BY TED HAMILTON | GROUP 2

On March 6 2009, Ted Hamilton, Justin Amburger and Adam Harris accompanied a geocaching enthusiast, Dave Herpy, on a trip around Kent State University to try their handat the hobby.

Our group left the recreation center at at 8 a.m. on Friday morning. The forecast the night before had called for rain, but luckily the rain held off for the trip. Braving the wind, we turned on Dave’s GPS and waited for the satellites to link up with the device.

"You need to have at least three satellites,” he said.

Then we were off – following the unit toward some unseen destination. Dave let me use the GPS to lead the group toward our first cache. When we got within 30 feet, Adam and I started looking around for a good spot to hide a cache. We found the spot – a small tree. I slipped in between some branches and, after some nosing around, found a small 35mm canister used to store film.

I popped the lid and pulled out the log, a thin sheet of paper that had the names of people who had found the cache and the dates they had found it. Also inside was a small eraser in the shape of a snowflake, the kind of eraser that is better for looks than providing any actual utility.

Spotting an empty bottle of wine on the ground, Dave reached down and picked it up.

“We practice a philosophy in geocaching called, ‘Cache In Trash Out,” he said. “If you spot trash when you find a cache, you should try to clean it up.”

After finding the closest garbage can, the group begins to make its way toward the next cache. The next target, Dave said, has heavy foot traffic. Non-geocachers – or Muggles, named after the people of non-wizard blood in the Harry Potter book series – are not necessarily supposed to know where a cache is. Dave mentioned the cache he helped set up was vandalized and that is the reason we needed to be stealthy.

Attatched to the log books in some caches is a message to Muggles about what the cache is and to please put it back where you found it if you stumble across it. Not to come off as cross, the message usually tells them how they can play the game as well.

We found the next cache in a small grove of trees near the middle of campus, roughly a quarter of a mile from our first find. There were a lot of Muggles around and I’m sure four people messing around a tree with a GPS, a notebook, and two cameras had to look pretty suspicious.

After we signed the log, we were off to the next cache. We ended up beside the library. Justin solved the hint, but we only found part of the cache - it had fallen off what had secured it.

“I’ll have to send the person who placed it a message,” Dave said, nodding. “That’s how I found out about someone vandalizing (the Rec’s) cache. Someone sent me a message saying a wild animal must have gotten into it.”

Pressing on, we started heading to our last cache. This one was not on campus, but in some woods and a bit harder to find. The group spread out and searched in about an 80 square foot area, looking for the cache. I was convinced we weren’t going to find it, but just as I was giving up hope I heard Dave say he found it.

The rest of us walked over to him and there it was, nestled between two roots and covered in a thin layer of dead leaves: A medicine bottle taped with black masking tape to help keep the weather from affecting it. After we had logged the cache, Dave told us another part of geocaching philosophy was causing minimal impact on the environment. Although the cache was in the woods, he explained, it was just off the trail. Geocachers do not want to disturb the environment around them.

After our last cache we headed back to the Rec and went our separate ways, having just experienced our first geocaching trip, we were Muggles no longer.