Geocaching: #SOL20 Day 17/Year3

Last night, I was brainstorming some ways to get out of the house during this social distancing proclamation.  Yesterday, my husband and I ran to the library and that was a good enough outing to not feel couped up by the time the day had ended.

It occurred to me that we could go geocaching!  We have been geocaching before but it was some time ago now, probably well over five years.  We’ve looked for caches in our town and also up in the woods near our cabin, three hours away.

When we geocache, we always seem to enjoy the hunt, and of course, the find!  Today promised to be a sunny day with mild temperatures. So, after lunch, my eldest son and I went to geocache.

We stayed in our small town and used his phone with the local geocaches downloaded for our referral. The first place we went to find caches was a hiking/biking trail right in our town. My son chose this location because it had many caches hidden along the trail according to the geocache website. Unfortunately, when we arrived we found that the trail we needed to use was closed. So, being good environmental stewards, we turned back and went another way so as not to disturb the trail.

This brought us to a picnic shelter area right in the same location, just heading North instead of South in the park. Alas, the cache at this sight was not to be found. We looked and looked but did not see it. Fortunately, though, we found 6 of 8 other caches.

Some had great “hints” that really made one think, and others were more obvious but just as fun.  My favorite was a large cache, held in an official geocache box that was under lock! The lock’s code was “FOUND!” Really fun!  There were many trinkets that could be traded in this cache but since we did not bring any with us to leave, we did not take any either.

One of the cache sites, in another park in our town, took a while to find. Once we found it, we recorded the find with our initials on the enclosed log and were just about put it back when we saw three teens approaching. I asked my son, “Do you think they are geocaching, too? Should I go ahead and put it back even though they can see us?”

“Yes, we need to put it back. We cannot remove it from the hiding place. We just made their find easier than ours.”

Sure enough, as we walked away, we heard the three teens raise a metal structure that held the cache underneath. Yup, they were geocaching too! It was great to see!

Getting out of the house for a walk or hike during the pandemic is acceptable social distancing. Geocaching fit the bill for our afternoon activity today. Now, I’m starting to think of where we could place a geocache of our own! If you have never tried geocaching, you should. Now, might be a perfect time! You can go to geocaching.com to find out how!