Geocaches

edb suggested that the website http://www.geocashing.com might be a source of blind targets for map dowsing, so I checked it out. If you are not familiar with geocaching, I recommend going to geocaching.com to learn more. I won't use up space here to explain it.

A membership is required to access the lists of geocaches on the geocaching.com website. A free membership is available, so I signed up for one. Once my membership was activated I was able to access the HIDE & SEEK A CACHE page and display a list of geocaches with only basic information about the type of geocache, the popular name of the geocache, and, in parentheses, a unique coded geocache identifier. The locations of the geocaches are not displayed on the index list. If you click on the name of the geocache, a new page displays the geocache location's latitude and longitude coordinates and other information.

I think this might work out as a source of blind targets for map dowsing, since the geocache name and identifier can be accessed without seeing the location information. I plan to try it for a while, anyway. My basic procedure will be to select a geocache from the index list, formulate a task statement, dowse the location on the map, and then access the geocache's information page for instant feedback.

If I can work out a functional tasking statement and have some successes, I may begin trying to get my feedback by physically going to the location and finding the cache through dowsing before accessing the information page. That should make the feedback even more interesting. At that point I may even try to RV the site first, using the unique coded geocache identifier as a TRN. I'm actually starting to get a little jazzed up about the whole idea.

edb, thanks for pointing me in this direction.