Geocaching Made Easy?

Geocaching can be a lot of fun but it can also be very frustrating. First of all, geocaching is known worldwide; it's a game of hiding and seeking treasure. The "treasure" can be anything from a note to miniature toys to money (small sums, of course!). You start with a handheld Global Positioning System (GPS). Then you log on to a geocache website, such as geocaching.com, download coordinates into your GPS, hop into your car and drive off, following the directions from your GPS. That's the easy part. (Did you know there are almost 800,000 active geocaches worldwide?)





The frustrating part of geocaching is trying to locate the cache once you get to the right spot. Caches can be hidden under rocks, behind plants, on fence posts, in telephone booths--just about anywhere. The hardest ones to find are those in areas where there is a lot of development. Someone may have stashed a cache in the previous year but the area has now been leveled for construction. And some of the caches just simply do not exist any more.



I recently had the opportunity to go geocaching with my son-in-law. He has a lot more perseverance than I do. We found one in a phone booth inside a magnetic case under the telephone. It simply had a piece of paper with signatures of previous "finders". It was a relatively new cache, dating back to the previous month. Then we drove out into an undeveloped area and tromped around a couple of drainage ponds. In the process, my son-in-law lost his shoe in the swampy, sludgy grass surrounding the pond. But, he did not give up (as you can see in the photo) and he finally found the cache hidden under some rocks. I had already given up and headed back to the car.

My husband and I go geocaching once in awhile: I drive and he hunts. I like that arrangement much better. I call it teamwork!