Get Out! could get lost on a dead end street. My sense of direction is, on good days, woeful. Recently, my wife received a GPS unit as a gift and I immediately stole it from her. She owns maps, atlases and could likely travel to work by following the stars if need be. GPS seemed like a wonderful thing at the outset.

After a couple of weeks getting used to it, I made a trip to Providence, R.I. Providence has been my nemesis for a lifetime. I always drive there knowing I’ll be spending a good portion of my time simply lost. GPS didn’t exactly fix that problem. It seems they just recently added a new exit in Providence, an exit that neither my GPS unit nor I were made aware of. GPS told me to take an exit that didn’t exist. I took the next exit and GPS told me to turn around and try again. This went on for a while until I realized the only way I was going to get to my destination was to get myself so far lost that I’d be directed to go a different way.

Thus, I was a bit dubious when Jenn Merlan sent in a picture of her friends and family doing something called geocaching, which, is in her words, is “a high-tech hide-and-seek treasure hunt” using a GPS device.

Geocaching began nine years ago and is a great excuse to be outdoors wandering around (like golf but cheaper, and I’m guessing less frustrating). Participants log on to a Web site (geocaching.com), get the coordinates of a cache and set off to discover it. “Geocaching is fun,” Merlan says. “It’s great to be outside, and it gives a fun purpose to a normal walk. The kids love to see what is inside the caches (stamps, stickers, small toys, a log, etc).  Once we found a small plastic bear with a dog tag-type ID. It turned out to be a Travel Bug, which is a trackable item. Once you track the item, you can see a travel log of the bear’s adventures. In this case, we could see that this little bear had been all over the world, including a safari trip to the Serengeti. We then placed the bear at our next geocache and when we checked it again, we saw that it had been picked up and was headed to Montreal.” GPS coordinates bring you to within 10 feet of what you are seeking and then you are on your own to locate it.

There are caches throughout Pembroke in spots like Tubbs Meadow, the Herring Run and on several trails. There’s also a boatload of them in nearby towns. All you do is log on to the Web site, enter your zip code, and they provide you with the coordinates that you enter into your GPS, and you’re off. If you don’t have a GPS unit yet, you are out of luck. However, the price of these units has dropped significantly in recent years. Since I’m no expert on this, here are some experts’ opinions on what makes it so great. Merlan’s six-year-old Ella has this to say: “I like geocaching because I am outdoors. They are fun to find and I like to find them. That’s why I like them.”

Not to be outdone, five-year-old Luke adds this: “Geocaching is fun to find and it can be under rocks, on top of rocks, sometimes you can see them, sometimes you don’t. Then also, you can find them outdoors, near lakes, woods and even lighthouses, all over.”

I will now spend the rest of my summer trying to decide how to actually pronounce “geocaching.”

Odds and Ends: Jim Plunkett will be performing tonight (Aug. 21) at Pembroke Country Club as part of a fundraiser for Pembroke Youth Football and Cheerleading. Plunkett, who has seemingly been playing around Massachusetts for an eternity, is always a crowd pleaser and is a true pro. The Marshfield Fair opens this weekend and will open daily through Aug. 30.

My daughter Madeline turns one today. She assured me that if I didn’t bestow birthday wishes on her in this week’s column, she’d revert back to the sleeping pattern she had the first seven months of her life. To which I practically scream, “Happy Birthday!!!!”

Matt York can be reached at This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it .