Last Week's Adventures ~ Part 4

As Mom said in her post on Tuesday, on Memorial Day we went geocaching! This was a first for the Girotti family, although we have talked about doing it before. Now that we have a GPS, there was no reason we couldn't try it, so....WE DID! :)

If you aren't familiar with geocaching, here's a short blurb about it from the website.

Geocaching (pronounced geo-cashing) is a worldwide game of hiding and seeking treasure. A geocacher can place a geocache anywhere in the world, pinpoint its location using GPS technology and then share the geocache's existence and location online. Anyone with a GPS device can then try to locate the geocache. 

On Sunday night, Dad gave me the task of figuring out what caches we would look for and how to enter them in our GPS. I typed in our zip code, and there were hundreds of caches in our area to choose from!  They all have ratings for both terrain difficulty and difficulty of finding, as well as an indication of the general size of the container.

I picked out 6 different caches, entered the co-ordinates into our GPS, and unfortunately did not bother deciphering the extra encrypted clues on each one. (They were supposedly rated EASY on the difficulty scale...who needs clues when it will obviously be easy to find???)

The next morning we got going, headed to the first on the list - a mere mile or so down the road. Each cache is named, and from the name we already knew where it would be...in a nearby church's cemetery. We all piled out of the car, eager to find our first cache. Walking through the gravestones, the GPS showed that we were getting closer and closer to the end point. The computerized voice announced that we had arrived when we reached the grave of someone called Nichols.

We started hunting around, looking for anything that might possibly be what we were looking for. A GPS may not be completely accurate, so you normally just have to look in the general vicinity, not the exact spot it says. We searched for a good while, looking around trees, along the fences, and anywhere else that looked promising. We finally had to admit defeat.  

This was discouraging, but we figured that surely we'd find the next one. Next up - the local park. All of us except Mom piled out again, starting off along the edge of the lake. This time, our stubborn little GPS never announced our arrival, and we just wandered all around the general area. Wouldn't you know it, there were dozens of ivy covered trees right where it was supposed to be! We looked high and low, stuck our hands into knotholes and in crevices, and once again turned up empty.

Two in a row - failures. No matter, our spirits weren't TOO much dampened as we headed toward our third location at a local ice cream store. We pulled up in the empty parking lot and started to search the stone wall bordering the back. Yet again, no sign of anything!

At this point, we were getting a little bit annoyed. What was wrong with us?! Right across the road from the ice cream shop was a street that we headed down, driving to the location of the final 3 caches. They were located in another park, but one we'd never been to before.

The road was not very suitable for our big van. The description on this cache advised us to use caution on the road and said that 4-wheel drive would soon be required. Hmmm. The road finally dead-ended, and we parked. We saw a sign for a hiking trail, and since the title of the next cache included the word "Overlook," naturally we thought if we walked down the path we'd soon arrive there.

 

This time both Dad and Mom stayed in the car as the 3 of us intrepid explorers set off into the woods. After a few minutes, I checked the GPS and gave the rest of them the heads up that we weren't getting any closer to where we wanted to be. In fact, it almost looked like we were getting farther away. No one paid any attention to me. :( They thought surely the trail would eventually curve back around.

After another little while, I announced that we were definitely walking farther and farther away from our intended destination; however, we were gaining ground on an entirely different cache. We decided to go ahead and look for that one while we were so close.

This one said we arrived when we reached a fork in the trail. The only problem was that we were in the middle of a very overgrown forest. Leaves, fallen logs, vines, and probable poison ivy did not make hunting very easy.

Finally admitting defeat, we headed back to the car. Getting back, I decided to stay in the car since I was getting quite hot, sweaty, and discouraged, while Hannah and Jonathan decided to go ahead and try hiking in the opposite direction to find the original overlook.

They took one cell phone, and the three of us in the car had another. A little while later, we called and said not to be much longer, as we needed to be heading to a Memorial Day cookout lunch with friends. They said they had reached the overlook, and there seemed to be a road that led there. Dad drove around, found what looked like could be the road, and we bumped and shook our way up the hill.

Unfortunately, someone was coming down the very narrow road at the same time. After safely squeezing by, we reached the overlook to find two smiling siblings. Correctly deducing they must have found something, we all got out and went to look at the long sought geocache.

Here we are, happy to have finally found one! In each box, there is a log book where people sign their name and the date they found the cache. In the ones that are large enough, there are also little trinkets that you are allowed to take as long as you put something back in of equal or greater value.

Jonathan signed the log, and I put in a keychain and took out a small plastic chip clip. We carefully put the box back exactly where we found it, and rushed to the last location a very short way down the road, hoping we'd find it quickly. No luck on the last one, however, and we headed home with only 1 find out of 6 tries. 

It seems as if people can really get into geocaching, and there's a whole world of terms and lingo that we don't understand right now. One thing I saw is that all non-geocachers are called muggles, and it's essential that you can't have muggles watching you find the cache or tell them about where a cache is located. So technically I might be breaking the rules with this post, although hopefully I was vague enough so I didn't give any top secret info to all you muggles out there. :)

All in all, it was a lot of fun, and hopefully we can try it again soon. Although this time I'm going to decipher those clues first.

~Sarah 

Comments

[Bet]

Very interesting, Sarah! I'm interested to see/hear about those clues. If you came to see me one of these days, you could go geocaching in SC! Doesn't that sound like fun?! :)

[Tammy]

Sorry I haven't been able to leave comments.Chris fixed one wierd thing on the computer and here I am.

Sounds like everyone has been busy.We have friends here,The Blackwoods and we cal them the Geocach family.

Still in Wake Forest-thanks for the birthday card.