Found in: “in gear” Official publication of the California Association of 4WD Clubs, Inc. July 2006. Page 26-27. By John Burnham.

            In all my years of camping, hiking, off-roading there have always been destinations to explore, see or go to. Often once you are there a keen eye will find a logbook, cards or notes left by those that preceded you. It could be a remote miner’s cabin in Death Valley, top of a peak, in one of the forest, best campsite around, but people want to say, “I’ve been here.” Who know, maybe it all started with “Kilroy was here”? How about photographs? While hiking in a wilderness park, near Los Angeles we climbed to the top of a great sandstone ridge to take in the view. Sure enough, found hidden away in a crevasse covered with a few stones, was what I thought would be nothing more than a logbook to sing. Opening the old military ammo can we found a note explaining that this was more than I had thought, with a bunch of goodies in side! It was a GEOCACHE – my first find!
            What fund! We signed the log, traded an item and went on our way. That night pulling up the website to our surprise we discovered that there are twelve caches in the park area, not just the one. There are 255,056 active caches in 221 countries. We stumbled on this one by accident but I got out my GPS and we eventually went back to on our electronic treasure hunt to find them all Some are easy to find, some the terrain is more difficult, some take detective work, many have “encrypted hints” (easy as a push of the mouse button on your computer to decrypt). There are many in backcountry that I frequent: Death Valley, Mohave Desert, all the forests, the Rubicon, and even in the city where you live! The range from a microcache of nothing more than a 35mm film canister with just a log inside, to others that are larger with assortment of trading items. There are caches set up for kid’s, CD exchanges, some dedicated to loved ones, but most are for the fun of the hunt and take you to places you may never have known existed.
            You can experience this by driving in your car, walking, easy hikes, hard hikes, off-road, on-road. It’s all in what you want to seek and find.
            The caches are rated for “terrain” (off-road would be rated as hard as you need a special vehicle) and “difficulty,” which refers to how the cache is hidden. So pull up the website www.geocaching.com and sign yourself up. This best part is: It’s FREE.
            To find the general location of a cache at the main web page, click on “HIDE AND SEEK A CACHE” on the left-hand side of the page.
Put in your zip code id you want to see what’s in the area. I’m a map kind of a guy so I scroll down to “view locale state pages (US only),” bring up California and right by “Geocaching in California” is a link to MAP. This brings up several states showing the incredible number of caches that are out there. You can zoom in, zoom out, pan and identify to the area you want.
            Now occasionally, if I am out with a group. I’ll be seen sometimes wondering away aimlessly, but I’ll have my GPS in hand, headed to a cache that the others have no idea is even there. In a planned trip up to the Kennedy Meadows area we are going to hit a few caches along the way to the trailhead, including one called “Hotel Cache.” Near as I can tell I have driven by it numerous times and was never even aware that there was a hotel and a brothel out there at one time. We will be hiding a couple of caches out somewhere in the Monache Meadows area, where you four-wheelers can come to explore and experience the area. And have a nice little hunt for a cache while you are out there and exchange a goody or two.