Hide and Seek

Who remembers playing hide and seek as a kid and not being able to find that last person hiding so you had to holler "Ollie, Ollie, oxen free!" to get them to come out?

If only finding a geocache were that simple!  Remember I said I wanted to learn how to geocache?  Well, I'm getting a start on that. 

In the interest of full disclosure, I really thought when the geocaching website touted this activity as a "treasure hunt," I thought to myself how hard can X marks the spot be?

Yeah...kinda hard, actually.  Color me corrected. 

My personality is one where I get an idea and I run with it without truly getting all the details or instructions.  Very gung ho. 

So I downloaded the geocaching app onto my phone and created an account.  The app proceeded to show me a map of all the caches near me.  Holy treasure chests, batman! 

There were literally hundreds within 20 miles, but of particular interest was the one just under a mile south of us on the gravel road.  I dragged Captain along with me because he is going to enjoy this adventure with me whether he likes it or not. 

I turned on the GPS on my phone, and we drive south.  It was right on a 90-degree curve in the gravel road, and there were two arrow signs pointing out which way the road traveled. 

On a side note, or backing up, each of these caches has a name.  This particular cache was called "Stuck In The Middle With You" which should be familiar to any true Nitty Gritty Dirt Band fan.  To me, this meant the container--which I envisioned as the size of a shoe box or bigger--would be between the two signs.  Makes sense, right?

Not so much.  The GPS said we were within 3 feet of it but no luck finding it in the ditch grass.  Plus there was a patch of wild parsnip in one spot and a patch of nettles in another spot, so we gave up and went home. 

When I mentioned this failure to a coworker who is an avid geocacher, she offered to spend time with me on Saturday showing me some of the basics. 

She and her husband picked me up on Saturday morning, and I was telling them how we had tried to find one a couple of nights earlier, so they took me there first. 

It's not surprising Captain and I didn't find the cache because it was a film canister tucked into the road sign.  So my first misconception of looking for treasure chests bit the dust. 

They had a list of several caches in Pine Island to give me a taste of it.  One (and I can't give too many details as spoilers) was the size of the first knuckle on my pinkie finger and camouflaged to blend into the structure where it was hidden. 

I call unfair!!

The second one took me to someplace I didn't even know existed in my own town.  Shameful of me, I know!  I should have realized it, but I just never put two and two together about it. 

The third one they showed me was missing it's cache due to whatever reason, so they replaced it with supplies that they carry in their car. 

Throughout the search, they told me little anecdotes about geocaching, and I learned a ton of stuff!

Like the fact that some caches are hidden in a hollowed out book in a public library.  How cool is that?  Depends on your point of view.  If you like those logic puzzles in the variety puzzle books, these would be right up your alley.  If you are like me and just need the "x marks the spot" approach, puzzle caches would only make you cry. 

On the flip side, people who hide caches sometimes have an off-the-wall sense of humor.  The container is easy enough to find/spot, but then it takes some work.  Like the people who put a container out with 100 plastic eggs in it.  One egg had the cache while the other 99 had a slip of paper that said "neener, neener"!  Ha!

I headed into the outing on Saturday with just my cell phone's Google Maps app.  I found out quickly how sadly lacking that plan was.  There are GPS thingies with a compass built in that basically lead you by the nose to where you need to start looking.  Well, not really.  It will get you close but you can't always depend on the accuracy of it.  Sometimes you just have to LOOK for yourself. 

A serious geochacher should also carry pliers, tweezers, wire, various types of empty containers, one of those reacher/grabber things you get after joint replacement surgery, and possibly a ladder.  I don't have to worry about that last one because I don't do ladders.  If something is that high up in a tree or whatever, it can just stay there and I will skip getting the happy face on my app. 

Anyone can actually hide a cache so long as they don't trespass on someone's private property to do so.  I wish I was as creative as the people who write the clues for the Rochester Fest medallion hunt.  Like a DaVinci code quest.  I'm just not that smart, sadly.  I'm going to add it to my bucket list to hide a puzzle cache with a crazy cryptic clue.  That's my new goal.  I will never be this cryptic, however:

Still, I'm glad I know a little more about how geocaching works so that when we are completing our bucket list of visiting state parks, we can find the geocache that is in each park.  Plus, I think it will be a good way to explore more of our own "back yard" as well.

For instance, there is a cache on the outskirts of the town where our daughter lives, and there is one between Mensing's and Weis's on 75th Street.  That's the next one I'm going to look for, so Lori Weis, please don't call the sheriff when you see me wandering around out in the ditch! 

Believe me when I say I will certainly take you on our adventures or at least tell you about it when I'm done. 

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