Tracy and I sat down to prepare for our outing with my sister-in-law Shelly and her husband James, who were visiting from Kansas City. I must admit, I was a little skeptical about the thought of treasure hunting. James informed me that all we needed was a free membership with the website geocaching.com, and a hand held GPS unit or a GPS enabled smart phone. We then created an account and decided on a profile name. We were now ready to see what this treasure hunt was all about. We soon discovered it was a technology-driven game of hide and seek using global positioning satellites. Members are able to hide caches and log their coordinates for others to find. These hidden caches contain a log sheet for you to sign your profile name. Some cache containers are larger and contain “treasures” that you can trade for other items. Trackables are items that have special tracking codes so that you may track where they have been. Then there is the virtual cache, which is not a hidden object at all. These types of caches are usually historical landmarks or may just be places with an interesting view. To log these types of caches you must answer a question about the locale or post a picture of the specific landmark and post it to the website. Now that we had more of an idea of what we had gotten ourselves into, I was definitely more excited about the geocaching expedition that lay ahead.
We all decided we would like to hike in the area of Watson Lake, as none of us had hiked there before. I pulled up the page on the website where you are able to find hidden caches and was given many search options to choose from. I opted to search by state and scrolled down to Arizona and hit the “go” button. Twenty-three thousand five hundred and ninety-nine ...
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...scovered many types of treasures that day. The day read like a story from the book The Joy of Geocaching that I had started to read the night before. I must agree with the author’s statement that “Geocaching is a healthy and inexpensive way to get the whole family outdoors, energized, and pulling together for a common goal.(Gillen 9)” Judging from the good time our family had it will be something we continue to do in the future.
Works Cited
Madden, James. Personal Interview. 4 February 2012.
Madden, Shelly. Personal Interview. 4 February 2012.
Geocaching - The Official Global GPS Cache Hunt Site. Groundspeak, Inc. Web. 07 Feb. 2012. .
Gillin, Paul, and Dana Gillin. "Family Time." The Joy of Geocaching: How to Find Health, Happiness and Creative Energy through a Worldwide Treasure Hunt. Fresno, CA: Quill Driver, 2010. 9. Print.
In a world where geography only makes the headlines or points of coffee house discussion if a new study is released about how terrible students are at it, however, amazingly there ARE still students and people alike that simply love it and are thriving in their point of interest. Some stare at maps endlessly searching for things that most people would never even care to look at such as what makes this state similar with this state or why is the population more or less here. Some long to find and view the rarest maps available; others embrace the future by participating in an activity known as geocaching. Geocaching is when the participant visits special areas with “treasures” hidden using their GPS devices and smartphones. Some people even draw thousands of their own imaginary maps, highlighting details in worlds and countries they long to visit.
Zig-zag, back and forth, down, down, down, Jonathon, Dad, and I went into a mysterious new world. Now that I have gone into this hot, dry canyon surrounded by monstrous hoodoos, I have seen what it is really like to leave the small town of Seymour, and emerge into the greatness of this world. I have now seen several other National Parks on one of the most renowned places on earth for mysterious creations, the Colorado Plateau. Of all the beautiful places on it, even the Grand Canyon, I have found my favorite one. Bryce Canyon National Park. I thought it was amazing, because it was the most diverse to anything I have ever seen before. We hiked down into it and I felt like I was surrounded by skyscrapers. We trekked around a little, but we didn’t
Weiner, Eric. The Geography of Bliss: One Grump's Search for the Happiest Places in the World.
I would like to dedicate this book to my parents, D Paul and Judy. My love of art and travel, as well as my sense of determination comes directly from them, and I love them deeply for it. I would also like to thank my supportive husband, Jason, without whom I would be lost and adrift. My friend and publisher, Kemberlee, has given me much support and inspiration, as well.
The debate over technology being healthy for our children has been a debate that has gone on for years. It appears as though the tragedy that children are missing out on hands-on nature is definitely something we all must learn to accept. Nicholas D. Kristof hits the nail on the head when he suggest that we try to preserve nature but we don’t promote natural activity such as hiking, biking, camping, and “discovering the hard way what a wasp nest looks like”. Kristof does an effective job getting the point across on experiencing nature and limiting technology. He is a father that is destined for his young daughter to know about the outdoors with personal experimentation. Kristof’s intended audience is geared toward people that want their children and themselves to be involved in nature, but they have been consumed with this technological age.
The Hereford World Map is the world’s oldest surviving map of the world; it was made in 1300, during the beginning of the Renaissance in Europe. There was a wider range of influences on mapping during the later medieval period. With an increase in exploration, Europe began to evolve into an international continent; widespread travel can be seen by the influences of the Islamic world on architecture. While map making in China had flourished in the 11th C, mapping was beginning to evolve in Europe. By around 1400 there was a peak in map making in Europe. There is evidence of the influence of Roman mapping on medieval maps in Europe. The Medieval world maps but together information from Roman sources to make the world maps in the middle ages known as the mappa mundi, meaning cloth of the world. These were cloth maps, and the name mappa mundi was widely used for them. These world maps were understood by historians as an attempt to show where countries were located, quite often they were not just geographical representations but they were also stories of the world. As knowledge of map making increased during the Renaissance, was a move for wider representations of information on maps. The map became a source of information on the animals and history of the different countries. This can be seen in The Hereford World Map, a map that gives a geometrical representation of the locations of the known countries of the world and also acted as an encyclopaedia of information on various types of animals and where in the world they came from.
The American Discovery trail, also known as the ADT, was founded in 1989 by the American Hiking Society. (HikaNation). It is 6,800 miles long, runs through 15 states, and goes coast to coast. There are continuous paths for adventurers of all types. The trail welcomes horseback riders, cross country skiers, cyclists, hikers and of course backpackers. Anyone planning to hike the ADT from beginning to end should set aside around 14-16 months. Some can finish sooner or later depending on their level of fitness. For anyone wanting to hike through beautiful land, see historical landmarks and say they completed one of the 16 Millennium Trails; the American Discovery Trail is the experience for them.
The state of place-names in the future is unknown and rapidly changing. The place-names in online games and virtual reality worlds don’t exist in the real world. We are constantly being told by these games that whatever we see in the online gamer world is a good model of life in the real world, but that statement is wrong. The invention of the GPS is starting to have a huge effect on the history and derivation of place-names, and it is starting to make humans un-reliant on place-names. Nowadays, all one has to do is type in the coordinates and can immediately find his or her destination, which is the cause for the downfall of the importance of place-names.
There are about twenty lots in our neighborhood; all consist of close to three and a half acres. Most of the lots have houses now, all of them are big and well kept; a perfect place to raise an upper-middle class family. Just outside of Richmond, the Boscobel neighborhood gives individuals a constant taste of the southern country air, a place to grow a garden, to sit out on the porch at night and look at the stars.… The neighbors are kind as they greet one another in passing. Families come together for picnics and cook-outs and mothers go on walks together with their dogs while the kids are in school. The kids of the neighborhood love to play by the creek in the back yard. They build forts and huts, find pretend food and crayfish in the creek, and play hide-and-seek in the woods beyond the creek. It is the peaceful, everyday life in the Boscobel neighborhood.
Jarrar, Randa. “A Map of Home.” New York: Other Press LLC, 2008 (Later published by Penguin Books, 2009.) 1-290. Print.
Strayed, Cheryl. Wild: From Lost to Found on the Pacific Crest Trail. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2012. Print.
Knox, P. L., & Marston, S. A. (2012). Human geography: Places and regions in global context (6th ed.). Upper Saddle River, NJ: Prentice Hall.
Growing up in Midwest America, there is not much to look at. The trees, fields of grass, rolling hills, and small towns offer a dull environment for a teenager. There are hardly any monuments, sculptures, or architectural feats to gaze at in admiration. Ultimately, the Midwest appears very mundane. This monotonous landscape seems to push the idea of a typical lifestyle of conformity; one that customarily consists of attending school, finding a career, and settling down with a family. To fully procure an awareness and acceptance of different lifestyles, one must travel. Whether from town to town or on the other side of the planet, traveling allows a person to see the different cultures, beliefs, and beauties that make up our world; I believe in traveling.
Being invited to a friend’s house the other day, I began to get excited about the journey through the woods to their cabin. The cabin, nestled back in the woods overlooking a pond, is something that you would dream about. There is a winding trail that takes you back in the woods were their cabin sits. The cabin sits on top of a mountain raised up above everything, as if it was sitting on the clouds.
Looking back on a childhood filled with events and memories, I find it rather difficult to pick on that leaves me with the fabled “warm and fuzzy feelings.” As the daughter of an Air Force Major, I had the pleasure of traveling across America in many moving trips. I have visited the monstrous trees of the Sequoia National Forest, stood on the edge of the Grande Canyon and have jumped on the beds at Caesar’s Palace in Lake Tahoe. However, I have discovered that when reflecting on my childhood, it is not the trips that come to mind, instead there are details from everyday doings; a deck of cards, a silver bank or an ice cream flavor.