For those of you that know us you know that we have become OBSESSED with geocaching. Since we started caching in February we have found 363 caches; 162 of these have been in the month of May!!! For those of you who don’t know: geocaching is a worldwide addiction in which you scavenger hunt. You go online to www.geocaching.com and find coordinates to a hidden item, plug these cords into your GPS and go looking for the cache. Once you find it you sign the log in the container then go online and say that you were there. Some caches are large enough to contain tradable items and most of them are geared toward children which suits me fine as I take them into school for the children. The cache can be anything from a small container the size of your thumbnail to an entire storage unit. The storage unit size is extremely rare, most of the caches range from the thumbnail size to ammo cans. The tiny ones are good for busy areas such as business districts and bridges while the large ones are good for the woods.
Geocaching has led Mike and I to some absolutely beautiful areas – parks that we didn’t know existed, beautiful hiking trails, and some very scenic wooden bridges.
What got us started? I had read about it in a magazine shortly after Mike and I started dating but since we weren’t near each other it never took off. Late last year I saw that a friend posted pictures of her geocaching experiences back in NY and I started looking at it again. Mike and I signed up but we were waiting for one of the girls from work to go caching again so we could join her and see what it was all about. Since we could never find a date that worked we decided to just try it on our own. We used our car GPS and found 2 that were very close to our house. Mike’s interest was sparked and he began to look into a little more. We started off very slowly but within the month we were spending one day a week caching; in fact, we each chose the area we wanted to cache at for our birthdays! We have met many cachers since then, in fact we go to get togethers each month. We have also gotten a few people into geocaching. We were talking to my cousin Dorothy and her husband and they started caching shortly after and I think they have some of their family into it now. Mike talked to his friend Keith and he has taken his kids out and they are thinking of placing their 1st cache. We also got my Aunt Reba and her husband into it and they joined us for a weekend and found about 30.
For the most part we have taken day trips, but there was a gettogether the 1st weekend in May in Thomson, GA. Mile and I decided to go and camp for the weekend and attended many events, found some great caches and made a lot of friends. While there Mike won tickets to a blues festival the following weekend so we went back and camped again, grabbed a lot of caches and attended the festival for a couple of hours. Last weekend we only got one cache and that was a kayak one that nobody had found and we really wanted to be the FirstToFind. This weekend we decided to visit my aunt in Dalton, GA since we had a 3-day weekend. She is only 4 ½ hours from us, but we don’t make the trip up that way very often. We decided to head up to Chatanooga, Tennessee for a day as we were going to be about 45 minutes away and we really want to get geocaches in EVERY state. We looked online a few days before going and realized that GeoWoodstock, the big kahoona of all geocaching events was going to be in Bell Buckle, TN the same weekend and it was only about an hour past Chatanooga!! At first we weren’t going to go but some friends convinced us to go as it would count as a mega-event and would be a good time. So, we did some caching with my aunt and her husband that morning and then headed out to Tennessee. We made it to the event and walked around the vendors and decided that we should really get some more geocoins while we were there and we ran into some people that we knew from Georgia. All in all it was a good time and we were able to get some caches in the area.
So, what is a geocoin?
There are 2 different items that you can pick up and move along from cache to cache and log online where it has been. Mike and I own several of these and some of them have missions (such as staying in state parks, going from cache to cache but staying near water) and others just want to visit a lot of caches. It is interesting to see where they end up, we currently have one in Rochester, NY and others that are still around us. So, we decided to buy a ‘grab bag’ which they said would have 3 trackable coins and some other small items. For $20 we got a Found It smiley face coin that had been printed wrong (wrong colors and could not be sold and I thought this was unique), an Appalacial Trail New Hampshire coin, and a cute compass coin. We also got a few small pins and a $1 coupon for their store so were got a small geocaching container. Not a bad deal!!
Mike and I have also placed a few caches in our area; there are 2 near Mike’s work, one near the house and one in a shopping center in our area. They are really fun to watch online to see who has found them.
Now we always keep our eyes open for new hiding containers and great geo-hiding places. This has been a great way to spend time together and it keeps us busy.
We have definitely come a long way. We started with our car GPS and printed out all of the pages from the internet. Then Mike found out how to put all of the logs into our GPS system eliminating the need to print every page but they still took us awhile to find as we had no compass only the cords and we would track down one then follow that number until we got to the other. This was hard but extremely difficult in large forests. Now Mike has picked up 2 hand held systems and this has made caching so much easier. We got a taste of these at the Thomson Treasure Hunt and knew we needed to upgrade… Mike’s actually holds all of the log information so while he is driving and following the car GOS I am getting the two handhelds ready and reading the description outloud. Life is good!!!
We left on this treasure quest around 4pm Friday and will be returning around 11:40 Monday night – and I need to get up at 5:30 tomorrow morning!! After caching all weekend with my aunt and her husband we decided to take a different route home and cache in as many different counties in Georgia and South Carolina as possible. We started on this longer route, zig-zagging through the mountains only to find that they weren’t in the GPS system after only getting 2!! Oh no!! So, I was trying to follow Mike’s direction for the computer while he drove and when they still weren’t showing up we tried to find a place with free WIFI; apartment complexes have proven to be good places for this in case you are ever in need. However, there was still a problem and Mike couldn’t get the local caches into the GPS. So, we decided just to head home. It really was a great view driving through the mountains and I knew we need to go back there to geocache and hike.
Now keep in mind, not everything in the wild is wonderful. On Saturday I saw my 1st tick. Yep, it was attached to Mike’s neck!! We had been in the woods that morning and once we stopped in town I saw something on his neck and when I tried to brush it away it wouldn’t so I had to pull it off of him. Now I had never seen a tick before but this seemed to fit the description of a tick. Later that day, I had one crawling on the book I was reading so I put it aside and had my aunt and her husband ID it and sure enough it was a tick. Today we were walking on a sidewalk going to a cache in Ringgold, GA when Mike stopped and pointed down, right next to the sidewalk was a snake and I had just walked within a few feet of it!!! My aunt’s husband ID’d it as a water moccasin which is poisonous.
But don’t let these things get in your way, try geocaching!!!
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