Speaking of News column by

Shelly Sulser

Executive Editor

The need to get outdoors while staying socially distant has led many people of varying ages to either discover or rediscover slower, more wide open spaces and paces and yours truly is not immune.

Last year, I took up back-yard container gardening as sort of a “Victory Garden” - you know - just to make sure we had something to eat as we were forced to navigate unknown territory at the onset of the pandemic.

Then, I took up birdwatching and photography which continues to provide rewarding pursuits, along with short bicycle rides, and, already this spring, I have added a return to dabbling in disc golf.

And, right now, the other half of our original, 2003, two-woman Geocaching team, MI Wandering Wild Women, and I have come out of retirement to get back in the game.

We’re so glad the scavenger-hunt type “sport” - launched originally in Oregon in 2000 as “geostashing” - is still going strong and that all of our Geocaching.com archives dating back 18 years - are still there for us to relive through the photos and memories.

By now, most of you have likely heard of Geocaching which originally used GPS units such as the Magellan SportTrak Pro or Garmin GPSMap 64sx to harness satellite signals to pinpoint coordinates, give or take 300 yards, where a little container of goodies might be hidden.

Since the beginning “cache” hides have been so creative that part of the thrill is learning that you’ve been standing on it, or leaning on it, or, even looking at it for 15 minutes before you realized you’d found it!

“Click!” is what Dianne and I say if one or the other finds it first. It’s an inside reference to our friend, Amy, who, when she would find the cache, would clip her GPS unit back onto her backpack. When we heard the “click”, we knew she’d had success.

The slogan for Geocaching has always been “Hiking with a Purpose” and that’s just what it is. 

It’s taken us to places around the country we would otherwise never have seen.

I first heard about Geocaching from a Hastings woman I met on my police and courts news gathering rounds when I still worked for the Hastings Banner hard news weekly, owned by Shopper News parent company, J-Ad Graphics, Inc.

I remember how intriguing it sounded and couldn’t wait to try it.

It’s not just going outside for a walk on a trail or in a park or even just driving around aimlessly and looking at scenery.

It’s doing all of that, plus, following coordinates to places, landmarks, natural wonders, unique structures, historical markers, land formations, and even more, on those trips outside the house that you wouldn’t otherwise have seen nor experienced.

Like, one of the most memorable caches I found in the beginning really fueled my interest - when I found a cache hidden in a log just laying beside a hiking trail. Clever!

Another was a small cache hidden inside what looked like just a typical electrical box on the side of a viewing platform.

Yet another was under one of those aluminum square bases for a parking lot lamp post and yet another was under those plastic sleeves for the concrete barriers at the gas pumps!

It was so much fun to take on the hunt, make the find, see what’s inside, sign the logbook and make a trade between the swag we had along and the swag inside the container.

We once found a container that was as small as the smallest pill fob on the market. It was black, attached to a magnet, and affixed to a black sculpture in downtown Jackson.

The biggest was a two-feet tall ammo can placed in May of 2001 as part of the Project A.P.E. series.

Back then, 20th Century Fox, was preparing to release its summer blockbuster, “Planet of the Apes.” They wanted a publicity stunt, and saw that computer geeks everywhere seemed to be flocking to this new hobby, Geocaching. 

“To try and capitalize on this potential market, Fox Studios formulated a “sub-plot” that had absolutely nothing to do with the movie,” wrote a player on Geocaching.com. “Renegade humans were trying to reveal an ‘Alternative Primate Evolution’ theory by placing artifacts around the world. Code Name: Project A.P.E.”

In other words, Fox Studios was placing movie artifacts in Geocaches. First ones there get the best trinkets.

After spending the day at a Geocaching event “cache” in which players not only attend a party that involves games that Memorial Weekend in 2005, we and another team made the most spontaneous road trip of our lives.

We all hopped in a car and drove from Kalamazoo to rural Joliet, Ill. and hiked into the woods at dusk to find Mission 12: Blind Canal on the A.P.E. cache series, next to the Des Plaines River. It was our 300th find.

Today, we’re only at 567 finds after a big drop off in activity after 2012 but we’ve never totally lost interest. And, now, you don’t even need a GPS unit. You can simply use the app on your smart phone and its GPS location services.

Just like in any other sport or endeavor, there is competition and there are more intense side games providing all levels of involvement, from the casual, vacation Geocacher to the more extreme milestone seeking, whatever level you enjoy.

In fact, one Battle Creek woman, known as “pairomedicchick”, has logged 21,762 finds and 128 hides along with many milestones for types of caches, geographical totals, etc.

In fact, Kathy Seedorff is a long time member of the Michigan Geocaching Organization and is the former president.

Some of the most fun side games I’ve played involve “travel bugs” which, once registered on the Geocaching.com website with a tracking number, get moved from cache to cache with various “missions” and goals that can be followed by anyone with an account.

We once had a travel bug end up in Sweden!

Others have vanished and that brings a whole new mystery to the game - one that’s usually never solved.

Geocains, badges, patches and other swag add fun goals to the sport.

Now, 18 years later, my grandson who went on many a cache hunt with us as a baby and then as a toddler, is just now revisiting the sport again with his parents and siblings and I’m so proud to know, his lifelong occasional outdoors activity will do the same for him again since gathering with his friends has mostly kept him indoors playing video games.

I hope he and his sister enjoy it again as much as we do again!

Next up in my outdoor activity adventures to be revisited - fly fishing! Stay tuned!