Hide and Seek for adults AKA GeoCaching

This past Monday or Tuesday, I was reading posts on this motorcycle forum I belong to, and someone had posted about "GeoCaching". I used to drive a Geo, so I was intrigued, only to find out it has nothing to do with Geo's. :)
If you have never heard of this, it's a treasure hunt......for real. Here's how it works:

You create an account on a website, like geocaching.com (it's free), and that's when you get hints/clues/coordinates to find the "cache". A cache is anything the hider wants it to be. It could be a tupperwear container painted green or black, it could be a film container in a plastic bag, or even a matchbox in a bag. It can be as small as they want it to be (microcache) to as big as they want it to be. In these 'caches' could be anything, but usually they all have a "log book". Some have little knick-knacks in them, some "tracking" items to keep track of how far around the world they travel, etc. And yes.....these things are hidden IN PUBLIC. It's cool.
Once you have an account created, you NEED to have some sort of GPS....handheld ones work the best. I have the Garmin ETrex that my wife got me for Christmas one year when I fish the big lakes...(I DO get lost and this has saved my butt many times).

Using your GPS, you punch in the coordinates you get from the website, and off you go. If you find the "cache", it's suggested you sign the log book with time and date, who you are on the website, and if you want to leave them a message. Then if the cache has little toys/knick-knacks/SWAG in it, and you want to take something from there, you can, as long as you put something in. Once you're finished for the day, you log back into your account online and log everything you did. It's pretty cool to see how many people have found the same thing you have, and where they're all from, etc.

So, this peaked my interest knowing I have a GPS, and I decided to try this this weekend. But my impatience got the best of me, and yesterday (Friday) while at work, I found a "cache" online that was hidden real close to the radio station. Actually, according to my GPS, it was .32 miles from here. :) On my lunch hour, I grabbed Adam (night time guy on Magic) and said, "c'mon, we're going for a walk in the woods to find something". He said, "what are we looking for?" I said, "I don't know, and that's going to be the fun of it". I explained what we were doing on the way down the block, and next thing you know, we're walking into the woods. The GPS was taking us little by little to the location of this unknown prize. Let me tell ya, the walk in the woods was refreshing and a nice break from the Friday mayhem, but what made it even cooler, was when the GPS got us to "Ground Zero". We were now standing in an area in the woods of about a 50 foot radius, and there was nothing around us but tons of leaves, trees and rocks. Seriously...NOTHING but woods. So Adam starts kicking leaf piles, and I'm looking for hollow trees, and we still can't seem to find this "cache".


So we are standing there just looking around, and I notice this HUGE rock. This rock had moss all over the top of it, and I noticed none of the other rocks had moss. I pointed to the rock, and Adam says, "huh, yeah right, it'll take 3 of us to lift that thing". I tapped on the top and it made a "thunk thunk thunk" sound. Both our eyes lit up....it was hollow....it was NOT a rock. I lifted it up (easily mind you because it was made out of foam), and sure enough, underneath was an ammo can. Inside the can was a huge log book with tons of signatures, and LOTS of 'knick-knacks'. I immediately signed the book with the comment, "GREAT CAMOFLAGE!!!" I also read back to the beginning of the book to find out this cache was hidden in May of 2005. It's been there for over 4 years.....I find that amazing!!! I didn't root through the can because we were on our lunch break and we had to get back to work, but I did leave a bottle opener in there that I took off my keychain. It was SUPER fun, and the adrenaline rush we got when we found it was the same feeling as when a fish takes your bait ice fishing.

Needless to say, I have printed out a bunch of different locations all around my area, and a friend will be coming over Sunday for us to go on our adventure. I have a feeling I'm really going to enjoy this new hobby. Hiking, exploring, being outdoors, AND getting a material reward for it......good times!!! If you want to get more details on GeoCaching....check out GeoCaching.com.

As always, thanks for reading, and thanks for listening to Magic 93. Hopefully I can find my way out of the parking lot!