Geocaching

Geocaching, Found It!

Geocaching is a fun sport, or activity, or lifestyle.  Did you know there are about one million hidden signature logs or little treasure boxes all over the world, which you can find using a Global Positioning Satellite receiver?  When you find one, you log your visit and sometimes (if the container is big enough) you take a trinket and leave a trinket.  Here I'm showing that geocaching will melt your hair if you do it at noon in the Summer in the woods.   Its good exercise and uses your creative sense, because these are often hidden in very good camoflaouge.    (Camo, as I like to say since it is hard to spell.  )  

Children especially love it.  Last week, we took a friend's daughter who is about 8, geocaching in downtown Tahlequah.  Several people wanted to know what we were looking for as we circled around and around a park bench downtown.  We were looking on the underneath side of the bench for a magnetic little micro-sized keyholder-type container.  But we guessed wrong about the size.  It turned out to be just a teensey lil bolt-sized magnetic log to sign, and we were off about the location too.

Some of the best geocaches are big hefty ammo boxes hidden deep in the woods, where you have to hike and there are no trails.  We call it bushwhacking.  We lunge thru the greenbriars, startle the deer, watch for the snakes, roll over the big rocks, climb the cliffs, and whatever else it takes to navigate the terrain.  We like the woods, and this gives a purpose to our trek.  We lap up the exercise and the activity away from our desks.  And as we go, we have a sense of adventure and accomplishment.  We've found about 175 geocaches and we have hidden about 15 geocaches in different places for others to find.  We've helped about a dozen people go geocaching for the very first time:  Gail Ross, Sara Cordle, Ed & Terri Fite, Ray Goldman, Katy & Josh Brinkley, Terra Bellamy & Family, and others.

About the treasure:  Sometimes the best geocaches are only published to premium members at geocaching.com because those are the more serious geocachers and they don't want "muggles" to stray upon their boxes and loot the treatures for trade.  When you take something from a box, you have a duty to put in something for trade which is of equal or greater value.  Some of our best trades have been for a picture from the grave of Jack Kerouac, gold coins, pretty feathers, and gear like caribiners, insect repellent wipes, coozies, bungee cords, etc.

Read some of our adventures by searching for "Fluffy & Friedrick" at http://www.geocaching.com/ .  We encounter snake dens, rock climbing tasks and more. 

A Geocaching Adventure

Geocaching is secret, so the uninitiated will not find and destroy the cache.  That is why is it always best to have a good excuse for wandering around with a GPS device, usually on public property.

One day, we discovered that a bunch of brand new geocaches had been announced over the state line in Arkansas, so we quickly grabbed our gear and went to find them, hoping to be first and get the honor of "First To Find."  We found a couple of them, but one was kind of hard to find.  It was some place along the fence row of a rural community center called, I think, Illinois Valley.  This little building also doubled as a place for church meetings.  It was a hot summer afternoon with plenty of sunshine left but a storm was moving in, and the cloud cover was interfering without GPS satellite reception.

I was scouting the back yard of the community center and Friedrick was working along the fence row, looking for some clue of the hidden treasure.  I heard him talking and came around the corner.  An elderly lady was holding a box of Ritz crackers like a book in her arms, and asking what he was up to.  "Oh, we are just having a look at this fence."  She must have thought we were surveying for an insurance claim, because she said, "That farmer who owns the fence... his tree is down across the property line."  She was tattling on him for not cleaning up after the winter ice storm of January 2009.  She told us his name and so I dutifully wrote it down.  And she sort of confessed, "Our church uses this community building for Vacation Bible School.  It starts in just a few minutes."  That was when Friedrick said, "Are you ready to call it a day?  We can come back and finish up some other time."  I nodded, then inquired about a good restaurant nearby.

We headed to the truck and loaded up.  That was when I was stung by a wasp and squealed in a most undignified way.  As this particular wasp was now down the armhole of my blouse, Friedrick was helping me retrieve it.  And we realized we looked more like a married couple than two insurance surveyors or engineers working together.  By then, the parking cone and reflective safety vests that made up a part of our "cover story" didn't jibe with the fact that we were both sitting in the truck groping after this wasp that was crawling on me.

We quickly solved the problem, buckled up and pulled away, just as a man was walking up to the car for a visit, as if we didn't see him just about 20 feet away.  When we got home  and logged our "Did Not Find" we discovered that we were not the first ones there who had been scared off by VBS volunteers that day.  Those poor VBS volunteers must have wondered why all the suspicious strangers were showing up with GPS units in hand!