LIFESTYLE

Oh the places you'll go geocaching

St. Joe County hunt begins. Here's how to join the fun.

JOSEPH DITS
South Bend Tribune

A group of folks studies their smartphones for clues about the hunt — difficulty, terrain and size — plus historic tidbits about the Oliver Mansion in South Bend where they are standing.

They tramp through soft grass, following the vector on their screens like a compass. Elizabeth Hertel’s phone says the geocache is 284 feet away, but Leslie Koczan’s GPS unit says it’s just 200 feet. Hmm. Within five minutes they arrive at the spot, where the geocaching.com app can only hint that the cache is located in “a potentially high muggle area.” Translation: There could be a lot of non-geocachers around. So they lift their eyes to scan about for the hiding spot.

The 2.5 million or more geocaches around the globe often sit under a rock or another object, depending on how small they are. It might be stuck under a park bench. Or in a bush on a mountain with a drop-dead gorgeous view of the ocean. Some caches are as small as a thimble, magnetized to the side of a guardrail.

Sharon Forte sees the black plastic box and thrusts it up in her hand like she’s just scored a touchdown. Now it’s time for the hunters to pluck one of the items inside — plastic bead necklace, stickers, pins — and then replace it with a trinket they’ve been carrying, or SWAG.

“There’s nothing like opening a box of treasures for a child and saying, ‘I found this,’” Hertel says.

It’s Friday, Earth Day, and just three hours after a geocache hunt has launched across St. Joseph County to mark Indiana’s bicentennial and the 50th anniversary of the St. Joseph County Parks. I am following organizers as they demonstrate geocaching, which has been around since 2000.

The county’s hunt goes on throughout this summer, designed with beginners in mind. Real prizes await those who find all 15 caches in the series. More valuable is where the hunt will take you.

Ever eaten at Yesterday’s, a Granger restaurant in a circa 1836 house? Did you know that it once served as Harris Township’s first post office, established in 1875 with a postmistress?

Ever stop by the Joshua Tree Earth & Space Museum in Lakeville? Like me, you likely sped past it on the old U.S. 31 to get somewhere else. We just didn’t realize that it is full of dinosaur bones, a petrified piece of dung, lightning-melted sand and other earthy gems that its owner has collected.

How about Spicer Lake Nature Preserve in New Carlisle? On Sunday, I found spring wildflowers on the Woodland Trail (lots of wild ginger) and, from the boardwalk, at least a dozen common water snakes (they’re harmless) as they swam and sunned themselves in the wetland.

If you check out geocaching at Spicer Lake Nature Preserve in New Carlisle, you'll be treated to a wetland and woods with lots of spring wildflowers and harmless water snakes.Tribune Photo/JOSEPH DITS

“That’s what geocaching does for you,” says Koczan, an experienced geocacher who helped to set up the local caches. “It takes you to places you wouldn’t otherwise go.”

In Italy, Koczan and her husband pursued a cache and found statues in a corner of the famous St. Mark’s Square in Venice, but it was the online description that told them the statue’s folkloric tale of a witch casting a spell. In Hawaii, a geocache led them past a religious memorial site, then a hike to a cliff with an “astounding view of the ocean.”

The Mishawaka couple dove into geocaching in 2005 “because our youngest daughter went to college … and we knew we needed something to do with our lives.” The retired technical writer says they don’t geocache locally too much. They plan long-distance travels, then use geocaching to find sights less visited. So far, she notes, they’ve found “only” about 300 caches.

Hertel, 33, started geocaching one year ago after seeing a post on Facebook.

“For the first few, I didn’t find anything because I didn’t have someone coming along to show me,” says Hertel, of South Bend. She quickly learned, and now she’s recorded about 70 finds. She, too, consulted on the local caches, partly in her role as chair of a bicentennial committee for the Historic Preservation Commission of South Bend and St. Joseph County.

Whether or not you find the cache, Koczan says, the best part is “the experience of where you end up.”

Ins and outs of the hunt

What gear do I need? You can get started with a smartphone and a free app. The app and a free account, which you must have, can both be found via geocaching.com. Koczan prefers using a separate GPS unit, saying the readings on her Android phone can be too jumpy. That may differ from one phone to the next. Lots of geocachers do just fine relying on their phones.

Some geocachers prefer using a separate GPS unit, though it’s not necessary. A smartphone is sufficient. Tribune Photo/ROBERT FRANKLIN

Do the app and the website show the same info? You’ll find more search options at the website.

I’ve got more questions. Check out our intro video at southbendtribune.com/outdooradventures. And learn more at geocaching.com/guide.

How do I start the St. Joe County hunt? Pick up a sheet called a “cacheport” that lists all 15 caches. Find the sheet at each cache’s online description, at sjcparks.org/leisure.html and at The History Museum and the gate at the four county parks. Each cache has a GC code that you can use to search for it at geocaching.com.

How many caches are wheelchair accessible? Only five in the county series are fully accessible. Some may need a grab stick. They are marked as such in the cache descriptions via the app and geocaching.com. All 15 caches are on or close to the ground.

What prizes? Once you’ve found all 15 caches and recorded the cacheword for each one on your cacheport sheet, bring it to The History Museum, 808 W. Washington St., South Bend, to pick a prize out of a box. So far, it includes county park discounts, a coffee-table book that lists and describes historic sites in the county, along with T-shirts and pins. More items will be added as they’re donated.

The St. Joe County hunt will place two “travel bugs” in its caches in May. What are these? They look like dog tags. Organizers hope they travel to all 15 caches, but that’s up to you, the finder. You will be asked to log its code number at geocaching.com, where it’s also known as a “trackable.” That’s how we track its travels. “Some have traveled hundreds of thousands of miles around the world,” Koczan says, emphasizing: “You do not keep the travel bug.”

What if I want to hide a cache? It must be a tenth of a mile from any other geocache. If it’s in the Indiana State Parks, you’ll need a free permit. Inquire at the park or in.gov/dnr/7488.htm.

Outdoor Adventures author Joseph Dits is at www.southbendtribune.com/outdooradventures, 574-235-6158, @SBToutdoors, jdits@sbtinfo.com and www.facebook.com/sbtoutdooradventures.

Other finds

Cobus hike: Cobus Creek County Park, 30680 County Road 8, Elkhart, will host a free, naturalist-led hike at 10 a.m. Saturday. Register by noon Friday at 574-535-6458.

Garden train returns: Fernwood Botanical Garden and Nature Preserve, 13988 Range Line Road, Niles, will celebrate the rebuilding of the outdoor tracks for its model train from noon to 6 p.m. Sunday. The railway garden was significantly damaged in a fire in the autumn. You will be able to see rebuilt replicas of Notre Dame’s Golden Dome and Buchanan’s Pears Mill and watch crews continue their work.

Battlefield: Watch cavalry and infantry in a re-enactment between the Franco-Polish and the Russo-Prussian armies, including a cannon, and wander 18th-century camps from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. Saturday and 9 a.m. to 3 p.m. Sunday at Potawatomi Wildlife Park, 16998 Indiana 331, Tippecanoe. Details at GetIntoNature.com.

Mother’s Day paddle: Take Mom on the St. Joe River on May 8. Cost is $25 per canoe (holds up to three people or 450 pounds), which includes equipment and the four-mile trip from St. Patrick’s County Park in South Bend, plus milk and cookies. Register by May 5 at 574-654-3155.

If you check out geocaching at Spicer Lake Nature Preserve in New Carlisle, be sure to follow the long boardwalk through a wetland where ferns and new spring life are emerging. Tribune Photo/JOSEPH DITS
A peek inside a geocache box shows the SWAG (Stuff We All Get) that can be found in a series of 15 geocaches hidden across St. Joseph County.Tribune Photo/ROBERT FRANKLIN
St. Joseph County Commissioner Deb Fleming, left, studies her smartphone while volunteer Leslie Koczan, middle, and Sharon Forte check a GPS unit for a geocache’s location near South Bend’s Oliver Mansion, one of 15 caches in the countywide hunt. See how it’s done in a video at southbendtribune.com/outdooradventures. Tribune Photo/ROBERT FRANKLIN