Beautiful scenery, historic landmarks, and hidden secrets await Centre County residents and visitors who embark on the Happy Valley PA GeoTour. Orchestrated by The Happy Valley Adventure Bureau, the GeoTour is an interactive experience that aims to get participants outside and exploring the sights and sounds the area has to offer.
For the uninitiated, geocaching is a treasure-hunting activity that utilizes GPS to allow people to find hidden caches that have been placed at various coordinates by other geocachers. In the 25 years since the first geocache in Beavercreek, Oregon, was shared on the internet, millions of people have participated in geocaching. Today, there are an estimated 3 million active geocaches to find around the world, and one even made its way onto the International Space Station in 2008.
Josiah Jones, the HVAB’s chief operating officer, joined the organization with some geocaching experience under his belt from his previous role as executive director of Visit Clearfield County.
“We had a great geocaching team of volunteers that were willing to build and create five different GeoTours in Clearfield County, and they were very willing to teach me the basics of managing a GeoTour,” says Jones. “After I joined the HVAB team, I quickly learned that we had our own GeoTrail for Centre County and became actively involved in making sure that the GeoTrail continued and was well advertised. The HVAB met with the volunteer geocaching team, and we decided to rename and rebrand the GeoTrail. We created new passports, a new look, and we also added some marketing dollars to help promote the GeoTour locally and outside of Centre County.”
The creation of the GeoTour — building off the trail passed on by Centre Region Parks & Recreation — was a team effort with help from volunteers like Rose Atkinson, a geocaching enthusiast who first tried the activity with her grandson.
“Our daughter and grandson moved in with us while her husband was deployed,” says Atkinson. “Jax was just over a year old and he loved to go hiking with me. I was afraid he would get bored. I’d heard of geocaching from some friends at church, so I asked them for more information and got signed up. That’s when Jax and I began treasure hunting.”
Soon after Atkinson and her grandson discovered geocaching, she quickly learned more about the activity and became particularly fascinated by completing geocache challenges.
“Challenges are things like cache 100 days in a row, find at least one cache in each of the counties in PA, find a cache where the title starts with each letter of the alphabet,” says Atkinson. “I got hooked on the challenges as it gave me a goal in my caching adventures and provided an outlet for my competitive spirit.”
Atkinson worked with the Happy Valley Adventure Bureau to plant six of the dozens of caches that are part of the GeoTour, including a mix of traditional and themed caches. That’s right, not every cache is the same. Traditional caches typically have a container with a log sheet for visitors to record their find. Other types include mystery caches where adventurers might need to solve a puzzle to uncover its exact location. Atkinson also helped with an EarthCache, which may be appealing to sightseers and geology enthusiasts.
“EarthCaches do not have a container to find,” explains Atkinson. “They take you to an interesting location, teach you something about the earth at that location, and then in order to claim the find you have to answer a couple of questions.”
In fact, heading out into nature and discovering new environments is one of the main appeals of geocaching. In addition to a calm environment and beautiful scenery, caches along the GeoTour often provide insight into the region.
“Some of my favorite spots involve Centre County’s rich history,” says Jones. “I love visiting places like the Eagle Ironworks and Curtin Village. What’s really unique about our GeoTour is that there is always a story to tell. The best stories I hear from residents are that they never knew some of these places existed within Centre County.”
While the GeoTour is readily available to anyone who lives in the Centre County area, Jones points out that it also benefits tourism and the local economy because experienced geocachers tend to travel all over the country, if not the world, to discover new caches.
“Last year we had 372 total geocachers that participated in the Happy Valley PA GeoTour,” says Jones. On average per geocacher, 3.53 days were spent on the GeoTour, meaning a total of 1,313 days. “All of this means that geocaching is an economic driver to all of Centre County.”
So what do eager adventurers need to embark on the Happy Valley PA GeoTour? Not much, fortunately, and everything that’s required is available for free. Anyone can sign up for an account on geocaching.com or download the related smartphone app. On the app, users can select the search icon and choose “The Happy Valley PA GeoTour” to filter out other geocaches that may be in the area. From there you’re provided a wealth of information about each geocache, including the cache type, its location on a map, hints about where to find it, and even details about the surrounding terrain or important updates about nearby parking and construction.
For anyone looking for something a bit more analog to complement their journey, The Happy Valley Adventure Bureau offers a GeoTour Passport that can be printed from their website or picked up from the Happy Valley Store in downtown State College or other visitor bureau locations in Bellefonte and Philipsburg. As with the app, the passport includes coordinates and other information about each cache. There is also a log so participants can note the date they found each cache as well as the codeword contained within. While most would argue the adventure is its own reward, anyone who finds and logs at least 45 of the nearly 60 geocaches on the tour can earn a trackable Happy Valley GeoTour coin by showing their passport or app log to the Happy Valley Store. Geocoins often are passed from cache to cache, picking up online stories along the way.
With the basics covered, for anyone still on the fence about whether or not geocaching is for them, both Jones and Atkinson offer some encouragement and advice.
“Anyone can geocache, no matter what your age. I always say that geocaching is a lot like a treasure hunt. You never know what you are going to find,” says Jones. “The caches can be found in many shapes and sizes, and they can have some really cool swag inside of them. Please remember to put something in the cache if you are going to take something out!”
“There is some type of geocaching for everyone,” agrees Atkinson. “If I wasn’t a cacher, I would have no idea where the parks were or what was interesting to go see. With geocaching, it’s easy, I just open the app, look for a cache and head off.”
If you’re interested in trying out geocaching, you can get started today by downloading the Geocaching app or visiting The Happy Valley Adventure Bureau to pick up a physical passport.
‘I want to do all of them!’
Eager to try geocaching myself, I set off with my 6-year-old son, Henry, to find our first treasure box. Despite a recent coating of snow and ice blanketing the area, we were determined not to let the weather get in our way. But given the icy conditions, we opted to locate a cache near our house. The closest one on the GeoTour happened to be at the Children’s Garden in The Arboretum at Penn State, a location we were already familiar with. Still, once we arrived, we had to put our heads together in order to pinpoint the exact location of the cache.
The geocaching app allows you to zoom in on the map to approximate the cache’s position, but many are well-hidden and not in plain sight. Fortunately, a hint was included which read, “This cache is for the birds.” Upon reading this, my son excitedly realized there was a birdhouse a few feet away from where we were standing. It was a bit too tall for him to reach, so I got closer and found a small metal bar on one side that, when turned, unlocked the birdhouse.
Inside we were delighted to find our first cache, in addition to a gourd likely leftover from the Arboretum’s Pumpkin Fest. We pried open the small plastic container to find an assortment of toys and trinkets, as well as a pencil and paper so we could write down our names and the date we found it.
We had arrived empty handed with nothing to trade, so we didn’t take anything from the box, but the joy of finding our first geocache together was enough to leave us satisfied. While the experience was short and simple, there was an undeniable thrill about following a clue and finding something new in a place we’d been to many times. Once the weather warms up, we already have plans to follow the GeoTour to new destinations.
“I want to do all of them by the end of the summer,” Henry says.T&G
Matt Farley is a freelance writer in State College.
