Written by Amanda Marie Hourt
Harding students are trying their hand at a new sport called Geocaching, a global sport similar to a treasure hunt that is played using latitude and longitude coordinates with a Global Positioning System.
“Geocaching is an activity you can do to see the world, explore new places and get to know the community you’re in,” Daniel Denman, a Harding University student, said.
Denman added that Geocaching can be educational, teaching students to use the GPS to navigate around different locations to find the “treasure.”The coordinates are found on theGeocaching Web site, along with reviews and hints about all the caches in the world.
Denman said that since coming to Harding, he has averaged one Geocaching trip a month and has helped eight people get into the sport.
“Harding is huge, and there are around six caches on campus,” Denman said, “Even several put out by a security member called HUBadge3.”
The best “piece of swag,” an item inside a cache, that Denman said he ever found was aGeocoin withKokopelli on it, that was put out by “Flute Face,” a friend of Denman’s.Denman’s signature item is a key ring with a piece of bicycle chain attached to it.
A good cache is generally an object that just blends in with its surroundings and draws little attention to itself, Denman said. adding that if something looks out of the ordinary, then it is likely to be a cache, but not a very good one.
The most interesting cache that Denman has found in Arkansas was at the Krispy Kreme doughnut shop in Little Rock. The cache was called “I dream of Krispy Kreme” and was made from an old ammunition box that had been painted to look like one of the doughnut boxes.
“It was not a huge cache, but it was one that made me feel good,” he said.
It should take around 5 to 10 minutes to find a cache, Denman said.
“If you’ve been looking for a particular cache for 15 minutes and have not found it, then you should give up and try again another day,” he said.
