Treasure Hunting for Geeks

I started geocaching this past week. For those unfamiliar, think of it as treasure hunting for geeks. Someone goes out and hides a cache anywhere in the world and then goes to geocaching.com and posts the gps coordinates of where they left it. Now this hidden item can be as small as your fingernail or it could be a .50 cal ammo box, it all depends (yes, the hider does tell you the size category the cache is so you aren’t looking for a ammo box when it is a pill container). The cache must be a container of some sort because inside the cache is a log… a book or strip of paper on which the finder writes their username and date they found the cache. Once you find the cache, which can be extremely well hidden and camouflaged, you put your name in the log and go back to the geocaching site to tell everyone about your accomplishment.

Enough with the basics. As I said, I got sucked into geocaching this past week. I got a free account on geocaching.com, bought the geocaching app for my iPhone ($10), and went out one evening. I planned to go out for an hour or so, check out a couple of the easy caches that the site said were near my house. Really. I left with the best of beginner intentions. Fast forward 3 hours or so and I am searching for my 4th cache of the evening in the dark on the streets of Norfolk.

I started with an easy cache, a one star difficulty rating that said it was good to do with your kids. It was even in the garden of a church, so how bad could this be? And it was simple! The directions got me to the garden and the cache was immediately apparent. But I guess that it the point of one you can do with children. Anyway, it was a good confidence boost for a beginner, since it shows you that you are doing things correctly.

I next found myself looking for a micro cache at the local Senior center. Half an hour of looking later I hadn’t found a thing, so I brought out my iPhone app and looked for something else close to where I was. And what do you know, there was another cache a little over half a mile down the road, so off I went.

This one was another micro hidden by the same people who hid the last cache which I couldn’t find. But I was a beginner, and therefore confident in my ability to find difficult caches I probably shouldn’t even be bothering with. But seriously, this evening was about how far away it was, not how difficult it was. This micro cache was at a local beach access point, so I parked, pulled out my trusty gps, and quickly found a tree that seemed to be the hiding place. But I knew I was really looking for a rock from reading the other posts on the site… well, I thought I was getting the hints at least. One problem, there was a car with their headlights pointing right at the base of the tree and I didn’t need any muggles watching me poke around the base of the tree looking for who knows what. So I stood around for a bit, looking like a tourist (I hope), watching the water and the people. It was a nice evening, so this wasn’t exactly the worst thing ever, but I was a geocacher on a mission. These people needed to drive away! Well, 15 minutes later, that stupid maroon car was still sitting there, so I looked for another cache in the area, figuring I would come back later.

What do you know, there was another cache just across the street! Well, streets. Several lanes of traffic and a field or so away. It was a nano cache on an old cannon the city had placed there… because what else were they going to do with this odd little piece of land besides put a cannon and a flag on it? Anyway, after running my hands over the inside and outside of this cannon about 4 times, I finally found the cache. And having never seen a magnetic nano cache before, didn’t even realize I had found it. I thought I had the magnet that was supposed to be holding up the cache. It wasn’t until 15 minutes later that I realized there was a seam on what I had and that it could be opened. Yay, I found a difficult one!

By the time I got back to where I had parked, the maroon car was gone and it was dark. So I headed right back to the tree and started looking under it where I had seen some rocks earlier. I grabbed the biggest rock (which was still small) and low and behold, there was a small tube super glued to the bottom of it. Cache found!

Armed with even greater confidence that before, having found a micro and a nano cache on my first day, I went back to the senior center to glance around again… in the dark. Yeah, I found nothing and as I couldn’t see much of anything, so I headed home.

All in all though, I think I did very well. I looked for 4 caches and found 3. Not bad for my first night out.