Geo-Caching-Modern Day Treasure Hunt

So here is the newest activity for my gang: "Geo-caching". Though it is not a new thing, it is a new adventure for us.

It is a modern form of the scavenger hunt. You use a GPS system to find "caches" that have been hidden by other people doing the same thing all over the world literally. While we began with the local finds, we have begun to branch out whenever we are traveling to whatever area we might find ourselves in. You would not believe how many places and people are secretly involved in this endeavor. All ages, sexes, races, religions, nationalities, etc…

The caches can be anything from a simple log of names of the people who have found the cache before you or as elaborate as real treasures that you can take. Usually we try to place some neat but simple item in with the stash. But beware-there are "Muggles" about everywhere that must be evaded at all cost.....

This is something that the whole family can do and it is a lot of fun-the added perk is that we get outside and actually have to walk to find the stash. Fun and somewhat entertaining to the adventurous minded. We have even created our own cache stash and get so excited when someone finds it and posts that they have found it.

One other added bonus is that we have found ourselves in some pretty picturesque places that have been of the most visually appealing photo moments. And more importantly, the only cost was the gas it took to get there. Well worth it!

Being the type of person who has to worry about everything, I tend to fret that someone might mistake us for druggies making a “drop” lol....My girls just roll their eyes. While most places are public, there are some that require some stealth.

Some amusing things have been encountered in our quests. One commonly used cache container is a military ammo box (readily available at surplus stores) that is painted camouflage and is about the size of a shoebox. They are usually lightly buried or stashed in the base of a tree or log. After searching for one of these stashes near own town that consisted of some light off road hiking, we eventually found it and logged our find. It was located fairly near a public building. However, a couple of weeks later we read in our paper how while some utility workers were doing some work near this particular cache, they stumbled across it. OMG! The police, fire trucks and eventually the BOMB SQUAD were called out because they thought they had come across unexploded military bombs….

While, I am sure someone wet their pants over that one, we did have to chuckle a bit. Granted, they did what was needed under the circumstances, and I am sure money was wasted on the resources to get them out there, it certainly upped the ante on the adventure part…

So that is why every good stasher should be sure they have a label on their cache that states this is a GEO CACHE STASH----not a unexploded bomb….