Today, I had my first "hard core" experience with geocaching. My aunt and uncle are fanatically about this "lifestyle" and have wanted to expose my husband and I to the joys of this experience for quite a while. So, today, we fianlly got together for a day of geocaching fun.
To begin, let me explain the idea of geocaching for those who don't know. Essentially, geocaching is a global Easter egg hunt for grown ups. You look up "caches" and let use your GPS device to navigate to the location in which the cache is hidden. Once you arrive at the location of the cache, you explore the area, moving rocks, bushes, and sticks until you uncover the cache. Caches are usually camoflauged to allow them to blend in and they usually are either a film canister, a small pill bottle, or something like that. Once you find the cache, you open it up, collect any trinkets inside, replace those trinkets with some of your own, sign the "finder's log" and replace the cache for the next person to find. Some caches are easy to find and some are more difficult. There are caches in parking lots, parks, creeks, cemetaries, fields, forests... pretty much everywhere. Some are called "park and grabs" which means that you can just park, find the cache quickly, and leave again. Others take several minutes to find. Most are small but some are "micro" or "nano" caches and these seem to be hardest. Apparently, some times people make a cache look like something else, like a piece of a tree or a screw and then it is really hard to find it! So, this is geocaching.
Now, let me set the scene of the day for you. We arrive at Starbucks to meet my aunt and uncle and when they arrive, I observe my uncle in a T-shirt that says, "I (heart) Geocaching." Oh, and they also have a geocaching bumper sticker on their car. Oh, yeah, it's going to be an adventure. Next thing I know, we are in the parking lot of the Starbucks looking around a gigantic rock to find a "quick cache" in the parking lot before beginning our real adventure. And, so, the day went on from there in this type of fashion.
Here's the thing I learned about geocaching today. While looking for a cache, people (and actually, you) will do things that any sane person (and you, on a normal day) would never do when not looking for a cache. And, you will do it happily and willingly. Example: today, we pulled off the road, walked through a field, hiked through poison ivy, and dug around an overgrown tree for 30 minutes to find a "micro" cache that looked like a screw in a tree branch. Then, we sat in our car while we watched a police officer almost arrest a hitchhiker who just happened to drop a bag of "nothing" immediately before being stopped by the officer. My aunt actually called 911 to tell them that the man dropped a bag before being stopped so dispatch could tell this to the officer. She told him we had pulled over to pull stickers out of our shoes and this is why we were on the side of the road. Cause, um, how do you explain to 911 that you were actually geocaching.
Other things that you will do while geocaching that you would never otherwise do include wandering through parking lots digging around lamp posts, walking through a creek bed sticking your hands in ANY hole you find in the rock face, and picking up sticks and rocks to look underneath them. Um, see, generally I try to avoid encouraging snakes to find me, and yet, today I found myself happily inviting them to come visit me when I disturb their hiding holes.... crazy.
And here's the craziest part of it all. It's so much fun! Now that I am home, clean, and safe, I find myself thinking about all of the places where something might be hidden without me even knowing it. And, I feel quite accomplished for having such a fun adventure today. The best part of all of it is that I got to spend the day with some of my favorite people laughing and searching while hanging out in the great outdoors and I thinking about nothing other than finding the next cache. What a fun and peaceful day.
I can't wait to go again!
