When Vernon Wright first purchased his Global Positioning System (GPS), it was to help avoid getting lost in the timber on elk hunting trips. When his daughter wanted to borrow it for geocaching, a form of treasure hunting using GPS, he got his first introduction to the activity, and as a result, he developed enthusiasm for another hobby.

“It got me outside. I’m an outdoors person, and it was something to fill the time between hunting season,” says Mr. Wright, who works as an electrical projects manager at Nestle Purina.

Mr. Wright, along with fellow geocacher Steve Allen and a few others have organized the first ever Jesse James Cache Bash on Sept. 27 at Messick Park in Savannah, Mo. (which, if you are geocaching, is located at N 39 56.495 W 094 50.375, in case you wanted to know).

Mr. Allen, a St. Joseph city inspector who considers himself a “diehard geocacher,” says the event is expected to bring in between 50 to 100 people from a four-state region. The event is free and open to participants of any age who own a GPS.

Registration starts at 11 a.m., with a potluck lunch from noon to 1 p.m. After participants are given the coordinates of the 10 caches within a five-mile radius, they’ll be off to retrieve them for three games.

Geocachers will try to collect five cards to make a royal flush for the Gambler’s Five-Card Straight Caches and chips for the Poker Chips caches, which participants can trade in for prizes. Since this is a Jesse James-themed event, they also will be hunting down a key to the Jesse James strongbox, which contains more prizes.

There’s no telling what caches contain what items. A geocacher may get a poker chip one minute and a king playing card the next. But that won’t stop them from trying to win every event.

“These people just love to hunt caches,” Mr. Allen says. “Most people will want to do all of them.”

The people involved in the geocaching event mainly interact through www.geocaching.com, and many will meet each other for the first time Sept. 27. They also have different reasons for doing it. Some like to find the most creative way to create a geocache. Other take pride in being the first to find one, finding the most or the places the search takes them. But everyone has fun.

“It’s kind of a way to get together, share ideas, meet each other, put faces with (online) names,” Mr. Allen says. “It’s a family of people with the same social interest.”

Lifestyles reporter Blake Hannon can be reached at blakehannon@npgco.com