Oh Geo! Or why muddy meandering makes me happy.
If you aren’t yet familiar with geocaching and you have kids under the age of 18, you’re missing out on making some mudlicious memories. Loudoun County, and Leesburg in particular, is rife with hidden treasures awaiting your discovery.
Our family stumbled on geocaching last spring, after one of my kindergarten kids brought in a geocoin for his show-and-tell. Boy could you tell from that little boy’s ear-to-ear grin that geocaching had given him a veritable king’s treasure. One simple coin and he was richer than rich. I came home that afternoon and immediately googled geocaching, finding geocaching.com.
At first, we just dabbled in this newfound GPS-guided treasure hunt. We’d go out hunting every now and then, our handy dandy Apple iPhone serving as our official GPS device. We always enjoyed the find, but it wasn’t until this month that we officially became bonafide geocaching addicts. Come to find out, there are a lot of similarly minded geocaching nuts out there, all traipsing through overgrown fields, cobbled downtown side streets, and steel and concrete jungles to unlock the mystery of the next geocache. Nothing quite beats the thrill of shouting “Found it” while my husband is 15 feet away digging through rotting leaves, hoping he finds the cache before me. Yesterday, I won 2-1. Yep, that’s right–we spent two hours on our own–after our Costco shopping trip–hiking the muddied, tree-laiden trails of Red Rocks Overlook. The storm took its toll on the pines and hardwoods that frame the trail, but we trudged on, alternating between watching our steps and our iPhones (we used both his and mine, as we were tracking two long-hidden caches). Of the trio we found yesterday–two of which were hidden in 2001–one hadn’t been uncovered for over a month. Talk about feeling special! And then there was the view we’d never seen–a glorious overlook high above the swollen Potomac River. And the up-close chance encounter with some less-timid deer, out for their late afternoon snack. And me in flip flops…toes dipped in deep chocolate mud.
There’s lot to love about geocaching, and it’s for anyone with a sense of adventure. There are easy-to-find caches, or hides, as you’ll hear them referred, and then there are those that would likely stump the best and brightest MIT grads. The variety and number of caches hidden worldwide is astounding–and the number grows daily. There are puzzlers, virtual caches, underwater caches, multi-level caches and the geocaching.com websites states that geocaches can even be hidden in outer space. Not sure when the last Shuttle is launching, but I kind of wonder if there’s a geocache on the moon.
Back to the addiction, it’s consuming. We’ve outfitted a gallon-sized Ziploc bag with all our geocaching necessities–a flashlight for when darkness arrives before the find does, plenty of trinkets and treasures to trade, a camera, and a few ballpoint pens. You never know when it’s BYOP! For the future geocachers, that means “bring your own pen” because the cache is so itty bitty (possibly smaller than the fingernail on your pinky finger) that it was impossible for the cache owner to add a writing utensil. We’ve found camouflaged caches on light posts (a seeming favorite), wedged in rotted out stumps, hanging by a strings in trees and fenceposts, and magnetically clinging to every size and shape of metal.
Last weekend, I enlisted my Mom and eldest daughter, Shelby, for our Edenton, NC geocaching expedition. We were visiting my parents, sharing a beautiful church service at St. Anne’s, dining at the Nothin’ Fancy restaurant (oh my gosh, were the crabcakes and cornbread Bon Appetit good!). But the geocaching bug overpowered me, and thank goodness my Mom was up for treasure hunting in her hometown. We found two of the three on our short list. I can tell, my Mom had fun…we all explored and giggled and amazed ourselves with our ingenuity. Heck, when we couldn’t pull the miniscule log roll from within the magnetic nano we found, Mom headed over to the local fishermen and, in her most gracious Southern accent, asked for assistance. The fisherman stopped fishing, pulled out his rather large knife, and expertly removed the scroll. We got our BYOP ballpoint out and scribbled our code name: 7up4fun. Turned out that the day before, the same fisherman had been sitting on the bench where said cache was located when another geocacher, laptop in hand, had stumbled by on the same search. I can only imagine what that local Edenton fisherman must think of we out-of-town treasure seekers. So my Mom knew best when I was a youngster, and she still knows best. Later that afternoon, for another find, Mom was using a long stick to pull a tiny black and highlight-yellow snake from within the hide location. Thanks, Mom.
We hid our first geocache last night, and it was published among the website listings at around 8:50pm. Twenty-seven minutes later, some other geocaching addict, on his way to a movie with his wife, forewent date night to instead be the FTF (first to find) “Jeepers Peepers”–our ode to the springtime amphibian troubadors. Now it’s your turn to find our cache fully loaded with kid-friendly treasures. In doing so, you’ll find that the greatest treasure you really find is yourself! 🙂
There’s plenty more I’d love to tell you about geocaching, but why read about someone else’s crazy good adventures when you can start having some of your own. Go to geocaching.com and sign up for a free membership–or go hog-wild with a premium membership (great for even more cheap thrills). Then, let me know what you think. Am I nuts? Or is this the best thing since Andy Gibb and Twinkies?
Go head, use your GPS today to navigate a blessed adventure with someone you love 🙂
loudouncrazymom 