Brothers explore Barstow through geocaching

BARSTOW • Kevin Depue and Brian Depue have spent much of their lives in the desert looking for precious stones, but now they’re using technology to find new treasures - geocaches.

The brothers grew up in a family that operates Diamond Pacific Tool Corporation, a company that manufactures and sells rock working tools, and often went on trips exploring the Barstow area. Although, the brothers both still work for the family they have a new hobby: geocaching, a type of scavenger hunt that requires you to use a Global Positioning System receiver to find hidden treasures called caches.

“You go out and find the cache first,” Kevin said. “Then you’re supposed to sign the log book, take something that someone else left behind and leave something of yours.”

Jen Sonstelie, director of marketing for Groundspeak, the company that runs Geocaching.com, said that geocaching started in 2000 when the United States government began allowing GPS satellites to give civilian receivers more accurate readings. Dave Ulmer hid a black bucket in the woods near Beaver Creek, Ore., and posted the GPS coordinates online, effectively creating the first geocache in May of 2000. Within two days people began visiting and using Ulmer’s geocache.

Kevin said he bought his first GPS receiver to take with him when he went hunting this summer and started geocaching to practice using the receiver. Kevin took Brian on one of his trips and the pair started a new Friday family tradition.

The brothers said they visit 10 to 15 geocaches each Friday and that they have yet to drive more than about 10 miles outside of town to reach a cache. Kevin’s GPS receiver has a list of more than 800 caches sites within a 30 mile range of Barstow. There are even two caches at Centennial Park, at the intersection of Barstow Road and Virginia Way. Brian said they have found everything from a country music compact disc to a action figure from the movie “Cars” in caches.

Kevin said the brothers often find items called travel bugs, small dog tags with serial numbers that can be attached to items to track them at Geocaching.com, in caches. The brothers now have their own cache hidden near Harper Dry Lake bed.

Brian said that a GPS receiver isn’t necessary to participate in geocaching if you have a newer phone such as an iPhone or Blackberry. He said companies offer applications for those phones that can be purchased to get coordinate information and use the phone’s GPS navigation.

Brian said although GPS receivers can get you within feet of a cache sometimes the terrain makes things difficult.

“You can be following a road on a ridge and be 10 feet from a cache and then realize that the person who hid it was on a road at the bottom of the ridge,” Brian said. “One time Kevin was driving and I was reading the GPS receiver and was like 200 feet, 100 feet, 50 feet, 20 feet, 10 feet. I thought we hit it. We got out and the cache box was right in front of the tire.”

Contact the writer:
(760) 256-4126 or dheldreth@desertdispatch.com

Tips for Geocaching
1. Purchase GPS receiver or download geocaching application for iPhone, Blackberry or other smartphone.
2. Visit Geocaching.com for listings of caches and GPS coordinates.
3. Make sure you check if getting to cache requires four-wheel drive or extensive walking.
4. Bring water, food, emergency supplies and items to swap at caches.
5. Create and hide your own cache box and list it at Geocaching.com