Look out world! I learned about geocaching!

Last week I had the pleasure of covering a story for the paper about geocaching which is basically modern day treasure hunting. My wonderful husband’s interest was peaked and decided to join me.

I won’t go into great detail about the rules and history as you can read the in-depth article within the paper.

I heard about geocaching a couple of years ago and really didn’t give it much thought as I really didn’t understand the concept or the hype.

After the class, I now understand!

The class taught us not only about what geocaching is but also the rules and how to “play” so to speak.

One thing I learned is that while I can use my phone’s GPS it is best to have a stand alone version simply because it is more durable (in the case of being dropped) and won’t use my cell phone’s precious data.

Plus, I need to bring small “prizes” if I want to play the treasure hunting part of the game. This follows the notion of “take something, leave something.”

After we got the low down on the rules and how to actually find the geocache, we were sent on our way with preloaded GPS units in groups to find the 5 geocaches that were located throughout Carl Levin Park.

The first one took longer than I think any of us expected. I don’t want to give away it’s exact location, but it was tiny and well camouflaged. In fact, it was so tiny we were all caught off guard! We attempted to sign the log inside, however, it had gotten wet at some point and became mush.

After our second geocache find, we decided to head home as it was getting late and we felt confident that we know what geocaching was about and how to play the game from here on out.

I immediately came home and registered for my free account on geocaching.com. I tried to register with the username nuttyhiker which is my trail name and the name I am commonly known by, but it was taken (apparently years and years ago and now associated with an inactive account), so I had to register as NuttyHikerTX in case you are interested in registering and would like to add me. Maybe we can go “treasure hunting” together.

Are you a geocacher? Let me know!

Until next time….Hike On!