Let the Geocaching Begin!

Lon received a gps for Christmas/Birthday (one of those gifts where you tell the person, "Okay, that's all your getting for like 3 years!"). We quickly decided to try it out and experience our first adventure geocaching. For those of you unaware as to what geocaching is....here's a definition from Wikipedia:

"Geocaching is an outdoor activity in which the participants use a Global Positioning System (GPS) receiver or other navigational techniques to hide and seek containers (called "geocaches" or "caches") anywhere in the world. A typical cache is a small waterproof container (usually a tupperware or ammo box) containing a logbook. Larger containers can also contain items for trading, usually toys or trinkets of little value. Geocaching is most often described as a "game of high-tech hide and seek", sharing many aspects with orienteering, treasure-hunting, and waymarking."

There. We feel smarter already. Anyway, we decided to take it easy and found two "sites" we wanted to explore close to home. The first find was pretty easy. The GPS seems to get you within a 10 foot radius, or so, of where the cache might be hiding. The geocache was attached to a fence post. We opened it, took out the paper inside and added our names to the list of those who had already been there. Off to the second find!



















(As told by Christy) The second cache was not so easy to find. We got to the coordinates, and a huge tree/bush was right in the middle of it. Well, we figured that must mean the box or container is attached to the tree. So begins the search pushing through the bushy branches of the thing with no luck. We looked and looked and looked....and looked some more. I was beginning to wonder if maybe the cache had disappeared...perhaps someone had run off with it, or perhaps the originator decided to take it down? At about that moment I heard Lon suck in a quick, deep breath of air....as if taken off guard and say quickly, "Christy - come here." I dropped what I was looking at and rushed to his side. He pulled one of the bushy branches back...




















And I almost wet myself. The small rattlesnake was poised to strike. We jumped back, waited...and nothing. It was a statue - literally.




















Here's Lon holding the "cache." (What creativity! We were glad that we hadn't found this thing in the summer...it probably would have become a million pieces.)















You can see the container on the back of the statue. You unscrew the lid and there was a paper rolled up inside. We took it out and signed our names. Definitly the funnest, and most creative geocache adventure so far!