Uncovering the World of Geocaching with Bryan Roth

Bryan Roth’s journey into the world of geocaching began when he relocated to Seattle, seeking a fresh start and a life closer to nature. His passion for the unique hobby ignited when his colleagues, Jeremy Irish and Elias Albord, introduced him to the exciting game of geocaching. The global scavenger hunt had just been made possible by the US government’s decision to increase GPS accuracy from 300ft to 30ft for recreational users.

Inspired by the game’s potential and the thrill of being part of a secret club, the trio decided to join forces and launch Geocaching.com. Their collaboration, fueled by dedication and the desire to share the joy of geocaching with the world, transformed a small-scale hobby into a global phenomenon.

Bryan Roth Geocaching Episode Transcript

Bryan Roth [00:00:00]:

A sign on the wall of Jeremy’s old office, and it says, let’s make better mistakes tomorrow. And so like Starbucks,

Todd Phillips [00:00:25]:

Welcome to the Exploring Washington State podcast. Here’s your host, Scott Cowan.

Scott Cowan [00:00:31]:

Welcome back to this episode of the Exploring Washington State podcast. I’m joined today by Brian Roth, who is cofounder and CEO of Geocaching. I may be the only person in the world who’s not really up to speed as to what geocaching is. So by the time we’re done today, I’m gonna know more about it. Brian, thanks for making the time, and why don’t you tell our audience a little bit of your backstory?

Bryan Roth [00:00:54]:

Sure. Well, it’s great to be here. Thank you so much for having me on the show, Scott. Let’s see. I’ve been out in Seattle now for about twenty three years, and I used to be, sort of in a former life, an attorney, handling real estate matters in Manhattan. And I moved out to Seattle for a change of lifestyle. So I quit my job, February sorry, ’19 ’90 ‘8 and got in the car and drove out here and spent about eight months looking for something that I would wanna do. I decided I didn’t wanna go back to law firm, style work.

Bryan Roth [00:01:31]:

And then I went to work for a.com where I met Jeremy Irish and Elias Alvord. And a little over 23 ago, we, we launched geocaching.com, which is a website, and it’s grown quite a bit, since then. But the goal was to support the, the hobby of geocaching, which had just gotten started earlier that year. And, yeah, I’ve been one of the cofounders. We’ve got about 95 full time employees here working to support the global community, and the game has changed a lot of lives, including my own.

Scott Cowan [00:02:08]:

Well, I gotta ask you. So you were a real estate attorney in Manhattan. Had you been out to the Seattle area before, or what why did you pick the Northwest versus, say, California?

Bryan Roth [00:02:23]:

Well, I had I had come out to visit on two successive Thanksgivings, you know, with an ex, and we came out to visit her sister. And we were out here, and I just I loathed all of the water and access to nature and the green you know, the the Emerald City sort of in it in its true colors. And this is in November. And so you can imagine I hadn’t even seen it in the springtime or or summer or even the the early fall. And so, what I really liked about it, one of the things that hit me, pretty early on is when I was in Manhattan, and I I think, like, living in Manhattan, you will get asked from time to time by people you meet sort of, what do you do? And the question is really directed, oh, I’m an attorney. I’m an accountant. I’m a this is what I do for work. And I got asked that question one of the times when I was out here.

Bryan Roth [00:03:14]:

What do you do? And it became very quickly clear to me that they weren’t asking about my work. They were asking, like, what do you do for fun? What are your are you a mountain biker? Are you a hiker? Do you like to, you know, swim? What whatever it is. And it was about the activity. And I said, okay. That feels different. And then also the, the pace of the city, you know, Manhattan is this massive concrete jungle, and it’s absolutely wonderful. As a young attorney, I spent a lot of time doing the the least expensive things I could, so walking around Central Park and roller blade. I I used to roller blade to work with a full suit and tie and a briefcase, which, was kind of fun, but it was a little bit of exercise and and it just got, it got to the point where I I was going on the weekends when I was living in Manhattan.

Bryan Roth [00:04:04]:

I was driving to Vermont to go camping or to go mountain biking or I was driving, you know, somewhere else and I and I I said to myself, why am I spending so much time trying to to recreate in a place where I don’t live? And so all this driving just to get out of the city, I’m like, why don’t I move out of the city? And so, you know, I had visited, Seattle a couple times, and then I looked in. And on the way out here, I was I got in touch with somebody who knew somebody, and they said, oh, we have this we have this little house. It’s in a a neighborhood called Queen Anne, and it’s you know, here’s the rent. And when and and when I saw the rent, I was like, okay. This is a house, and there’s a there’s a backyard, and and, oh, this is this is less than what I’m paying for a very small box to live in in Manhattan. And so sight unseen, I signed a lease agreement and moved out here with no job, little bit of savings, and lived in that house, rented that house for about five years. And then in o four, I was able to buy a house on on Queen Anne where I’ve now been ever since. And, obviously, the, you know, the the house was quite a bit more affordable back then, but but I love it.

Bryan Roth [00:05:20]:

I love being in Seattle. I love being close to the mountains and close to the water, and it’s just so so beautiful and the the pace and the people. And, you know, I Okay. My mom in in the first couple of years, my mom would say, like, when are you moving back? And and, of course, it was hard to leave my family. It’s all on the East Coast. My mom would say, when are you moving back? And I said, well, you know, I’m not really planning on it, but but let’s see. Let’s see. And and at some point, you know, after, I met my wife and and my adopted son, Dylan, and I, you know, got involved with with this job, and and she saw just how much I was enjoying myself out here.

Bryan Roth [00:05:57]:

She kinda stopped asking, and now they’ll come out to visit every so often just to, and and they love it when they come out to visit. You know, they’ll walk to the coffee shop and and just have have some casual weekends. So I think they understand, some of the aspects of what I love about being out here in in Washington state.

Scott Cowan [00:06:15]:

Alright. So I’m gonna we’re gonna we’ll wrap up the New York section of our show with this question. Are you a baseball fan?

Bryan Roth [00:06:23]:

I am a baseball fan. Alright. Although, I don’t follow it

Scott Cowan [00:06:26]:

in Alright. So alright. I just lump everybody from New York into you’re either a Yankees fan or a Mets fan. Very carefully, what what is the what is the correct answer?

Bryan Roth [00:06:40]:

Well, I’m not sure what the correct answer is from your perspective, but I was I was born and raised a Yankees fan.

Scott Cowan [00:06:47]:

Oh, really?

Bryan Roth [00:06:48]:

That’s okay. And and yeah. You know, it’s, I remember watching TV as a kid, watching the old Yankees with Reggie Jackson and Thurman Munson and Billy Martin and and, you know, Greg Nettles, all the Bucky Dent, all those guys. And I remember when I when I moved to Atlanta for law school and where I was following the Braves, and the Braves were doing well, but it was it was sort of interesting to realize that when I grew up, the Yankees were winning all the time. The Islanders in the in the eighties were winning all the local teams, and and New York as such a a sports kind of powerhouse with two and three teams, you know, per sport. Mhmm. There was always there was always this this winning and, you know, coming out here, like, I want the Mariners to make the playoffs. I’d love to see the Mariners win the World Series.

Bryan Roth [00:07:39]:

But knowing that, like, maybe maybe fans out here, baseball fans, had a different experience, a different childhood experience than I did with baseball. Like, you know, it felt like they were winning the World Series every year or every couple of years. So, yes, I’ve I’ve been a Yankees fan. I will admit as a Yankees fan as a Yankees fan that they’ve had more than their fair share of victories, but it is what it is.

Scott Cowan [00:08:02]:

Without going into too much detail, I hate’s a really strong word and I don’t really mean the word hate, but I really dislike the Yankees, but without the Yankees, without it, without the Yankees to chase baseball would be a boring sport. I mean, you don’t seem to be buying players like you used to. Right? You this seems like the the team is settled into a little bit different I mean, I say I say that, but they’re gonna go give Aaron Judge half a billion dollars probably. But, the point is the Yankees raised the bar for everybody. They we if you wanna compete, you gotta you gotta figure out how to beat the Yankees. Everything goes to the Yankees. And so I love that. I just wish just once just once in my lifetime that the Mariners make it to the World Series.

Scott Cowan [00:08:58]:

I’d love for them to win, but just for Seattle to get the opportunity to play on that that stage.

Bryan Roth [00:09:09]:

So I would love to see it as well.

Scott Cowan [00:09:11]:

Yeah. I and

Bryan Roth [00:09:12]:

it is actually a go ahead.

Scott Cowan [00:09:14]:

The I’ve I’ve watched the Mariners for a long, long time. And I grew up being a San Francisco Giants fan because we didn’t have the saddle team at that time. Right? So, and Pittsburgh Pirates and San Francisco Giants. Don’t ask me why, because I don’t know. But as a long time, long suffering Mariners fan, I I take it one day at a time, one game at a time. I can’t get excited. It’ll break my heart. Alright.

Scott Cowan [00:09:40]:

You’re a Yankees fan. We’ll move on. So You moved out here. You met your cofounders at a different company, and you started geocaching to support a hobby. So was it your hobby? Was it one of your partner? I mean, let’s let’s talk about how did the, how did the company come about out of the kernel of a hobby?

Bryan Roth [00:10:06]:

Sure. So in early May of the year two thousand, the US government changed the GPS satellite signals for recreational users. So prior to February, the accuracy if you owned a Garmin GPS, say you were a fisher or, you know, a fisherman or something like that, if you owned a Garmin, the accuracy was about 300 feet. So the device could tell you where you are in the world with a with a radius of about 300 feet. Well, in February, in the interest of, you know, transportation and navigation and and, you know, so many public benefits, they changed it to approximately 30 feet. And that was called it was called selective availability, and they removed selective availability from the signal. So military has precise accuracy Mhmm. But recreational users got a drastic increase in accuracy.

Bryan Roth [00:11:05]:

And so a guy who lived, who lives in Oregon, his name is Dave Omer, he posted to a satellite news group online, basically, this idea saying, now that we know where we are with this degree of accuracy anywhere in the world, I have this idea for a game. I’m gonna hide a bucket, and here’s some items I’m gonna put in it. And I’m gonna post the coordinates, and let’s see who can find it. And so he did that, and it was found within three days by a guy named Mike Teague.

Scott Cowan [00:11:41]:

Let me interrupt you. Let me interrupt you. Where did he hide the bucket?

Bryan Roth [00:11:45]:

It’s just outside of, just outside of Portland. It’s now known as the original stash.

Scott Cowan [00:11:52]:

Okay.

Bryan Roth [00:11:52]:

There’s a plaque there’s a plaque at the location. The original bucket is is long gone. Mhmm. But there’s a plaque at the location, and it’s, people travel from all over the world to go find that plaque, and and there’s another cache there Outside of Portland. And outside of Portland.

Scott Cowan [00:12:11]:

Okay. I

Bryan Roth [00:12:11]:

can I can reference the the geocaching code at some point, but I I have to look it up? I don’t know it offhand.

Scott Cowan [00:12:17]:

Okay. Alright.

Bryan Roth [00:12:17]:

So so anyway, Dave Ulmer hides this box. It’s found by Mike Teague. They they basically say to everybody, hey. If anybody else hides a box, you know, let Mike know. And Mike had a little website where he would just list them in order. And you could go to the website, and you can scroll through, and you could see, oh, there’s a cache here, there’s a cache here, and and so on. And so, I was working at a.com. At that time, it was my first job out here, and it was a men’s clothing store that was trying to, build a web presence to sell retail online, back at a time when people weren’t really ordering, clothing on the Internet in the in the late nineties.

Bryan Roth [00:12:57]:

And a buddy of ours, named Michael Schmidt brought a yellow Garmin eTrex into the office that he had gotten for his birthday, and he’s like, look. I got this GPS receiver. You know, here’s how cool it is. And so Jeremy took it and, you know, went outside, and there’s a little man and bread crumbs where you where you move on the screen. It was, you know, a basic basic unit. And he said, oh, you know, what cool technology. You know, I’m I’m accessing a multibillion dollar satellite system to know where I am. Like, I wonder what else we can do with this.

Bryan Roth [00:13:28]:

Okay. And so he went online, and he found Mike Teague’s website and Dave Ulmer’s post, and he said, oh, look at this game. And at the time, they named the game I think Dave named it. I’m I’m not a % sure, but they named it the Great American GPS Stash Hunt. That was the name of the game. And so

Scott Cowan [00:13:47]:

it’s That’s a mouthful. Online.

Bryan Roth [00:13:49]:

It’s a mouthful. And it’s all you know, ultimately, it was changed because, you know, it’s not limited to America, and it’s, you know, stash has some negative connotations. They don’t wanna attract any negative attention. And so a guy who is part of the community named Matt Stum, he came up with the idea to call it geocaching, geo for global and caching like a a stockpile of goods that you do, you know, if you’re on a Pacific Crest Trail or, you know, through hiking or something like that. So Jeremy bought a GPS unit, and he went out with, a friend and his he had a puppy dog, and he took his Saturn car, and he ended up you know, he drove three hours, and he ended up, you know, on these logging roads that were completely, you know, inappropriate for his car and

Scott Cowan [00:14:38]:

The zapper.

Bryan Roth [00:14:39]:

Ran out of water and and got attacked by bugs and but ended up in this clear cut area, and he found this card box. And when he found it, he said, you know, how cool is this? Like, I’m part of the secret club. Like, nobody would ever know this is here. And so on his way back to Seattle, he thought about he was a web developer. He is a web developer. He thought about, I think I can build a website to make this easier for people to play rather than having to scroll through a whole, you know, page just to find something in your area. Maybe there’s a ZIP code lookup. You know, I should tell people, bring water.

Bryan Roth [00:15:15]:

Be prepared. This is outdoor recreation. Like, don’t take chances. And so he got back to backtothe.com, and he talked to Elias and I. He’s like, hey. You know, here’s this game. It was really fun. I’m gonna build a website.

Bryan Roth [00:15:27]:

We were like, hey. That sounds awesome. You know, really cool. And so he went and he did it, and I I know he was talking to Elias about some of the technical functions. And, basically, twenty three years ago on September 2, he launched geocaching.com. And what had happened was Wow. Mike Teague’s website went down. There was some issue with it.

Bryan Roth [00:15:49]:

And Mike and Jeremy had been talking about how to best support the hobby, and Mike basically came out and said, hey, everybody. My website’s down. This is not what I’m interested in doing. Please go to Jeremy’s website geocaching.com. And so that was the start of the geocaching.com website. And soon after, Jeremy approached Elias and said, hey. I could use some help. You know, I’m a web developer.

Bryan Roth [00:16:14]:

Elias handles network infrastructure and hardware, and, I mean, they’re both wicked smart guys. And and they said, you know, we can handle the technology, and I was doing legal business development, HR, all the nontechnical things. So they approached me and said, hey. Here’s this game. Like, what do you say we we start a company to support this hobby? You know, there’s no money in it, but it’s outdoor recreation and technology. We’re all passionate about those things. And really knowing those guys, what I said to them is, I would love to work with you guys, but, you know, let’s do it. And so I drew up the articles of incorporation and the bylaws, and we officially became a a company in on November 3.

Bryan Roth [00:16:55]:

But on October 20, the New York Times did a front page circuit section, article on geocaching. And it was it was I think the title was, like, what else is GPS good for or something like that. And we have it framed somewhere in the office. You’d think I might know what it says. But but anyway, they, so it it got a lot of attention, and and we got picked up by Slashdot, which at the time was some sort of like a Reddit.

Scott Cowan [00:17:22]:

Right. That’s right. Yeah.

Bryan Roth [00:17:23]:

And and they, so it started to get a lot of attention. And basically, we worked for free for I I was you know, the so the .com crashed and burned soon after that with the rest of them in the in the late nineties. And the three of us all went to work for a promotional marketing company called Sunrise Creative Group out in Woodinville. And what we were doing was they were building websites for, for companies who like, bigger companies or bigger brands who needed their their shirts and their hats and their desk sets and cycling jerseys and things like that. And so they they were doing one for for Xbox, and they did one for Windows XP when it came out, but they needed sort of a so they hired a a few of us that were at thisthis.com that failed. Jeremy came in as a web developer. Elias was handling IT. I became general counsel and sort of supported HR and things like that, and we had some other people come over as well, for the for the warehouse and whatever.

Bryan Roth [00:18:25]:

And and Jeremy was there for, I think, about a year, maybe a year and a half, and he came to us and he’s like, listen. This working two job stuff is is really kinda difficult. We either need to go and just sell this and focus on our day job, or we need to find a way to generate revenue. Right. And we started out selling, because we’re working for a promotional marketing company, we had a 44 geocaching t shirts made.

Scott Cowan [00:18:53]:

Okay.

Bryan Roth [00:18:53]:

And we sold those, and those were that was the first revenue that we had as a company was the t shirts. And so we went out to the community and we said, hey, folks. We’re doing this. You know, we really wanna support this game. We have some ideas of of things that we can build, but we don’t have any money. Please consider we have a we’re gonna launch a charter membership at $30 a year. And if you pay $30 a year, we’re gonna give you access to, you know, the new features first, and we’re gonna give you ass access to sort of charter member or premium member only features. And by the way, none of those exist now, but we kinda need money to make it happen.

Bryan Roth [00:19:32]:

And so that month, I wanna say we got about $28,000 in memberships. And we said, you know, oh my goodness. There there’s people out there who want more of this, and and that was really, really cool. And the next month was was, like, $2,000 because, you know, everybody who was sort of on board came in immediately, and it was it was, like, $2,000 after that for for quite some time. But, anyway, we realized we we now had some money, and so we hired Jeremy full time to come to come work on building the site and building the functionality. And I don’t know how long after, maybe a year after we hired Elias. And then we went and we realized, like, we didn’t need a full time attorney. We didn’t need a a full you know, we were a very small company.

Bryan Roth [00:20:16]:

And so we hired an illustrator. I think we hired one or two more engineers. We hired some customer service. And then after five years, I was able to leave my day job and go work for for this company. And now here we are, you know, quite a few years later, and we’ve got, as I said, 95 full time employees. And we’re we’re a boot it’s crazy. We’re we’re a bootstrap company, which is really interesting because I think it’s interesting anyway. You know, over time, we’ve looked at the way that startups move forward, you know, and so many of them are, like, looking to be acquired or looking to be funded.

Bryan Roth [00:20:57]:

And, you know, those are those are viable paths where you take money from outside investors and, you know, turn around you know, deliver a 10 x, five x, whatever the the x return is. But we always felt like it was nice to not have to answer to anybody except ourselves and the community. And so as long as the community was willing to support us, we could keep doing what we feel is in the best interest of the community. And so here we are twenty three years later, since the website launched anyway, and we’ve never taken any outside funding. We don’t have any debt, and we we believe it’s our responsibility to keep this company, you know, functioning as a going concern for years to come because there are millions of people around the world who are depending on us to provide access to this hobby that they love.

Scott Cowan [00:21:51]:

So on my other monitor here so no one else but you understands that I’m looking over at another screen. I’m on your Facebook page. Normally, I like to talk to guests that have large social media followings. I’m kidding. At the moment that we’re recording this, the thumb up says 608,271 people. I go over to your Instagram page with 238,000 followers, but wait, Twitter, where did Twitter go? Twitter’s like 81,000 followers. But the stat that blows my mind is I’m on your website. And without getting too geeky, because I kind of understand the tech here, but right now I’m looking at the hero image, join the world’s largest treasure hunt.

Scott Cowan [00:22:39]:

There’s a video playing, you know what your website looks like, right? But right below that, it tells me that there’s two forty one geocaches around Chelan. You went from a bucket in the ground in near Portland to 23 later, you’ve got somebody’s hidden approximately 250 things in the greater Chelan Wenatchee area. Right?

Bryan Roth [00:23:04]:

Yep.

Scott Cowan [00:23:05]:

I wanna jump ahead and ask a question because your social media is that’s incredibly powerful. You’ve got that much traction online. I don’t know you’re gonna know the answer, but you might. Approximately, how many geocaches are currently hid worldwide?

Bryan Roth [00:23:24]:

Geocaches, like, the physical boxes? Yeah. I I know almost exactly.

Scott Cowan [00:23:29]:

Okay.

Bryan Roth [00:23:29]:

And in fact, I’m going to tell you right now how many geocaches. Last I checked, it was, I wanna say, 3,200,000 geocaches worldwide. 3,200,000.

Scott Cowan [00:23:43]:

Okay.

Bryan Roth [00:23:44]:

And there are, as of today, see, oh, 3,362,000 geocaches. 3,362,000 geocaches.

Scott Cowan [00:23:59]:

With that data that you have there, can you

Bryan Roth [00:24:02]:

send it have access to this, by the way.

Scott Cowan [00:24:03]:

Okay.

Bryan Roth [00:24:04]:

So you so you need a geocaching account to log in. It’s free to create one. But then there’s a search box where I can search anywhere in the world and it will tell you how many geocaches are there. It’s kind of fun because you search Cape Town, South Africa and you get x number of caches. Search Amsterdam, you get x number. It’s it’s kind of a fun tool just to see and and for travel planning, of course.

Scott Cowan [00:24:27]:

So I’m gonna ask you to do my research for me. Can you and can you answer two questions for me? How many in The United States and then how many in Washington state?

Bryan Roth [00:24:37]:

Alright. Let’s see what we get for United States. United States regional search. 1,006,974 cash results in The United States. Those are those are, active caches. Active caches. In existence. And then let’s see.

Bryan Roth [00:24:58]:

Washington state. Let’s go look. Washington, United States. 20 8 Thousand 1 Hundred And 80 3 caches in Washington state, which if you think about it, like, 20 that’s 28,000, like, mini adventures that people can go do. And for, you know, really for just a lot of effort to go find that many, we we have people who work here at HQ who have found over 40,000 caches in their lifetime. And there are people out in the in the global community who have found over 100,000 caches in their lifetime. There are people who do this every day. There are people who are doing what, you know, what’s called streaks.

Bryan Roth [00:25:44]:

You know, how many days in a row can you do? Right. And and we’re talking multiple years, five years, seven years that people have been on streak, even more than that.

Scott Cowan [00:25:53]:

That’s crazy.

Bryan Roth [00:25:54]:

There are some very, very passionate players Alright. In in of this game in this community. It’s it’s astounding. Even after even after so many years of seeing it grow Mhmm. I hear stats all the time where I’m like, you gotta be kidding me. That is just unbelievable. And and the cool thing is, you know, when I get to talk to some of these folks, I I got to talk to a woman. There was a there was an event in Canada A Couple Weeks ago called Geo Woodstock, and they had thousands of people who attended this event.

Bryan Roth [00:26:24]:

It was the biggest event in Canada, in history so far. And there was a woman who I’ve known her I’ve met her at events before, her and her husband. I see them on social media celebrating geocaching milestones all the time. And she had just hit 69,000 geocaches found. And, you know, I said to her, I was like, that’s so much time. Like, that’s so many experiences that you that you’ve enjoyed. Like, I I cannot even begin to imagine, like, how the richness of your life experience, you know, when combined with geocaching in this way, it’s just remarkable. And so to see, you know, for me, to see people who have been positively impacted by the game, in such a variety of ways, It’s such an interesting form of success.

Bryan Roth [00:27:15]:

You know, we we talk about it here, like, you know, measure success through impact. We we’ve got jobs. You know, we have a we have a business. You know, I can pay my mortgage or whatever, but at the same time, as a company, we’re we’re having an impact on people’s lives all over the world. And Mhmm. Because it’s a community, we actually get to meet so many of those people when we travel to geocaching events around the world or when they travel to come see us here in Seattle at our headquarters, in our visitor center, or, you know, the some of the other events that that take place?

Scott Cowan [00:27:49]:

Okay. So earlier on, you we started talking about the changes in GPS technology from a 300 foot radius to a 30 foot radius. And I seem to remember there was some discussion back then about privacy, and I think the I I I want to remember that the military wasn’t real crazy about allowing civilians to have that degree of accuracy. I I don’t remember if that’s accurate. It’s just what my brain’s saying. But has in twenty three years, has the GPS technology improved as far as games the game goes, or has it stayed relatively static?

Bryan Roth [00:28:31]:

I think that in the first I don’t know. I’m I’m speculating about the time frame. But in the first probably ten years or so, they had not just straight GPS, you know, which is using the the signals from the satellites, but they also have a system. It’s called wide area augmentation system, and there’s some other, like I think that there are broadcast stations in different places on the planet. And if you’re receiving those signals, you know, you you’re not gonna get it in tree cover or in sort of a, you know, Manhattan skyline if you’re downtown. You’re not gonna get access to this accuracy. And 30 feet is is almost best case when you are in, you know, when you’re out there. If you’ve got an augmentation system, you can get down to, like, six feet, seven feet, something like that.

Bryan Roth [00:29:23]:

I’ve I’ve seen, you know, estimates of three feet, and then you’ve seen GPS antennas have improved. And so you can get better reception in in sort of high dense, you know, coverage areas. So there have been improvements, but it’s interesting because for geocaching, we actually don’t want, you know, we don’t want it to be one centimeter accuracy because it would take half the fun out of it because because a good part of the fun is when you get to the location, how difficult is it for to to find the box. And some of these so I haven’t talked about it yet, but every geocache has a difficulty rating and a terrain rating associated with it. The terrain rating is one to five with half steps. You get one and a half, two and a half, and so

Scott Cowan [00:30:09]:

on.

Bryan Roth [00:30:11]:

Difficulty rate sorry. Terrain rating of one means that the cache should be accessible from a wheelchair. Okay. 1.5 means it’s probably just out of reach. Three could be decent hike. Four, four and a half, like, four and a half is is a difficult difficult terrain to navigate to get to the cache location. A a a terrain five means that special equipment is required, whether that’s rock climbing gear, scuba gear, a boat, a kayak, a paddle board, in one case, you know, a helicopter, stuff like that. The difficulty rating is when you get to the location, how how hard is it to find the cache? And so what you’ve got is you have, you know, a a a d one could mean alright.

Bryan Roth [00:31:03]:

You’re out in the middle of, an open field. There’s one tree, and there’s a little box next to the tree. No trouble at all to find that. A a three, maybe you’re sitting at a picnic bench and one of the bolts on the bottom of the picnic bench is hollowed out and filled with a log book. Like, they they we sell them in our shop. They’re, like, specially made hidden containers. Then there’s other things that are, like, literally field puzzles. Some of them involve electronics or levers or mechanical, you know, movements of things like a lab labyrinth out in the out in the woods that you have to solve in order to unlock the cash box.

Bryan Roth [00:31:44]:

And and there’s many, many, many creative cash hiders who have spent so much time building incredible geocaching experiences combining either difficulty or terrain. There are puzzle caches where in order to get the coordinates, you have to solve a puzzle. And maybe it’s a complicated math puzzle or maybe it’s an image that has clues you have to like a hidden word kind of puzzle or or so so the creativity that the community has brought to this platform is really what makes it so special. So there are people who really focus on, like, I wanna get as many of these as I can. I wanna find the easiest ones possible. There are other people who are out there saying, like, I wanna find the hardest puzzles. I wanna find the five fives. I wanna you know, out out in Germany, I wanna have climbing ropes and be a 50 feet up in a tree finding a cache that was placed up there because somebody wanted to challenge me.

Bryan Roth [00:32:46]:

You know, I wanna be, rappelling down a cliff in in Austria because there’s a cave halfway down the cliff that has a has a geocache in it. So for a a long time ago now, and I would say it’s it’s gotta be at least fifteen years ago, CNN did a piece on geocaching, and they’ve probably done other pieces since. There’s there’s some good media around it. But, anyway, they had two groups that they interviewed, and one was a mom with kids. And they were out following the mom with kids around, and and the kids were probably, like, between five and 10 years old. And the mom was saying, like, this is how I get the kids away from the television. We’re going out. We’re taking them treasure hunting.

Bryan Roth [00:33:27]:

And there’s good lessons. You know, when they find the big boxes that have trinkets and toys, the rule is you can take something out as long as you leave something for the next person to find. And and there’s some good lessons in there because you teach the kids about, hey. You don’t want the next person to be disappointed. You found something cool, like, you have to trade even or trade up, like, make it a good so so the mom was talking about, like, how cool it is that I can get my kids outside in a way where they’re engaged, they’re excited, and I’m also able to share these, you know, lessons in in courtesy with them. And then the next the next group they had was a couple. It was an older gentleman and his wife who were both in their mid eighties, and they were out and they had found almost 2,000 caches. And they showed them walking around with a with a cane just looking for for caches in in different areas, and they were saying, this is something that’s keeping us feeling young.

Bryan Roth [00:34:21]:

We’re getting out of the house. It’s a reason to go outside. It’s a reason for us to walk around and travel and be active. And I said, hey. Well, you know, we hope to live long enough to find 3,000 of these in, you know, in a in a few years. But that’s so you get such a variety, you know, for for older people, for families with kids, absolutely. But then for, for people who really wanna challenge themselves with an adventure, I mean, there’s there’s caches that I have no interest in doing personally because I’m, you know, either concerned for my own safety or, you know, don’t put me anywhere where there might be snakes or or whatever. And and so but there’s just a large variety, and and people are are going through swamps in the Everglades to find caches and and climbing up on old bridge decks that, you know, the bridge no longer exists and, you know, the cache was actually placed with a helicopter in West Virginia.

Bryan Roth [00:35:16]:

And another interesting aspect of it is that the people who are creatively putting out exceptional geocaches become heroes in the community, become folk heroes, especially Celebrities, if you will. Yeah. Celebrities precisely. Like, you know, have you heard about, you know? There’s somebody out here in Washington state who places some really cool caches. There was a out on I think it’s on Bainbridge. There’s, like, a a garden center, and there’s, like, a phone booth that has a a a video screen, and you have to, like it’s, like, superhero related, and it’s just, like, so much time and effort. There’s a we have in our visitor center. We have a we have an old, dial up phone.

Bryan Roth [00:36:01]:

We have to figure out the right number to dial, and the little thing where the money used to go pops out and the log book is is inside that. He he built that one, and there’s a a geocacher called Bounce Bounce who makes some really creative caches in Washington state. And that’s that’s just in this little area here.

Scott Cowan [00:36:17]:

Right.

Bryan Roth [00:36:17]:

Like, every area in the world, the the active geocachers could tell you, like, who hides best caches in this in this area. You know, what what’s been remarkable about, you know, what what they’ve created. There’s a, I’m trying to remember this in in in Long Island. There’s a group, and and they created, like, it’s an ATM that’s it used to be an ATM, and it doesn’t function as an ATM anymore, but it’s a it’s a puzzle geocache that you have to, like, push buttons and solve to get the cash to come out. Anyway, it’s it’s been fascinating to see how the game has evolved in so many years and just how much fun people are having with all of the different facets of the game.

Scott Cowan [00:37:00]:

One of the things I you know, you’re sharing here that I was gonna ask you kind of the age range, but you kinda you know, you basically said young children into people in their eighties, and there’s probably younger and older on that. So it’s it really is I can’t remember what board game company, you know, just they’re slow slow and goes fun for eight to 80 is kind of the same same thing here. You alluded to difficulty, and you say you mentioned five five of five or you know, so there’s so I guess the question I’d like to ask is, these super complicated, these super hard caches, Are there a lot of them, or is it a very small number?

Bryan Roth [00:37:40]:

There are a lot of them. I mean, if you consider that there’s 3.3 something million caches worldwide, you know, if I said that there are, you know, 400,000 really hard, hard caches, it seems like a lot to me.

Scott Cowan [00:37:57]:

Oh, yeah. That’s a percentage wise. That’s a number. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, I’m just gonna put you on the spot.

Bryan Roth [00:38:01]:

Know exactly, but there’s there’s a lot.

Scott Cowan [00:38:03]:

I’m gonna put you on the spot. This is a lot like asking, you know, a parent what their favorite child is. But

Bryan Roth [00:38:08]:

Oh, go for it.

Scott Cowan [00:38:10]:

What pops into your head is, like, the most creative like, you were like, when you heard about this cash, you’re like, oh, wow. That’s crazy.

Bryan Roth [00:38:21]:

I mean, what pops in my head are are quite a few of them. And and they pop in my head because I’ve had I’ve had the good fortune to actually get to go to them. And so I’ll give you an example. This this is an older cache. I don’t think it’s active anymore, but it was it used to be called Operation Crocodile with a k. Okay. It was located in a wooded area outside of Frankfurt, in Germany. And I went we were out there for for a business meeting at one point, and I had our VP of marketing.

Bryan Roth [00:38:54]:

He was out there with me, and we met up with these geocachers, and they said, hey. We’re gonna go do this cache. And it could only be done at night, and there was a waiting list to do it of of months long waiting list to do it because only and and because there were it involved keys that you had to take from one location to others. And I’ll I’ll tell you a little bit about it. But because we were coming from Geocaching HQ, they invited us to join them on their sort of pre calendars. You know, that it was arranged that we would get to do this cache with a group of caches. But it started out where you had, you had to use a flashlight starting from, you know, the starting quarter to use a flashlight and you flashed it into the woods and and you get these little fire attacks that would light up and you had to fire follow a path through the woods. And we found in the middle of this clearing, there was almost like a a flower that was that was in, you know, just sitting there and in the the the flower was hinged and you could, like, open it up and inside was a key and a set of coordinates.

Bryan Roth [00:39:59]:

And, basically, the coordinates were this old, like it was a it was a an old World War two bunker that we had to unlock and go in. And using black lights that the German geocachers had with them, there were there was information written on the walls in in you know, that that would only be illuminated by the black light. It it it actually gets even crazier. But we so we go out and we find you know, we follow the next set of clues and we got and this thing took I wanna say it took four and a half hours for us to finish it. And we wouldn’t have finished it if we weren’t with the German geocachers who really knew what they were doing. But anyway

Scott Cowan [00:40:36]:

Right.

Bryan Roth [00:40:37]:

At one point, we found a a tree stump also with a hinge. And you open the tree stump, and there was an old video camera in there. Like, a it almost looked like an old VHS, like, filming camera. And there was a in German, it said something like, you know, start recording and pay attention to what you hear and not what you see. And so, okay, press record, and you hear, like, a little chirp in the woods. You know, what are you talking about? Press it again. There’s a birdhouse on a tree, I don’t know, 40 feet away, and we get there and in the like, you shine a light on it and there was a or a light receptor or whatever. And and in the little window where the bird would go was a little LED that gave us a frequency that they tune to with radios, with FRS radios, and there was a little broadcast saying, you know, you have to go to the next coordinates.

Bryan Roth [00:41:28]:

So so just the electronics and the and how would the whole thing integrate. So, anyway, during the course of this experience, we found a a helicopter hanging from a tree that when you shine the light on it, a laser came out of the front and pointed to the next location, which happened to be another bunker. When we walked into the bunker, there was a suitcase with a video screen, and and you had to hold the button down and it played this message. And the whole story is operation crocodile was a fictitious story about, you know, two missiles had been stolen. You are trying to recover the missiles. And, you know, so the video screen is like, one of the missiles was was detonated, you know, no damage, whatever. We’ve got coordinates for the next set of missiles. You gotta go here.

Bryan Roth [00:42:12]:

We unlock the final bunker. World War two bunkers, mind you. You know, they said the massive cavernous things in the side of hills. Anyway, takes two people to slide the doors open. We walk in, and there is a three foot long, like, Styrofoam painted green missile with four DIP switches on it and a little LED screen. And sitting next to it is an original newspaper from, like, 1951. And you had to read some of the paragraphs to figure out what you needed to do to set the dip switches in order to disarm, quote, unquote, dismissal and complete the cash find, which we did. And so you think about something like that, it’s almost like a it’s almost like an escape room without the room.

Bryan Roth [00:42:59]:

And and I’ve seen, you know, in in other places, particularly in Germany, I’ve seen a lot of these, but a bunch of geocachers rent an entire house out in the woods that used to be an old orphanage, and they create this story driven adventure where you’re going through the entire house and you’re you’re climbing through the the dumbwaiter shaft to get to another area of the house because things are locked and you’re playing a tape recording to get information on the next clues and you, you know, you find a a mannequin of, like, a dead body in the attic, and it’s, like, just fascinating fast. And these are these are cash hides that people are, again, waiting for for months and months to do. It’s just remarkable, and and people putting in that time and creativity to create experiences for other people that they generally don’t know. It’s, it it that those are some examples of of super creative, difficulty five without a doubt.

Scott Cowan [00:44:00]:

Wow. I I had no idea. Zero idea of the complexity, the I was thinking while you’re describing the the crocodile that it sounded like an escape room. It it sounded like the experience that you can have in an escape room, but yet it’s not within a room. It’s you’re out in the the wild.

Bryan Roth [00:44:24]:

Out in the wild. And and, you know, to be fair, most caches are not like that. Most caches are a box in the woods or, you know, a box under a tree. But they’re out Still,

Scott Cowan [00:44:35]:

the the creativity that the community is bringing is I mean, this is kind of mind boggling to me that that there’s

Bryan Roth [00:44:44]:

no creativity. Into because we have a global community, because we’ve got access to people throughout the world, you know, it’s like it’s like hive mind concept. You know, put put the minds of millions of people together and you’re gonna get really cool things. You know, you’re gonna get access to creativity. It’s like it’s it’s part of the beauty of Reddit, quite honestly, which I’m I’m a fan. But, like, you go to Reddit and they what do they say? They say they’re the front page of the Internet. That’s because there’s people all over the world who are sort of mining the world for interesting stories relating to specific topics. So if you wanna know what’s going on in an area, the the the crew the collective mind will tell you.

Bryan Roth [00:45:25]:

And so I think as a as a platform, we’ve we share and experience the benefit of that with with millions of people.

Scott Cowan [00:45:34]:

Approximately, how many members are there in your community?

Bryan Roth [00:45:39]:

We don’t know. We don’t know. So what I can tell you is that in in twenty three years, there have been tens of millions of geocaching accounts created.

Scott Cowan [00:45:50]:

Wow.

Bryan Roth [00:45:52]:

You know, I I think that we estimate in a primarily Northern Hemisphere summer months, we probably have between three and four million people that will play, during that during that kind of time period. So it’s a lot. You know, I I I tend to think about it often in in terms of, like, I don’t know. I’ve gone to a Seahawks game in the past, then you figure, alright. That that place is gonna hold 70,000 people or whatever. And you look around, and it’s like, man, that is a lot of people. Well, when you think, you know, thirty, forty times that in a month around the world out playing this game, you know, again, it’s it’s staggering. It’s it’s impact.

Bryan Roth [00:46:34]:

It’s people who are it’s interesting. You know, I say I say impact, but, like, most people spend too much time inside. As as as a species, I think we’ve we’ve grown accustomed to spending a lot of times in our caves, too much time inside. And so to know that people are leaving their homes to get outside to go play this game, like, that’s good for the world. You know? It’s good for people. You know? There’s nature deficit disorder and all that, but but the more time that we could spend outside, you know, among the trees, among other people, I think it’s good for individuals, which becomes good for society and overall good for the world. But then when you combine the fact that it’s not just people from one location, you know, these these events taking place, the really big geocaching events are attracting people from all over the world. We just had our event in Seattle Two weekends ago, and we had geocachers from Singapore and South Africa and New Zealand and throughout Scandinavian countries and Eastern Western Europe, and everybody’s there.

Bryan Roth [00:47:44]:

And the cool thing was, like, people are are talking to each other. They’re hugging. They’re they’re they’re sharing their love of the game with each other, and they have stuff to talk about. And to see Mhmm. You know, they’re not talking politics. They’re not talking religion. They’re not talking, you know, economics for the most part. They’re getting together and they’re sharing the love for the game.

Bryan Roth [00:48:05]:

And so to see, you know, these sort of cross border communities being built with with strength and with sharing people doing stuff in the interest of making other people happy or getting other people outside, It’s just something that’s so positive. So when we think about, alright, if it’s even if it’s 1,000,000 people that played the game in a month, that’s 1,000,000 people that that left their homes and and went out and did something that that, hopefully, they really enjoyed. Yeah. That’s so funny. The numbers are the numbers are big. You know, and it’s funny because in in this day and age, like, we you think about, oh, Facebook and probably not anymore. Facebook has a billion people on their platform. Like, that’s a that’s a staggering, like, I don’t know where you go from there.

Bryan Roth [00:48:50]:

I mean, maybe down a little bit, certainly. But so so to think, like, okay. It’s a it’s a few million people are playing this game, and we know how good it is. You know, as a company and even as a community, we’d love to share it with more people. We’d love for people to check it out and and try going outside and finding a treasure, whether it’s with your kids or I mean, for me, what I really like to do is I travel somewhat frequently. And when you go to a new city, you know, look up on in the mobile apps, it’ll show you the the geocaches that have the most favorite points. And so favorite points, this is a premium member feature. As a premium member, when you go find a cache for every 10 caches you find, you could designate one as a favorite.

Bryan Roth [00:49:37]:

And so Oh. Good caches will get a lot of sort of hearts on them, a lot of favorites on them. And then whether you’re a premium user or a basic user, you can look at the map and it will show you the most favorited caches in the area. So to go to a new city, caches will take you to unique locations, and you can read about them. You know, if you click on a cache, you can read the description. It’ll often tell you, here’s a little about about the cache. Here’s a little bit about the area where the cache is placed. It’s a lovely view.

Bryan Roth [00:50:07]:

It’s the you know, things like that. But you can also read the logs of everybody who’s found the cache, And you could say, oh, this, you know, this family went out and little Susie found the cache and the, you know, everybody had a good time or, you know, this was the you know, somebody’s visiting from Sweden, and this is the first cache that they found in Washington state or something like that. So there’s there’s a lot of detail available for each of these cache hides, a lot of statistics. And by looking at the favorite points, you kinda get a clue of what are the best experiences out there to to participate in.

Scott Cowan [00:50:43]:

Wow. So I may like I said, I I may be and your numbers kinda back up my statement that I may be the only person who doesn’t under didn’t know the game before. And I’m one of the things that I you know, I think I told you this when we talked on the phone. I don’t do a lot of prep because I like to be surprised. And you’ve you’ve surprised me for fifty minutes now. I’m I’m

Bryan Roth [00:51:03]:

Good.

Scott Cowan [00:51:03]:

I I the idea of, you know, a a a styrofoam rocket that’s or missile that’s, you know, painted, and you’ve gotta you’ve gotta read a newspaper, and the the amount of creativity and attention to detail is staggeringly cool.

Bryan Roth [00:51:17]:

It’s really cool. And and for us, you know, we’re building a platform. You know, we want people to create, share, and play. And so, you know, we’re trying to put the tools in the hands of the creators and in the hands of the players so that they can do these kind of things. And, you know, we’ve made a lot of progress over twenty three years. There’s certainly more progress to be made. Right.

Scott Cowan [00:51:39]:

So that that leads me to a question I’d like to ask, and it’s a two part question. Part number one is over the last twenty three years, if if we could roll back in time and, you know, you and I met twenty three years ago, right when you decide to launch this thing and, you you know, would you have envisioned it being where it’s at today?

Bryan Roth [00:51:58]:

No way. No way. Okay. In in in fact, if you ask me to envision where it’s gonna be five years from now, I’m not quite sure. You know? Okay. What what I what I would say is that it’s grown organically. You know, we Okay. Historically, we’ve never done the kind of marketing where it’s like, hey.

Bryan Roth [00:52:18]:

You’re looking for something fun to do? Come check out Geocache. We don’t do that kind of marketing. It’s almost entirely, word-of-mouth. So people will go out and play, and they’ll say, wow. I didn’t know this game existed. This is really fun. My friends took me in. Now I’m gonna bring other friends.

Bryan Roth [00:52:36]:

Hey. You know, look at what me and my family are doing. You guys should try this. And so all of a sudden, you know, what we see here is just a product of people enjoying it enough to tell other people.

Scott Cowan [00:52:46]:

Yeah. The organic growth. Alright. So one of the questions I love to ask people, and I I always have to really set the stage so you don’t take it the wrong way. In twenty three years, has there ever been an idea that you, as a company, thought was gonna be, like you’re like, oh, this is really cool. Well, this should work, and it didn’t.

Bryan Roth [00:53:09]:

You bet.

Scott Cowan [00:53:10]:

For example, I’ll I’ll give you I’ll give you I’ll set the stage. So, like, there’s a little coffee company in Seattle called Starbucks. And in the mid nineties, they had a a coffee soda called Mazagran 

. And it was a retail flop. K. It was. I actually really liked it, but it was a retail flop. But out of it came the process for creating the coffee syrup that they were were able to then put into the bottled Frappuccino’s and for Starbucks ice cream and things like that.

Scott Cowan [00:53:40]:

So Mazagran was a failure, but there was a lot of cool that came out of it. Some same sort of scenario here. Did you guys have a a an idea, a concept, and it just didn’t pencil out?

Bryan Roth [00:53:53]:

Yes. Yes. We did. In fact, we we’ve had more than a few of those. Like, we’ve spent quite a bit of time, effort, and money to build applications that we released and shut down in two months, three months because it just wasn’t doing what we thought it would be doing. And or it we discovered issues with the the nature of the platform that made it almost untenable. Like, oh, had we known this would be happening, we wouldn’t have even started this. But, you you know, we we like to say, and I’m sure it’s common phrase, like, we can only make decisions based on the available knowledge at the time.

Bryan Roth [00:54:34]:

And sometimes when you start walking down that path, you find other issues and that, you know, that require you to either adjust yourselves or push on forward. And I would say there have been cases where, you know, we we push through some adversity and, you know, felt like we were making progress, and then we had the next aspect of adversity. And, like, you know, there have been projects that have not seen the light of day because we’ve put a year and a half worth of work into them, but we just can’t get it across the finish line because there’s a fundamental challenge or, you know, resource constraints or or whatever. So we we’ve made mistakes. One of the things that I that I like to tell new employees here and I I meet with every new employee.

Scott Cowan [00:55:17]:

Okay. We

Bryan Roth [00:55:18]:

we schedule normally, it’s scheduled as at at about a half an hour, and it’ll normally last for for a bit more than half hour if we’re having a good conversation, you know, to talk about just about anything. But one of the things that I’ll say is, like, you know, what you see here is the the product of hundreds of decisions made over a lot of years, hundreds of decisions made with a certain set of values and and principles, and the fact is we’ve made more than a few mistakes. You know? It’s it’s inevitable. Absolutely. We have a mistake. We have a a mistake. We have a a sign on the wall of Jeremy’s old office, and it says, let’s make better mistakes tomorrow. And so like Starbucks, we’ve we’ve learned things.

Bryan Roth [00:56:02]:

You know, we’ve learned what not to do, and I think that, you know, there’s certainly gonna be more lessons out there for us to learn, no doubt. But if we approach it from the standpoint of we can’t sit still, we wanna keep experimenting, and if we learn a little bit from each of those lessons, well, then we’re a stronger company tomorrow than we are today.

Scott Cowan [00:56:23]:

Right. No. And and I think and you because I’m sure out of out of the a a project that didn’t see the light of day, things were learned that could be applied elsewhere down the road. Or, you know, there was there’s there’s those Lego pieces get reassembled somewhere else down the down the road. And I think when you if a company or if you don’t take risks, you’re you don’t grow. And your growth is I I’m kinda blown away, frankly, that it’s this organic nature over twenty three years and your multimillions of users.

Bryan Roth [00:56:56]:

Thanks. I really like the, the Lego analogy. I’m I’m gonna I’m gonna borrow that one, but it’s it’s very true. You know, you it’s not like these projects become a complete loss. You know? And and the reality is they’re far from a complete loss because teams learn to work together, teams learn to serve, to solve novel problems. Those building blocks, those LEGO pieces do get reassembled in in new ways.

Scott Cowan [00:57:21]:

Yeah. It’s like if you if you, you know, you go to a a garage sale, let’s just say let’s just say you go to garage sale in the Queen Anne area of Seattle, and they’ve got this box full of Lego, and they say it’s the complete death star. Right? And so it’s it and you and you believe the person, and so you buy the box, but the instructions aren’t there. And now you’re trying to put together who knows what else you’re gonna build out of those? You know, it’s supposed to be this giant sphere, but maybe you built the Eiffel Tower out of it. Who knows? Doesn’t mean you’re you know, it’s kinda fun to to fiddle if you can have a longer term attitude. But to shift this to Washington, because the we’ve talked about your company in general and and the global impact of it. In your opinion let me ask you this question. Do you I don’t know if you’re gonna know these answers, but is there are there any caches could there be a cache on Mount Rainier or because it’s a a national park, would that not be allowed?

Bryan Roth [00:58:17]:

Because it’s a national park, it’s not allowed. However Okay. There is a type of cache that we have. It’s called an Earth-cache. And we started this program many years ago with the, Geological Society of America. And the basic concept is in places of geological significance, rather than place a physical box, you can create a basically, Earth-cache is our our geology lessons. And so Okay. You go to a location and you could read the page that’ll tell you about the, you know, the the massive, glacial erratic rock that you’re standing in front of or, you know, basalt cliffs or or or an an undersea cavern or something like that.

Bryan Roth [00:59:02]:

And you they’ll give you information about it, so you learn this geology lesson and understand what it is you’re seeing, and then you get asked questions that you have to answer correctly in order to get credit for the cash fund.

Scott Cowan [00:59:17]:

So they’re all sound like school, man. I gotta say this is starting to sound like a lot like I’m kidding.

Bryan Roth [00:59:22]:

I mean, what’s interesting is is here we have people who are, like, willing to go through this educational experience in order to get a cash fund, which is kind of funny to to think about. But there are people out there who who really live for Earth-caches. And there’s there’s a different badge program you can become like, to earn your way to become an Earth-caches master, you have to have, you know, found a certain number of Earth-caches, and it’s it’s a it’s it’s a program within the program. I mean, again, it’s one of those facets

Scott Cowan [00:59:53]:

that

Bryan Roth [00:59:53]:

we could we could easily not talk about because there’s so many other things to talk about, but Earth-caching in itself is this, They’re all over the world. There’s geo geology lessons all over the world. And so if you’re passionate about geology and you’re gonna travel, go look for highly favored Earth-caches, and it’ll give you some idea of some things that you might wanna see. And it’s Okay. It is what it is.

Scott Cowan [01:00:17]:

Alright. So let’s go back. Wow. That’s that’s pretty cool. Let’s go Washington state caches off the top of your head. Any any when we talked on the phone, you mentioned one over by Hayek. So let’s let’s talk about that one first. So that was a collaboration with a movie.

Scott Cowan [01:00:37]:

Correct?

Bryan Roth [01:00:38]:

Correct. So Okay. In in 2021 so sorry. In 02/2001, really in the very early days of geocaching, we got a we twentieth Century Fox reached out to us. They were doing the Planet of the Apes movie, the old, obviously, the the 02/2001 version of that movie. And they were wondering how we can do, how we can help get the word out about the movie using geocaching. And so the basic concept was they wrote a story line about alternative primate evolution on Earth, and clues to this evolution were going to be hidden in 13 geocaches in different places around the world. And so we worked with geocache hiders in Washington state, a pretty famous geocacher known as mountain bike, and then cashers in Japan and London and Brazil, I think Los Angeles.

Bryan Roth [01:01:43]:

Anyway, 13 caches in in different places in the world, and we put them out. And each of the caches had props from the movie. So, like Okay. Actual props that they took from from the studio and they put in the caches, and that was the first to find prize. So whoever finds it, you know, gets to keep that gets to keep that prop.

Scott Cowan [01:02:01]:

Okay.

Bryan Roth [01:02:02]:

And, basically, the caches were placed. They were I think one of them was never found, and and it’s a little bit of geocaching lore, but but nobody really knows what happened to it. But over time, over the the twenty or so years, those caches went missing. Either they got stolen, they got removed, permission was no longer available for placing it at that specific area. And so when they went away oh, and and and so let me take a step back. When you find different types of caches, a traditional cache, a multistage cache, an earth cache, an event cache, you get different icons on your profile, and the website will keep track of all the different types of caches that you found. And so there are a lot of people who are interested in the stats, and they wanna be they wanna have the most Earth caches, the most traditional caches, or they wanna have fill their grid of, I want traditional caches that’s a one one, a one and a half one, a two one, a two and a half one, like, fill the entire difficulty terrain grid by finding a cache in each of those. So there’s all these mini games within the games.

Bryan Roth [01:03:11]:

But, anyway, these ape caches had a separate icon. And so in the early days, you know, if you were willing to really travel, I don’t know who has found the most ape caches. The max would be 13, and and I think the practical max is 12. Nobody found all 12. So there are people that found three, four, five, but over time, those caches went missing. And once they’re missing, they don’t get replaced. You know, if if you don’t have the cache box, it doesn’t get replaced. And so what happened was there there were two remaining caches, two remaining ape caches.

Bryan Roth [01:03:46]:

One of them is in Brazil and one of them is is in Hayek. It’s actually not on Hayek. It’s on the other side of the Snoqualmie Tunnel. And it’s called, Project Ape, because they were all called projects Project Ape, and that one is called Tunnel Of Light because you walk through the tunnel to go get it. And people travel from all over the world to find those two caches. I know a number of people who have gone to Brazil solely for the purpose of finding that cache, and I can tell you I have plans to go. I don’t have I have aspirations of doing that myself. I would like to go find the Brazil Ape cache because I have only found one here in Washington.

Bryan Roth [01:04:26]:

There was one in New York. There was one in Chicago. I just never had a chance to find them in the early days. And so now people travel from all over the world to go find those ape caches. And it’s a so that’s that’s one of in in here in the Pacific Northwest, that is a very famous cache. In fact, on Saturday, this Saturday, the Washington State Geocaching Association

Scott Cowan [01:04:51]:

Let me let me interrupt you. Let me interrupt you. So that’s just because this will probably come out after that. So let’s give the audience Okay. The date. That’ll be

Bryan Roth [01:04:59]:

September 10.

Scott Cowan [01:05:00]:

Tenth? Yeah. September so we’re referencing 09/10/2022. If you’re listening to this afterwards, the events happen. Okay.

Bryan Roth [01:05:07]:

Cool. So WSGA, Washington State Geocaching Association, is holding an event. It’s called Going Ape, and this is the eleventh year in a row that they’ve held this event. And they basically gather hundreds of people in the parking lot at Hyak, and there’s food and and games and things like that. There’s somebody in an ape costume, and then everybody essentially, oh, you know, not all at once, but but people will hike through the tunnel, go find the project ApeCache, and then come back. And it’s a big event for the geocaching community. And in years past, they’ve had, you know, 500, a thousand people at this event. This year, I think, will be a little bit smaller because normally it coincides with, midsummer, but I’m I’m planning on going this Saturday.

Bryan Roth [01:05:56]:

And, anyway, so the ape event is a very famous cache. Another very famous cache is the geocaching headquarters cache. So here at our office, we have a visitor center. People come from all over the world, and and the GC code for geocachers out there who probably know about the cache already is GCK25B. And if you enter that into the search results on our website or in the mobile app, it will show you the geocaching Headquarters Visitor Center geocache, which looks like a big treasure box. It’s got a big log book that’s been signed by thousands of people from all over the world, and there’s curiosities, there’s trinkets, there’s things to see in the HQ Visitor Center. So people you know, we talked about the original stash earlier. There’s something it’s called the the triad.

Bryan Roth [01:06:48]:

And so this is this is a triad geocoin. So this is the I’m I’m showing now the it’s a triangular geocoin. It’s got the original stash. It’s got HQ, and then it has the ape. And those are the three caches where they’ll say the three of the most famous caches in the world, if not the most famous caches in the world, and people will come to complete the triad. So they’ll travel down to Oregon to find the original stash. They’ll come to headquarters, and then they go out to Hyak to find the the project ape tunnel of light geocache.

Scott Cowan [01:07:21]:

Alright. That’s that’s crazy. Can you share with us a couple of other Washington state locate not necessarily locations, but caches that are of notoriety?

Bryan Roth [01:07:34]:

Sure. You know, there is something to mention. Let me see if I have the the page for it. There is we we did a a promotion with, Washington State Parks, a few years ago, and we created what’s called the GeoTour. And, basically, what what Washington State Parks did is they worked with us to place 100 caches in 100 state parks across the entire state. And they work with local cashers and, you know, everybody made a special effort to make it a nice series of caches. Now that the official GeoTour program and and and it was once you find 50 of them, you could turn in your passport and get a a special Geo coin, like a commemorative coin, from from Washington State Parks. If you find all hundred of them, you know, they had these rare gold geocoins, only 30 of them were available at the time.

Bryan Roth [01:08:34]:

It was just a fun way to partner with the parks to have people explore Washington State. So many of those caches still exist. And if you, you know, if your listeners look up, Washington State Park Centennial GeoTour, they could find a list to, you know, where all the parks are and and access to see where where all of those geocaches are. So there there those are some of the famous ones. I’m trying to think where else. There’s some you know, there’s 28,000 caches in Washington state in different areas. There’s

Scott Cowan [01:09:09]:

a Crazy.

Bryan Roth [01:09:10]:

Ancient Lakes has a bit of a power trail. The Ancient Lakes Trail out near, Wenatchee, I think it is, has a a power trail, and power trails are series of caches that are about generally a tenth of a mile apart. And so, it’s for people who are trying to, like they want their numbers up. So they’re gonna go find a cash code tenth of the mile, find another cash pipe. And and so I’ll I’ll tell you. I know we’re talking about Washington state, but in near Roswell, there is what’s called the ET Highway series where along this highway, there are over 2,000 geocaches placed a tenth of a mile apart. And what people will do is they’ll get a team together with a van and they’ll drive this. And they have the van door open, and one person’s driving, one person grabs the logbook, one person signs it, and they they do this, like, choreographed dance for twenty four hours to see how many they can find in twenty four hours.

Bryan Roth [01:10:10]:

One of one of my coworkers here, they set out they found 1,234 caches in twenty four hours, and they’re all expert cashers. But those are called power trails. They’re not for everybody, but it’s, again, it’s a different kind of unbelievable experience. I’ll tell I’ll tell you one more thing that’s interesting is there’s a concept called Geoart where people will hide caches in such a way that on the map, when you look at the caches, it it creates art. So in Nevada, there’s a there’s an f 16. In Long Island, there’s a lighthouse. I’m trying to remember what we have. I should really know what we have in Washington state.

Bryan Roth [01:10:54]:

But if if your users look up, like, on Google Geoart and then click on the, you know, the image search, you’ll see just countless, countless images that have been created by people using actual geocaches. And what people try and do is they’ll go out and they’ll say, instead of having it all be the the icons for the cache boxes, when you convert a cache, when you find the cache and you log it on the website or the mobile app, it becomes a smiley face in the app. And so they try and convert the art into art made out of smiley faces, and it’s just another aspect of this this

Scott Cowan [01:11:31]:

Oh, so crazy. Alright. So one of the things that we were gonna talk about I wanna is is your adventure lab.

Bryan Roth [01:11:40]:

Yes. What is Okay. So what

Scott Cowan [01:11:41]:

is the adventure lab?

Bryan Roth [01:11:43]:

So adventure lab is a relatively new platform. It’s a couple years old. And, basically, what we did was we said, if you’ve ever gone to a new city, you can download tours on your mobile phone. Like, go to Central Park, and you can do a Central Park history tour or or a Alice in Wonderland tour or whatever. And, you know, they’re it’s $24.99 for you and your family to go and and do this tour, and you’ll you know, it’s interactive and things like that. And what we recognized is that geocachers were using geocaching physical boxes to sort of bring people to special places, and wouldn’t it be interesting if we created a platform to allow geocachers to create their own and not just geocachers, but anybody to create a multimedia, multistage experience in the real world. So what we did is we we added the ability for people to using a using a builder app that’s web based for today. You could go in and you could say, at this place, and you take a picture of the place, you know, the the sword of Excalibur has been stolen in Downtown Seattle.

Bryan Roth [01:12:53]:

We need you to go to the space needle as quick as possible. And you get to the space needle and it says, hey. The sword of Excalibur has been stolen. Like, you know, here’s some information about the sword. Here’s some information about the space needle. You know, how many concrete blocks are surround the space needle? And I think it’s 21 or 24. And if you get the answer right, it says, great. You got credit for this stage.

Bryan Roth [01:13:14]:

Now we need you to go to CenturyLink, sorry, Climate Pledge Arena. And as you go, you know, to Climate Pledge Arena, the device knows where you are. And when you get close enough, it says, okay. Here’s a little history of Climate Pledge. Not so much history because it’s brand new. It used to be the key arena, whatever whatever. You know, there’s somebody waiting for you at Climate Pledge, you know, virtually, of course. Right.

Bryan Roth [01:13:37]:

We need you to answer this question to prove that you’re there. And if you answer the question, we’re gonna give you the next clue. So you can marry media, text, images, video, combined with questions and answers and location to create almost like a multistage scavenger hunt. And as a creator, I can choose to require it to be linear or it can be nonlinear. So you can find them in any order or I have to find them in order. So for a story driven adventure, maybe the creator wants me to find them in order. For a non for for, say, an art history tour of the, the UW campus, or there’s a there’s a tour on UW for in in Seattle, the the special trees of the UW campus. And it takes you to five, like, a a giant sequoia in the middle of campus, and it tells you about the tree.

Bryan Roth [01:14:26]:

You you can learn something, but you have to answer a question based on the location. And so so we put this tool. We started by saying, alright. We know geocachers can do this, but we really wanna give access to everybody. Like, who has a story to tell? Who wants to share their hometown history or or, you know, special places where they grew up? You know, there’s a anyway, so the the the options are are kind of endless. So we gave geocachers to start the ability to go create these experiences. And as of today, I think I looked yesterday, there’s 48,000 of these worldwide. So if you download the app on iOS or Android, it’s called Adventure Lab, you can create a free account, and and almost every major city in the world has these now because, again, it’s a globally distributed community.

Bryan Roth [01:15:20]:

They’ve they’re comfortable with the tool set, and so they’ve built these multistage experiences for people to go out and enjoy. And you don’t have to find a box. You’re not finding physical items. You are going to locations. You’re consuming media, and then you have to answer a question, either a multiple choice question, a fill in the blank question in order to get credit. And what’s interesting is for the people for whom stats are important, every state every stage of these experiences counts as a point within geocaching. They count as lab caches. And so it was a way to engage geocaches with the platform, but, you know, we’re we’re hoping to have 50,000 of these worldwide before the end of this year.

Bryan Roth [01:16:06]:

And That’s crazy. They’re free to play. So, you know, anybody can go and and, you know, download the app and and go see what experiences there are nearby. You know, it’s it’s sort of a it’s a little bit more accessible, I think, than traditional geocaching because, you know, you know, you don’t have the challenge of finding something or whatever, but you’re you’re having to answer questions, and it’s based on location. And there is some navigation that that’s involved, But we’re seeing quite a bit of adoption, and and people are really enjoying the platform. And I I’ve seen people creating absolutely incredible things with it. There’s a, the Antietam Battlefield in I think think it’s in Virginia or West Virginia. I’m not a % sure.

Bryan Roth [01:16:49]:

But they they created this adventure where it it was the site of this old civil war battlefield, and they dressed in civil war costumes, and they videoed themselves saying, like, hey. You’re at this location. Like, you know, you’re a spy and you’re, like, crossing enemy lines. I’m, like, we need you to go to this location next. And so it’s just interactive. Like, they put so much time and effort into it. They’re not getting paid to do this, but they’re bringing people to this battlefield, and they’re giving them a cool experience. And so I was just I was in Prague earlier this year, and I went to look and say, hey.

Bryan Roth [01:17:25]:

I wonder how many adventures are here in Prague. And Prague The Czech Republic or or Chechnya now is is a very active country for geocaching, and so I knew I was gonna find some. But if I tell you that the default view of the map, I couldn’t see the map because it was covered with adventure lab pins on the map. It was that many that were available, and there were some cool tours. There were some, you know, learn about the architecture in Prague, there’s some story driven adventures there. But now, like, pick pick a city and for the most part, there are adventures. There’s the I wanna say there’s six or seven, maybe four or five in in Cape Town in South Africa. They’re in

Scott Cowan [01:18:07]:

So cool.

Bryan Roth [01:18:08]:

They’re all over Germany. There’s a I’m I’m sure there’s one in Chelan. There has to be at least one in Chelan, but I I’m

Scott Cowan [01:18:15]:

gonna go check I’ll I’ll I’m gonna go check this out. This this is this is your so we’re gonna shift gears away from geocaching to jokingly the important things of the call. Just kidding. Coffee. Are you a well, you’ve been drinking coffee during this recording. Right? I

Bryan Roth [01:18:32]:

have been drinking coffee during this recording.

Scott Cowan [01:18:34]:

And that’s why we don’t

Bryan Roth [01:18:35]:

It’s my first cup in the morning, and then I allow myself one cup in the afternoon or evening depending on how caffeinated I’d like to be.

Scott Cowan [01:18:46]:

Where do you like to go? Where’s your go to place for coffee?

Bryan Roth [01:18:50]:

I’ll tell you there’s there’s three go to places for coffee. There’s the one that you mentioned earlier, which which we don’t have to focus on. It’s all good. There’s but but I can tell you that here in Fremont, we have a coffee shop named Milstead & Co. that is very, very highly regarded. They do a wonderful job. They take their their coffee extremely seriously. They’ve been in this neighborhood for many years now, and, yeah, it’s it’s just wonderful. I know we we have this thing.

Bryan Roth [01:19:25]:

It’s called signal awards. Signal is a frog. It’s our mascot, and he’s got an antenna, and that’s, you know, we’ve we have we have, I wanna say, we had eight or nine mascot costumes that are in different locations around the world for all the big events. And people put the costume on, and they go and they take pictures with signal, and families and kids like them. And we have, stuffed animals that people will dress up and attach to their backpacks. Anyway, we have the signal awards here at headquarters where if one of your coworkers does something sort of extra special, helps you out with a project that, you know, goes goes above and beyond, you know, the the normal day, you can you fill out a form and you say, hey. I wanna acknowledge this person for doing this thing. And every month, we have an all company meeting, and we draw three names.

Scott Cowan [01:20:12]:

Okay.

Bryan Roth [01:20:12]:

Three signal awards, and we read them aloud to the company just as a share. You know, here’s this goodwill that’s being exchanged, and the sender and the recipient both get a gift card to Milstead & Co. And I can tell you they’re highly coveted because the the coffee is really it it’s fantastic. And then the other place that I go, there’s, it’s Queen Anne Coffee Co, and it’s up on Queen Anne. And I like that place because they have really good sandwiches. The coffee is great, and it’s, just a few blocks from my house. So it’s it’s very accessible.

Scott Cowan [01:20:46]:

So what’s your coffee drink of choice?

Bryan Roth [01:20:51]:

Normally, I would say I will do a nonfat mocha. However, I really try and make that a special treat because it’s just it’s a lot of calories and a lot of sugar. And so what I will normally have is, like, an Americano with a little bit of 2% milk. Okay. That’s, that’s kinda where I go. Nothing nothing too fancy. How about you? What’s your drink of choice?

Scott Cowan [01:21:15]:

I’m black coffee or espresso? I I like I just I yeah. Black coffee is probably my go to. I did a a series of of articles, a hundred cups of coffee in a hundred days across the state. And And I just went to coffee shops and had black coffee and talked about the shop for I didn’t complete the series. I I burned out, and I need to go back and re re-complete it. But it was a lot of fun to go and just, you know, try a coffee shop. And I wouldn’t go this was not drive thrus. This was coffee shops where I could go in and sit down.

Scott Cowan [01:21:47]:

Not excluding drive thrus, but just sitting in a coffee shop.

Bryan Roth [01:21:52]:

So it’s funny. We have we have another project, that has been out, I don’t know, for fifteen years now. It’s called Waymarking, w a y m a r k I n g. Waymarking.com is the website. And the concept is, users will create categories of locations, and then other players around the world will fill in specific instances of that category. And so what I mean is there’s a category called independent coffee shops. And it’s Okay. Coffee shops that are not Starbucks or, you know, the main brands.

Bryan Roth [01:22:27]:

It’s literally, you know, maybe they not Dunkin’ Donuts. It’s it’s maybe they have one or two coffee shops. There’s a category for dog friendly restaurants. There’s a category for, you know, independent food chains. There’s a category. So there’s there’s over a thousand categories of locations. There are over 1,000,000 waymarks that have been submitted by the community over the years. But very early on, people decided to become administrators of categories.

Bryan Roth [01:22:57]:

And so I have been the administrator of the independent coffee shops category, I don’t know, for twelve years or so. And what’s really cool is that people are submitting their independent coffee shops from Slovenia or from Finland or from all these countries. And if you go into the into the Waymarking website, you can see all of these coffee shops, you know, on the map around the world. You can read about them. It’s got metadata, so it’ll say, you know, what are the hours of operation. So anybody who submits a coffee shop has to submit a picture, the name, the coordinates, what are the hours of operation, what type of coffee do they serve, You know, do they allow pets? Things like that. Is there a drive through? And then those submissions get reviewed by the administrators to say, does this meet our category requirements? And if it does, it gets published. There’s a category for haunted attractions.

Bryan Roth [01:23:49]:

There’s a category for locations that books have been written about. It’s it’s anyway, it’s a

Scott Cowan [01:23:55]:

That’s crazy.

Bryan Roth [01:23:56]:

It’s pretty crazy.

Scott Cowan [01:23:58]:

I had a so I’m a huge baseball fan, and there’s a a summer league collegiate player league here in in Oregon, Washington, and Alberta and British Columbia. There’s 16 teams in the league. And the commissioner of the league, his name is Rob Neyer. And Rob’s based out of Portland. Rob, you may have heard of if you if you’re a sports guy at all, he Rob was a writer for ESPN for a number of years, published book author and all this stuff. Anyway, Rob was a guest on the show. We’re talking about coffee and Rob and I said, Rob, so coffee. And he goes, well, Portland.

Scott Cowan [01:24:30]:

He goes, I’m a Portland guy. I’ll send you my spreadsheet. And I just started thinking, what? So about a week later, he sent me a spreadsheet of approximately 350 Portland area coffee shops with his notes. And I’m just thinking this this you just described Rob Neyer. But the guy’s got 350 Portland and it’s like, you know, something like nice ambiance. The latte was you know, hitting these I’m like, I love coffee, and I don’t document it. But this guy’s gone, and he’s got a a, you know, a Google Sheet that he takes with him everywhere. He fills it out.

Scott Cowan [01:25:03]:

So that’s kind of a a a kick on this. Last question I’m gonna let you go. When you’re not involved in the geocaching world, what do you and the family like to do for fun and excitement as as as it pertains to say around Seattle area, Washington state?

Bryan Roth [01:25:18]:

Well, we have a dog. Who she’s a nine and a half year old, Portuguese water dog, and we we like to go for a lot of walks. You know, we walk around. We, you know, I walk to and from work, and so we really try not to drive a lot. And we’ll go down to the Seattle Waterfront and walk along Centennial Park. It’s just so beautiful down there. Or we’ll walk around Queen Anne or we’ll go to, Green Lake or or Gasworks Park. You know, there’s there’s just so much wonderful nature around to experience.

Bryan Roth [01:25:50]:

So trying to get outside and and and just in enjoy time outside is really one of the the biggest pastimes that we have.

Scott Cowan [01:25:59]:

Awesome. Speaking of dogs, my seventh he’s seven months old as of today. You now are hearing him. He’s telling me it’s time to go outside. So, Brian, I’m gonna let you go because we’ve taken a lot of your time, and this has been amazing. And I know we haven’t even really scratched the surface. But where can my audience go to find out more about geocaching and all that you guys are doing?

Bryan Roth [01:26:22]:

Your audience is welcome to visit us at geocaching.com. You can download the geocaching app to get started, or you can also download the Adventure Lab app to get started. And it’s all, it’s all free. You do not have to pay for a premium membership if you don’t want one. As you get into it, you know, there’s there’s plenty of reasons to to do that. And and what I could say is I I mentioned earlier, we started it was $30 a year for a premium membership. Here we are twenty something years later, and it’s still $30 a year. So anybody That’s great.

Bryan Roth [01:26:53]:

That’s not necessary. Feel free to try it out. And and whatever you do, find a reason to get outside and and enjoy the world around us.

Scott Cowan [01:27:02]:

Brian, thank you so much for for taking the time to sit with me today. I appreciate it.

Bryan Roth [01:27:06]:

My pleasure. Thank you so much for having me on the show, Scott. I I really appreciate that as well.