Geocaching

Adam, Addy and I found a fun new hobby recently - geocaching! Here's the deal - someone hides a treasure box (aka: geocache) with random things in it - ie: small toy figurines, cheap CDs, pens, candy etc. and then enters the latitude and longitude coordinates online at the geocaching website. Then someone else (usually completely unrelated to the geocache placer) finds the listing on the website, and armed with GPS, tries to find the geocache. Upon finding the box, the geocache hunter leaves a small token and takes one item in return. Most of the time, there is a log book at the treasure site as well, so the hunter notes that he/she was there. Then, the geocache box is replaced by the hunter just as it was - so that the fun can continue for others!

We went out on Saturday afternoon and found two geocaches and gave up on a third. We found the first one relatively easily (which has been there since 2002!) and left one of Adam's super cool origami pieces. There was a child's hat in the geocache - knitted to look like the Microsoft logo which was just perfect for Addy, so we took that in return.

Can you see the geocache?

The official game piece!

Addy and her new hat!

Then we went on to the second geocache - it was a little harder to find, but we found it under the branches of a large tree. It was a 'log only' geocache, so we left our name on the log and moved on to the next one.

Our second geocache - only 2 inches by 2 inches

The third one escaped us completely (see our map/route below). We were losing the light and the GPS satellite was having a hard time finding us through all of the trees, so we temporarily gave up on that one. But we'll be back - I'm sure of it!

The trusty navigator!!

Our route to find the third geocache. Luck just wasn't with us!!

The website rates the sites on difficulty and terrain, so it was easy to find hunts that were appropriate to do with Addy. It was a fun way to spend a few hours. I guess even scavenger hunts can go high tech!