I recently got back from a short vacation with friends and family in Hawaii. Although I’ve been part of the LizardTech Engineering team for many years, I’m relatively new to the geospatial industry, so you’ll forgive me if wax a little misty here.

One of the things that made this trip particularly memorable for me was geocaching all over the Big Island.

My wife and I found one cache that brought us through an ancient petroglyph site. Others of us found a cache placed by a 6th grade class near a 100-foot seawall. There were others… all of them at sites conveniently close to us but uncrowded and beautiful. I’m grateful to the locals who posted these, becoming private tour guides and sharing their intimate knowledge of beautiful places close to their homes and their hearts.

I’m continually struck by how small a place the world has become. From our living room at home, we get online and look at the road from the airport to the rental home we’ll be staying in. The aerial image shows the roadway, the round-abouts, the beach, the pool and the rooftop over our suite. When we arrive in Hawaii – 2000 miles from home – we walk, for the first time, through a brush trail looking for a 10-inch package and find it as easily as (well, with no more frustration than) if it were a box of Christmas lights in the garage.

This is just the fun side of it, but “better living through geospatial technology” is a worthy goal and we at LizardTech are proud to pursue it.