TA News

By Ezekiel Colburn

The Environmental Studies and Outdoor Education Course went on a field trip to multiple geocache spots near Thetford Academy. A geocache is a hidden container marked by a GPS point. The person who hides the geocache can also provide a clue as to where the geocache is located. Our teacher, Scott Ellis had students download a geocaching  GPS app on their phones. It turns out that smartphones are also good GPS units. The first geocache was near the covered bridge on Tucker Hill Rd. When we got off the bus we rushed off to find it. It took us a few minutes but we eventually found the hidden geocache around the middle of the bridge. What we found was a small capsule with a roll of paper inside with the names of all the people who previously found it. 

The next geocache we went to was along the path next to the bridge. We had been walking for about five minutes when we finally got to where the GPS said the box was hidden. This geocache took us nearly twenty minutes to find. When one of my fellow classmates finally shouted that he had found it, I felt so relieved. 

We went to a few more geocaches and found them all pretty quickly except for the last one that had no clue to where it was, just a GPS location. After all the searching and hiking I was exhausted. I would like to thank Scott Ellis for giving us the chance to do this fun outdoor activity. I had fun and now I know how to use a GPS to navigate in the woods and find a location.