Geocaching 5.28.08

OK....so if you have never heard of Geocaching...it's time you learn. We had just had a ball 'playing' this game. It's like treasure hunting with your GPS. There's a great website here...check it out!!

Geocaching is an outdoor treasure-hunting game in which the participants use a 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 containing a logbook and "treasure," usually toys or trinkets of little value. Today, well over 800,000 geocaches are registered on various websites devoted to the pastime. Geocaches are currently placed in over 100 countries around the world and on all seven continents, including Antarctica.

And what's best about it is it's just plain FUN!! Who of you reading didn't like treasure hunting when you were a kid? If you said 'me'....well the Easter bunny would be so disappointed! And no, you can't use the excuse that you don't have a GPS unit to play. My mom & dad as well as a friend are both doing it without a GPS unit, they just do a bit more research on Google maps as it will even show you a picture of the round-about place it's hidden. OK and for you fuddy-duddies that say "you have too much time on your hands..." You're RIGHT!! And we're enjoying it as much as we can. ;-) wink, wink!

Did I mention how much FUN it is?? OK, so we have been 'playing' for about a week so far and have found 9 caches already! They range from somewhat easy (the hints are given well and we can find it quickly) to the really, really hard ones!

I'll show pics of 2 of our favorites so far...and describe our most favorite.

The first one was a 'Parking lot cache' and it was a 2 1/2 difficulty. We looked one day without success then came back another day after doing much more research and looked & looked. Finally, the cache owner 'caught' us and helped us out. It was disguised as a nail in the parking bumps! See the pics...

Another one that was eluding us was called "Thar She Blows". It was a cache disguised as a sprinkler head!!

And finally, our absolute favorite so far is called "Radio Central". It is a 3 part cache - you go to the 1st stage and it gives you the coordinates for the next one and so on. So the first stage was called a 'park and grab', which essentially means it's a fairly easy one to find. Inside was the coordinates to the next one and said to be sure to tune to FM 88.5 for some easy listening when we got there. We drove to the next one, tuned to 88.5 where there was an "Emergency Weather Announcement for the Hollywood Beach area. The weather was going to plummet today to 34 degrees with winds coming out of the west at 15.47 mph and tomorrow the weather would heat to a blazing 119 degrees with winds switching to the north at 35.75 mph. We should be able to pull out of the hard string of weather. We now return you to your regular programming". Too cute!! (FYI, 34 15.47 and 119 35.75 is our GPS coordinates here).

So we went to the final coordinates and looked, and looked, and looked! (We're new and haven't figured out all of the 'tricks' of the trade!). There was a hint on the instructions that said to be conspicuous when looking for the last one cause neighbors were watching, but knew about geocaching and were cool with it. We couldn't find it and left. But didn't get far before deciding not to let it beat us and went back. Finally, I noticed a bolt in the fence that was just out of place. I wiggled it, & pulled it out a bit and it was tied to a string! I pulled it hard and up from the back of the fence came the final cache even singing the 'chicken dance' song! haha... And as we headed back to the truck, Michael & I laughed knowing the neighbors were probably watching us as we did the 'chicken dance'. Fun, fun!!

OK, so after reading this...you MUST be interested! Beware though...it's infectious! It's just like Lay's potato chips....once you start, you just can't stop!

Here's what you do. Go to http://www.geocaching.com/. On the right hand side of the screen, enter your zip code and click Search. In the upper right hand side of the screen, you'll see a picture that says "Map It!". Click that. This will bring up a google map showing all of the geocaches in your general area! Click on the green geocache and it will show you a window with details. Click on the title of the geocache and it will give you the puzzle & hints to find it. To see the exact latitude/longitude, you must be signed up as a member...but it's free and they don't spam you.

Good luck to everyone! Drop me a line if you decide to do it, or have already tried it, I'd love to hear the stories!

More to follow...

Rene

{GMST}034|09.00|N|119|11.00|W|Port Hueneme, California|At Roberta's House getting ready for camping!{GEND}