Geocaching - Brainstorm

This would be a great 2011 SRP program for both teens and adults. For those of you who don't know, geocaching is a treasure hunt using GPS units. The treasure, or cache, could be anything from small trinkets to special locations. How it usually works is, someone hides a cache and then places the coordinates on the geocaching website: www.geocaching.com. The cache often includes a notebook for those who find it to leave their name, the date, and anything else they would like to say. Sometimes the cache has a theme so hunters can take one trinket from the cache and leave another. For example when I went on a hunt with a toy theme, I left a Mickey Mouse Pez Dispenser and took a small toy airplane. There are hundreds of thousands of caches all over the world.
Oh the program possibilities.
1. You could plant your own cache somewhere on the library grounds and take a group of teens around looking for the hidden treasure.
2. You could have a program out of making a cache and hiding it, for example have the teens make something or bring something to put in a box, work together to decide on a location, find the coordinates for that location, then submit the coordinates to geocaching.com.
3. You could send out a "travel bug" with your library's name and email address on it. A "travel bug" is a trinket people leave at a cache. When the "travel bug" is found the finder goes to geocaching.com to register when and where they found it, then they hide it at another cache for someone else to find. If you follow the bug's progress online you can see it travel all over the world. The problem with this is that the bug may travel very slowly and might not make it very far during the duration of the Summer Reading Program.
4. You could give out coordinates at the library and let people with their own GPS units to find the "treasure" on their own. If you do this you could direct them toward historically or otherwise significant areas of your city or direct them to a local business that agreess to give out a prize if the patron tells them they found the location using the coordinates from the library.

I think the geocaching website is worth checking out. It certainly fits the theme and other than getting a hold of a GPS the programs can be practically free.