I first learned of geocaching from an internet friend, Theta Brentnall, who lives in California and travels frequently with her husband, Gerry, in Cleo, their RV. At many stops they geocache, go in search of "treasures" hidden by others. Once discovered, the finder signs the log that is in the cache, and then returns the parcel to the same hiding place for the next person to find. These coordinately of these caches are noted on the geocaching web site and can be plugged into GPS-equipped tools to aid in the search.
The weather here has improved to the point I can go out and walk again. Scurrying along the same old road, past the same houses can be done quickly, but it's also boring. I hit upon the idea that I could walk and search for something and the time would pass quickly and I'd have a goal. I don't have to do it every day, probably won't, but it would be fun to do with Brandon and Sophia, and Dawn and Bob if they're not at work.
Today is Easter Sunday and the weather was forecast to be sunny and 70. Perfect to try geocaching if the kids, Dawn and/or Bob were up to it. There are three caches in Jackson Bog, two of them along the shore of Shady Hollow Lake. And that's where we went.
Brandon had loaded the coordinates of "Make a Wish" and "Pride Rock" on his iPhone and acted as our guide, selecting the proper offshoot to take when the trail forked. The first location was "Make a Wish" and the clue was in code with the solver beneath it. Decoded, it read, "Look inside stump at ground level. Cache is a pill container painted black." There were two stumps in the area. The hole under the first was empty. At the second stump the first hole checked was also empty; the second, cache found! We laughed at our success, signed the tiny log inside the container, snapped pictures and then returned the container to its hiding place.
That find happened so quickly into our search that we immediately headed on to find the second cache. This hint said "Off the beaten path melon size rock." A second hint when decoded said, "Look for a rock on a log," Simple enough. But there were lots of trees and many were horizontal. We made our way through sticker bushes, over fallen trees and around thickets without finding the melon-size rock. Obviously it wasn't where we expected it to be. Then we looked on the other side of the trail, and found it right away. Two searches, two successes!
The rock, found.
The cache contained several items, including a special travel bug.
Signed the log book on behalf of all of us and Bob left $1 bill.
We planned to hike back to the car over the Bog's boardwalk, but failed to find it and were too tired and hungry to keep looking.
Our finds have been logged on the geocaching web page. Some people have thousands. We have two. But there are many more in the area and we will be out searching again soon! And time permitting when any of us are out of town, sites there can be searched as well.
