“I have a perfect hobby for us,” she stated, as though I had been looking to pursue a new interest. “It’s called geocaching.”
As my 5-year-old granddaughter Kaiya would say, “What the…..?” (I’m only hoping Kaiya never finishes the question. To date, she has not.)
It turns out geocaching, according to their own website geocaching.com, is a “real-world, outdoor treasure hunting game using GPS-enabled devices. Participants navigate to a specific set of GPS coordinates and then attempt to find the container hidden at that location.”
I didn’t really understand any of that, except for the TREASURE HUNT!!!!!!
Tell me more, I said to my sister. She proceeded to explain to me that she had learned about geocaching from a husband and wife who were clients of hers. “I can’t really explain it myself, but it sounds like fun and I think we should look into it,” she said.
So we did. And it is. Fun, I mean.
Apparently up until 2000, GPS systems were restricted to only really important people, like those who needed to know the location of nuclear devices. In 2000, President Clinton decided all of us should have access to GPS technology (probably because he correctly determined we wouldn’t be able to figure out how to find nuclear devices anyway, but we sure could find tiny little containers holding random gadgets and a log to sign with a SECRET CODE NAME. Thus, the beginning of the game called geocaching.
Seriously, geocaches are simply a variety of little containers that generally hold nothing more than a log that the finders sign using a geocaching code name. They are hidden by other geocachers who then register the cache with a website. There are geocaches all over the world. Thousands of hidden treasures. Once a geocacher finds the container using GPS coordinates, he or she signs the log. Did I mention you sign using a SECRET CODE NAME?
I have even got some of my grandchildren interested in the activity. Addie, Alastair, Dagny, Maggie, and I find a park that I know has a geocache (from checking the website), and we proceed to hunt for it. We are generally successful, but usually no thanks to me. I have very smart grandchildren, who are good at following a compass even if they are only 10, 8, 7, and 5!
Yesterday Jen and I spent a couple of hours geocaching in a couple of areas of Phoenix. For the most part, we are hit-and-miss geocachers. Yesterday we were AWESOME! Five finds out of five searches. Three in one park and two in another.
One geocache was big enough to fit a pair of shoes.
One geocache was so tiny it barely fit a signing log. It was magnetic, and we found it under a metal bench. It's the little metal case next to the cell phone.
One hung from a tree, hidden in plain sight.
One was in a pill bottle tucked into a fence post. Jen was the one who figured out the top of the fence post came off.
The one that took us the longest was also hidden inside a fence post. Jen had tried to remove the top when we first approached the area, but it appeared to not be removable. We looked and looked and were about to give up when Jen once again gave the fence post a twist. Voila, there was the geocache.
One of the things we like best about geocaching is that it gives us a chance to see parts of a community that we might not see otherwise. Beautiful parks; beautiful views, like the one at the beginning of this post. We have occasionally been asked what in the world we were doing, but for the most part, surprisingly, people leave us alone. You would think two grandmothers crawling around looking under bushes might cause some confusion, but apparently not enough confusion to ask what we’re up to. Only on one occasion was I stopped by a police officer and asked what I was doing looking around the base of a light post in a Walmart parking lot. I think having a one-year-old baby with me (my nephew Austin) made me look less sinister.
Of course, he didn’t even know I had a SECRET CODE NAME.
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