Hide and seek goes high tech

LANSDALE, Pa. — You walk and drive by them every day and don't even know it, unless you're looking for them.

They are hidden in plain view along sidewalks, in the park, on a fence, in the woods, under lampposts, in the hollow of a tree.

Some are the size of the first digit of a pinky finger, while others are as large as a 55-gallon drum.

There's an estimated 1.2 million of them around the world, and at least 100 or so in the Lansdale area.

Think of it as a technological treasure hunt, a hide-and-seek for the inquisitive digital set.

It's called geocaching, and it's been around for 10 years.

Using a GPS — either the pricey high-quality units or an Android or iPhone App — geocachers follow coordinates to a specific cache, and then have fun trying to find it.

Most caches — ranging in size from micro, to small, regular and large — have a logbook inside them. You open the cache, sign your name, date it and log your find at www.geocaching.com or another geocaching website.

Other geocachers then log in, search for geocaches around them and the search is on.

While locations offer one cache, there are multi-stage caches. Think of it as a scavenger hunt: finding one cache offers clues leading to the location of the next cache and so on. The same idea centers around puzzle caches, however with those, you must solve a puzzle in order to get the coordinates.

Then there are geocaches with certain themes. For instance, "Ducky's Kid Cache" is a geocache on the other side of County Line Road in New Britain that's about the size of a recycling container packed with wrapped children's toys. The idea is replace the toys you take out with other wrapped toys.

On the Geocaching.com site, each cache is rated with a star for locating difficulty, one star being easy.

And if you want to place a cache, its location must be approved by volunteers that review the rules and regulations of the sport. Caches cannot be placed on private property and they must be within a tenth of a mile from one another.

"I love it," said Towamencin resident John Ingram, 26. "I've been doing it since the beginning of July and since that time I've found 143 of them, mainly in this area. I've hidden two of them myself in Lansdale."