Exercise 1:  

Two geocaches have been located in the Camp Oyo parade field.  Go find them using the GPS receivers provided by the course.   The actual caches used are pictured at right (the pill bottle and rock, but not the cat).

Programming considerations:

I've always thought that it would be fun to turn a patrol patch or scout event patch into a travel bug and have a patrol release it and track it online (see Send your den to Alcatraz on the Travelbugs page).  I've also tried having scouts race travel bugs.  The group activities have struggled because the first steps