The general rule when geocaching is when you find one and you want to take an item out you trade it with another item. I stopped at a dollar store on the way and found what is possibly the angriest looking plastic dog ever and a few rubber duckies. Everyone loves rubber duckies! On a side note, I have never been watched so much in a store in my life.
The easiest way to describe geocaching is a fancy treasure hunt with GPS. The best place to start is geocaching.com. It will explain it all in much better detail than I can. You can either purchase, or find a place to rent, a GPS unit or like some of us download an app onto your smartphone.When you find a cache it is filled with little toys or trinkets or a trackable for those hardcore geocachers. A trackable has a code on it that you can register and once you find it you go online and mark it then relocate it and you can follow it around the world.
The four of us met in the parking lot and 3 of us pulled out our phones to figure out what the heck we were doing. I was the only real newbie since two of them practiced the day before and the other was a full blown expert with a professioanl gps unit. The application I downloaded was hard to understand and so I quickly abandoned it and became an observer
Shellie Moment of the story: Yes this moment comes at the beginning of the story. The gps unit was handed to me so that I could get the full experience of geocaching. Basically the screen has a digital compass on it, the name of the cach, coordinates and distance from it. It is really quite interesting. What I quickly realized is that I have no idea how to read a compass or use it for that matter. I ask a few questions try and figure it out and quickly realize that I am just leading the group in a very small circle. I soon hand back the unit and we actually start geocaching.
We managed to locate 8 out of 10 caches we set out to find. That is pretty good for a first time. What a beautiful area to do this in. I had been to the park before and stayed on the paths. This took us bushwhacking. What a crappy day to wear shorts. My white legs were soon scratchy and red from walking through bushes, tall grass, and pricklies. Some of the caches come with hints. The last one we set out to find had been looked at numerous times the clue read "under the sun". We all looked up and started joking about how non-specific it was lol. You will see the picture below what it actually means.
I highly recommend looking into geocaching. Especially if you are already into the outdoors or go for walks. It is a fun way and makes things more exciting. In the words of Hal Johnson and Joanne McLeod, stay fit and have fun!
