By Richard Kerns
rkerns@newstribune.info
Tribune Staff Writer
LUKE – Following a unanimous vote of the mayor and council Tuesday afternoon, the town of Luke will soon be on the cutting edge of what the Maryland Municipal League describes as “high tech tourist trade.” You’ll have a hard time finding out why, but that’s the whole point.
“It’s fun for all ages,” said town council member Janet Bryan, who proposed the town’s participation in what is known as “Geocache tourism.”
Discovering a geocache is like going on a treasure hunt, using a hand-held global positioning system (GPS) device. Treasure hunters log onto www.geocaching.com to find hidden caches in their area, or in areas they are visiting. The list is global and it grows each day.
A search for the Luke zip code at the Web site found 20 caches in a 20 mile radius of town.
Geocache hunters search for the treasure based on GPS coordinates and cryptic clues provided for each site. But it’s not as easy as walking up to a spot and setting your foot on the precise GPS coordinate.
Caches are not buried, but are hidden, under logs, inside trees — usually some place tough to find.
“They can make it hard,” said Bryan, who recently found the Big Savage cache after an hour-plus search with her brother.
The treasure caches themselves are in watertight containers and usually hold a log book for geo-cachers to record their find, as well as brochures, trinkets and other items. Under geocache etiquette, any item taken should be replaced with a similar item.
Town councilman Thomas Clayton said one item traveled from a cache in Europe to California, and then all the way across the U.S., one cache at a time. “It’s a day out for the family,” Clayton said.
MML is promoting geocaches as a tourism program, inviting Maryland’s 157 municipalities to participate as part of an effort to develop a “geochaching trail” through the Old Line State, in hopes of luring tourists who will shop and dine in the towns along the way.
Bryan plans to set the Luke cache with her brother, tying it into Luke’s most recent claim to fame as the home of family members of Olympic gold medal winner Michael Phelps. “It won’t cost the town anything,” she said.
Mayor Joseph LaRue and councilman Gary Wiltison joined in giving the Luke cache a thumbs-up. “I don’t see that there would be anything wrong with it,” LaRue said. “It would be a lot of fun for some people.”
Luke, Md. —
