12 August 08 - 12:17
Geocaching
Back in 2002, my good friend, the late Pat Walker, introduced me to the hobby called geocaching. This is treasure hunting for those of us who like electronic gadgets--in this case a GPS system. Basically, people hide containers of stuff and post the GPS coordinates to the Internet; then you go look for it and log the results of your efforts. You can learn more about it at www.geocaching.com. Dave wasn't interested then and we all soon drifted to other things.This year, at the Escapade in
Gillette, Wyoming, Dave and I attended a seminar on geocaching.
Dave was more interested this time. He dug out our GPS and
entered the coordinates for local caches hidden by the seminar
presenters. But, we never actually went looking for any of
them--it ws just too hot to want to go walking outside.
A
few days ago we started thinking again about geocaching.
It's not as hot here in North Dakota. So we went to the
geocaching website and entered coordinates for some caches to look
for.
The first one Dave picked was in the weeds by a railroad
bridge. I decided to wait in the RV. Dave did not find the cache but a tick did find him. I later learned he'd decided to start
by hunting for a difficulty level 3.5 cache. Each cache is rated
from 1 to 5 for ease of terrain and ease of hunt. I don't
know whether Dave was overconfident when he picked such a hard one or if he
just didn't realize what the ratings meant. I tend to limit myself to those rated 1/1 for now.
Anyway, the next day
we hunted for one at WalMart in Minot, ND. We interpreted the coordinates and the clue correctly so we found the right site but were still puzzled about how to find the cache itself. There was a can of Bud Light sitting nearby so I checked it to see if it was one of those fake cans that open but it wasn't. I have no idea why a can of Bud was sitting outside a WalMart. Anyway, I eventually figured out where the cache was hiding so we signed the log in the cache and recorded our find on line. That one was
challenging for newbies but would be really easy for us now that
we've found a few others so we have a better idea of what to look for.
Some caches are hidden in areas
close to the memories of the hider. Some are just where it's
easy to get to them. Some are in places the hider thinks are
neat so wants others to see. Here's some pictures from some of the neat places.
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If you are looking for a motivation to go walking, I highly recommend geocaching.
TTYL,
Linda
one comment
Did you know that Mn State Parks has a special sequecentennial geo-caching series? It’s more geared to kids, but the “reward” for each geocache is a collector-type historic postcard. They’ve developed on for each and every Mn state park.
Peggy B () - 25 08 08
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