Hey all! I wanted to share with you a fun project that I've gotten started. It's a Geocaching Trackables adventure following/featuring the Amazing Race! My dad and I are very avid geocachers and have been playing the game for over three years now! This is something I've been wanting to do for a while and finally got it off the ground.
What is Geocaching?To put it simply, Geocaching is a game played with GPS devices. Players will hide 'caches', usually plastic containers or metal ammo boxes, in various locations around the world and take their GPS location reading. They then publish this on the Geocaching website, and other players go out to find them using their own GPS device and searching skills. Geocaching has been going since the year 2000 and is a worldwide game, with at least one geocache hidden in every single country in the world except three (Somalia, Nauru, North Korea).
Geocaching has actually been featured twice on The Amazing Race already, both in the Canadian version. In season 2's visit to New Brunswick, it was a Detour choice that nobody chose, unfortunately. In season 4's visit to Alberta, it was a Roadblock task that everybody completed.
What is a Trackable?This will become relevant in a moment, but I'll explain it here. A Trackable is an object that can be placed inside of a Geocache and can be picked up and moved from cache to cache by other players. Every trackable has a unique ID number, usually represented by a metal dogtag attached to the object. When you purchase a trackable and set it free into the world, you can assign it a specific mission (such as 'Take me to every US State') or just leave it without a mission and see where it goes on its journey.
GB's Amazing Race project:I purchased five trackables and have attached them to laminated photos of five Amazing Race teams and have released them into the world. Their mission will be to follow that team's Amazing Race journey by traveling to caches from all of the countries visited on that particular season! For example, one of the trackables is Dustin & Kandice, and that one's mission is to go to China, then Mongolia, then Vietnam, etc... To make things more interesting, they are not allowed to visit caches from any other countries along the way; only the countries visited by that Racer's season. Now I am relying on the cooperation and assistance of Geocachers from around the world to help these five teams complete their journey across 8+ countries each, before hopefully returning home to me!
All five of the teams have already reached the U.S. state that was their starting line, and one team has managed to leave the country (Dustin & Kandice are in Taiwan and on their way to mainland China)
Click on these links to see info pages about these Trackables and see their journey so far:
Dustin & KandiceKen & GerardJoey & MeghanAdam & BethanyJet & CordWhy these teams? These are my favourite teams from my top five favourite seasons (3, 10, 16, 22, 25). Sorry if these aren't your particular favourites, but I had to pick somebody. While I would love to sent out one trackable for each team, or one trackable for each of the 50+ seasons of the show, trackables cost $5 each plus shipping, and that eventually adds up. I'll probably do more at a later date if this proves successful!
