GeoCaching
There was one additional thing that I purchased yesterday that I didn’t mention, but I am sure that Angel will find out sooner or later. I purchased a Garmin eTrex GPS receiver. For anyone who doesn’t know what a GPS receiver is, I will sum it up as an item that tells you where you are located on the planet. It uses signals from satellites that is freely available to figure out this information.
A simple GPS receiver starts out at about $100 new. On eBay, I’ve seen them selling between sixty and one hundred, twenty dollars for the simple hand-held receivers. I think I made a killing, for I stopped at a pawn shop to see if they had anything. They had one in the display and after much waiting for the limited staff to take care of every other Christmas Eve shopper, the woman said that it would be forty five dollars.
She showed me that it worked and I was still scratching my head trying to figure out if anything was wrong with it. I couldn’t find any scratches and from what I could figure out - everything appeared to work. The woman didn’t know if there was anything wrong with it and I didn’t want to agitate her any further by taking her time and asking questions that she wouldn’t know the answer to.
You may be asking yourself if I had anything in mind for this GPS receiver. My friends - I did. I’m not really getting lost often. I’m trying to find something. Actually, I’m trying to find many things and have a reason to exercise and get out. I need more content for my blog, but I don’t want to sit on my butt all day trying to come up with ideas. I present to you, a game called GeoCaching.
GeoCaching is a game where someone finds an area to hide a container. It is usually a Rubbermaid container the size of a tissue box, but there are some as small as 35mm film canisters that are challenging to find. This person leaves a log book, instructions for anyone who may unintentionally find the container, and something small and personal. They record the GPS coordinates and then post these coordinates on the GeoCaching website.
People like me look for GeoCaches in the area that we will be in by searching the GeoCaching website and use our GPS receivers to find the treasure. We then swap an item in the cache with something that we bring along. We also report the date/time and who we are in the log book. Then we report our adventures on the GeoCaching website along with any photos that we may take along the way. What fun!
Today I woke up early at ten in the morning - Christmas Day. It was chilly out, but I set my sights at finding a way point called GC4F8C. (N 38° 36.653 W 077° 18.553) A friendly name for this way point was “Round Top Beaver Pond”. This is the closest cache to my house and it is a multi-cache. This means that after you find the first cache, you are given coordinates to a second cache.
I walked towards the dead end of my road and walked up the hill onto Cardinal Drive. I walked along for a while looking at my GPS receiver that would count down the number of miles and feet remaining as well as showing a digital compass, my walking direction, and the direction of the way point. It appeared that I started to get it to be directly to my left and then started walking past it, but I didn’t see any ATV roads going up a hill or a guard rail with a dirt path near it as the website talked about. I continued for a few minutes and then found a small one.
I finally found an ATV path and gave a good run going up the hill. I was out of breath but recovered quickly. I walked along the path for a while and observed all the trash laying about the woods. I saw a sofa, an old rusted refrigerator, a wash basin, old tires and all kinds of junk. My GPS receiver came down to about three hundred feet and the item was off of the path, so I started to head down what looked to be an overgrown path.
I came along a stream and saw large ice sickles where the water would fall about five feet. I stopped and took a picture and then continued across the stream. I walked along the bank for a while and realized that the cache would be on the other side. I had to backtrack and walk on the other side. I found the cache in the bottom of an old stump where the top of the tree had fallen over.
I was excited with my find and pulled the cache out and opened it. There were three zip lock bags and an old rubber ball. I opened the bag with the note pad, pencils, and document in it. I read over the document congratulating anyone who would come across the treasure and asking others not to remove the box, but to join in the game.
I had some giggles as I looked through a few of the toys and trinkets that others left behind. I picked up a floppy disk cleaner and left my toy puzzle snake in the box. The brush is funny as it looks like a floppy disk, but a brush comes out to help you clean your monitor and stuff. I signed the log book and wished everyone a merry Christmas. I looked through a few of the logs and still had my moment of bliss at being able to join in with everyone else in this game.
The top flap of the log book had the coordinates for the second and final cache. I entered the way point into my GPS receiver as a closed treasure box. I also set the icon for the original way point to an opened treasure box. I put everything back where I found it and covered it with a few leaves, but made sure that some of the cache could still be seen to anyone looking for it.
I headed back to the path that I came from and kept a steady eye on the way point. The numbers started to go down slower and slower and then started jumping back up. I turned to my left and went off the path towards the treasure. I was walking through a lot of branches coming into my face and was happy that I didn’t attempt this first adventure during the summer or spring with all the leaves and bugs that would have surely been in the way.
As I approached the valley, I faced a very large hill and just thought to myself, “This had better be worth it”. I was up three quarters of the hill and had to stop. My heart was rushing and I was a little dizzy. I didn’t want to run into any problems. I gathered my strength and continued on. I found another ATV path and started walking on it. I then saw a beaten and unused ATV path springing off to the side and took it since it was going further towards my goal.
I went on and started noticing that I was approaching a cliff. The cache was only a hundred feet away and my eyes darted everywhere looking for it. I came closer and noticed some grave stones. I walked closer towards them and then spotted the cache off to the side. It was behind some wood and within a Yellow coffee can.
I did not leave nor take anything except logging my entry in the log book. Someone had left a dollar and another person left a small pack of crayons. I had thought about bringing crayons before I left, but I figured they might melt or something. These seemed to be ok. I also saw lots more little things including a Scooby Doo toy and a cat toy. I closed up the can, put everything back as I found it, and headed over to the graves.
There were two large grave stones and about six smaller stones. I think that they were from the early eighteen hundreds, but I can not remember off hand. I then headed towards the cliff and saw a suburb down there. I went on the path along the cliff to see if I could find a better view. I found one near a tree house and got my camera out.
After the pictures, I went along the trail towards the traffic that I could hear on Cardinal Drive. I came out on a large steep hill that an ATV would quickly run up. Due to the ground being frozen, I went down along the overgrown grass on the side. Once I reached the bottom, I walked back home along the road.
I was so happy that I was able to do a little adventure in my neighborhood. I had also picked up a pine cone for my wife and gave it to her when I got back home. Angel began telling me stories of pine cones up in New York where she grew up and that some trees would only have pine cones every seven years.
One thing I noticed was that the log books were almost full and I figure that I may go back to add an additional log book to both caches later on.
December 27th, 2004 at 2:22 am
I have been wanting to do some GeoCaching for a while. After reading this post, I am sold. Thanks, now I am going to have to go buy a GPS.