It’s less Hollywood blockbuster and more Hamilton County treasure hunt, but the adventure still has shades of “Raiders of the Lost Ark.”
At Big Soddy Creek Gulf, a group of would-be Indiana Joneses ducks under a dew-draped spider web, taking care not to rattle an orb weaver the size of a nickel. They scan the trees, the rocks and the underbrush for their prize – not a golden idol but a peanut butter jar hidden somewhere nearby. The summer air hums with insects, and just to keep things interesting, a copperhead has claimed a front-row seat a few feet from the path.
This is the real-world adventure known as geocaching, and today three Chattanooga-area treasure hunters are on a quest.
Unseen by the hikers and joggers passing by, a hidden world lies silently along the trail. Tucked into tree limbs, nestled in crevices or magnetized beneath metal bridges, geocaches are everywhere – if you know where to look.
Today’s cache is a modest one: a weather-worn jar wrapped in camouflage tape and stuffed with a logbook, trinkets and the musty smell of earth and plastic. But it’s not about the prize – it’s about the find.
Meet the adventurers
Maggie Kirkpatrick and Richard Manning are veterans of the geocaching world. She’s a former accountant; he’s a retired electrical engineer. Married and living in Falling Water near Soddy-Daisy, they stumbled onto geocaching decades ago while researching compass navigation for whitewater rescue work.
“I was looking up how to navigate with a compass when I came across something called ‘geocaching,’” Maggie recalls. “It was right at the start of it all. I thought, ‘It has gadgets; it’s nerdy – my husband will love it.’”
“She was dead right,” Richard says. “We bought our first GPS and have been wearing them out ever since. The one I have now technically still works, but you can’t read the screen and the buttons are shot, so these days, we mostly use our phones.”
The couple geocaches on every vacation, with finds in all 48 contiguous states and on several trips to England. Even travel for other reasons turns into a caching opportunity – during a recent training week in Canada, Richard wrapped up class at five and spent his evenings hunting caches.
The couple have brought along their friend Nathan Lewis – aka “Super_Nate” in the geocaching community – a 36-year-old Cleveland firefighter who found his first cache as a teenager in 2004. Today, he has more than 15,000 finds across 49 states – a feat that’s only deepened his enthusiasm for the hunt.
“I was 15 and couldn’t even drive yet,” Nathan remembers. “Someone gave a presentation about geocaching at my church. I’d always loved scavenger hunts, so it clicked instantly. That same day, I found my first two caches. I thought, ‘This is the greatest thing ever.’ I was hooked.”
A different kind of treasure hunt
Geocaching is essentially a global scavenger hunt. Someone hides a container – called a cache – notes its GPS coordinates and then posts them online. Other geocachers, using GPS devices or apps, set out to find it. Inside might be a logbook, trinkets or a “trackable” – a tagged item that travels from cache to cache, often with a mission, like “Visit all 50 states.”
Caches range from “micros” no bigger than a fingertip to ammo cans and even entire buildings. There’s a shed in Murfreesboro that’s a cache. And a house in Kentucky. One in Indiana is a ball of paint that started as a baseball and now weighs hundreds of pounds.
“The biggest cache I’ve found was a large ammo case,” Richard says. “Those are especially good because they’re watertight. You can pretty much guarantee the contents will stay dry.”
Some caches are elaborate puzzles. One of Nathan’s favorites is in Martinsburg, West Virginia.
“It looks like a birdhouse, painted to match the library behind it – but there’s no hole, no door and no instructions. I had to rely on visual clues to open it. The solution was to hook jumper cables from a car battery to two bolts on the sides. When I made the connection, the cache slowly rose up through the chimney. It was incredible.”
Cache culture
The geocaching community is tight-knit and diverse. There are doctors, pilots, IT specialists, fast-food workers, retired couples and even television meteorologists among them.
“All walks of life,” Nathan says. “We have a pediatrician on Signal Mountain, a commercial airline pilot, animal rescue folks, a painter and more.”
Some geocachers are in it for the numbers or the travel. Still others, like Maggie, love the unexpected discovery. One of her favorites was a remote buffalo jump site in Alberta, Canada that’s home to several “earth caches” – geological features that serve as caches.
“I like history and weird places,” she says. “I found it incredibly interesting.”
Locally, the Chattanooga Area Geocachers group meets regularly through “event caches” – social gatherings that count as finds. Some are casual parking lot meetups; others are fully organized with games, giveaways and workshops. The group is active on Facebook, where members post about newly placed caches, share gear tips and ask for help solving difficult puzzles.
Everyone is welcome, whether they’re new or have logged thousands of finds.
GeoWoodstock, the world’s largest annual geocaching event, draws thousands of participants from around the globe. When a college student organized last year’s gathering in West Virginia, it underscored what Nathan calls the social heart of geocaching – “the storytelling, the camaraderie and the shared passion for exploration.”
Tools of the trade
Early cachers used handheld GPS units like the Garmin eTrex, plotting coordinates manually. These devices are still popular with traditionalists and those who frequent areas with poor cell coverage.
However, smartphones now dominate. Apps like Geocaching, Cachly (iOS) and c:geo (Android) use real-time satellite positioning and detailed maps to guide seekers to their targets. Each cache also comes with hints, descriptions and ratings for both difficulty and terrain.
“Difficulty refers to how well the cache is hidden, and terrain measures how hard it is to reach,” Nathan explains. “A one is easy. A five might require scuba gear or even a helicopter. There are caches hidden in shipwrecks – it can get pretty extreme.”
Other essential gear includes pens – since signing the log is required to claim a find – along with spare logs, waterproof bags and tweezers for retrieving tiny micro-caches. Many geocachers also carry flashlights or UV lights for night caches, magnets and mirrors to reveal tricky hides, and practical supplies like first aid kits, bug spray and poison ivy wipes.
Maggie carries a compact tool kit with spare logs, tweezers and a magnifying glass. Richard favors a GPS device and extra water. Nathan has a dedicated geocaching backpack.
Because most newcomers start with simple finds a few blocks from home, they need only a pen to sign the log. Before long, they’re climbing hillsides, crawling under bridges, or puzzling over birdhouses that double as secret compartments – discovering that geocaching turns the everyday world into something extraordinary.
A brief history of geocaching
Geocaching got its start May 2, 2000, when the U.S. government disabled a feature known as “selective availability,” dramatically improving the accuracy of civilian GPS devices overnight. The next day, a GPS enthusiast named Dave Ulmer took advantage of the change by hiding a black bucket in the woods near Beavercreek, Oregon, and posting its coordinates online. He dubbed the experiment the “Great American GPS Stash Hunt.”
Others had found the bucket within days, and the idea spread quickly through internet forums. By later that year, the hobby had a name – “geocaching” – a blend of “geo,” meaning Earth, and “cache,” meaning a hidden item.
As the 2000s progressed, the pastime evolved from an underground curiosity into a global phenomenon. Websites like geocaching.com sprang up to support the growing community, and a wave of events, custom gadgets and creative caches followed.
Today, more than 3 million active caches are hidden around the world – including 1,037 in Hamilton County alone, according to Nathan – with millions of players participating in nearly every country.
The hunt at Big Soddy
Back at Big Soddy Creek Gulf, the trio closes in. Their phones and GPS devices show slightly different distances – a quirk of satellite reception in wooded terrain. They round a gate, hop a ditch and duck through spiderwebs.
Finally, Nathan spots it: wedged in a tree fork below eye level, duct tape peeling at the edges.
Inside, the logbook is damp but still usable. Each of them signs their geocaching name – Super_Nate, RMEngineer and MagKirk. There’s a trinket or two inside, but the real reward is the satisfaction of the find. They return the cache to its hiding spot and log the visit in the app, noting the wet contents.
“Maybe the owner will come out and refresh it,” Nathan says.
Bigger than the box
For Nathan, caching has become a family affair. His 2-year-old is starting to join the fun, while his 4-year-old proudly carries a “swag bag” filled with toys to trade at caches.
“If you take something, you leave something of equal or greater value,” he explains.
Nathan is deep into a sub-hobby called “county caching” – finding at least one cache in every county in a state.
“Tennessee is done. So is Georgia. A couple years ago we finished Texas, which has 254 counties. That was a big one.”
For Richard, geocaching has opened doors he never expected. On one of his work trips to London, he attended a local geocaching meet-and-greet and struck up a conversation with a retired Nottingham police officer. Two years later, they reconnected, and the man took Richard on a daylong geocaching tour through the heart of Robin Hood country.
Together, they visited Sherwood Forest, explored ancient abbeys and found caches hidden in places steeped in legend.
“We visited the abbey where Friar Tuck had actually lived,” Richard says. “For me, geocaching isn’t just about the caches – it’s about the people I meet and the places I see along the way.”
Final coordinates
Geocaching is more than a hobby. It’s part sport, part science, part community and part exploration. And like any good adventure, it meets people where they are – with toddlers in tow, or with decades of maps and memories under their belt.
While it’s a game people can play anywhere, for Maggie, Richard and Nathan, it’s a way of life. Nathan’s single-day record now dwarfs his first few finds: a staggering 415 caches in a single day, set back in 2012.
As they step back onto the Big Soddy trail, another group of hikers passes by, unaware of the world hidden just beyond the path.
The cache is back in place. The spider is still clinging to its web. And the hunt, as always, continues.