GeoCaching

In the name of safety while hiking, we went and purchased a GPS the other night. I had done a lot of reading and picked the model I wanted before we even left for the store.

At the store, I asked where the handheld GPS units were and a salesman took me there and started selling me on one of the units. As he was explaining features I interrupted him and told him I already knew what I was getting. He kept talking as I took it off the shelf and headed to the register.

Now that I have a GPS for the purpose of increasing my safety on the trail, I started thinking how else I could use this. I learned on a blog about geocaching.

If you don't know what geocaching is, I recommend you read their website. In short, people will hide things at various locations and list the coordinates on the site. I can download the coordinates and use the GPS to find the stash. The box may hold various trinkets, a log book, and sometimes a registered "travel bug". The travel bug is designed to be left at a different spot and travel as much as it can. By logging it on the website you can track its movements.

Cari and I went to the park across the street yesterday and found our first geocache. It felt like tresure hunting. We took a bullet casing out of the box and signed the log sheet. We left a red clown nose in the box for the next person. The box is hidden well enough that someone without the coordinates would not likely find it.

I'm excited to take it out and use my new toy on our next hike. Did I say toy? I meant "safety device". In the past we had honestly drawn arrows in the mud to help remind us wich way we had turned on a trail. No more mud arrows for us.