Geocaching Fun

So, have you heard of Geocaching? I haven't felt like sewing so I have been out trying to get a little exercise by chasing down hidden geocaches. Briefly, geocaching is a sport developed by techies as a way of using their handheld GPS units for something other than a paperweight. All over the world (literally) there are caches hidden and then recorded at www.geocaching.com. A cache can be very small and only have room for a small pencil and a rolled up piece of paper for a log to ammo cans. I've even heard of some in 5 gallon buckets. All caches have a log book for the finder to sign and larger ones have little trinkets for cachers to exchange with. The general rule of thumb is if you take something, replace it with something. To add to the fun there are traveling items like Travel Bugs or GeoCoins. They have tracking numbers on them and after they are logged in the owner gets a message about where the Trackable is now. I have one Travel Bug in Australia (She's traveled 20,000 miles since 2002) and another in California (She's traveled 5,000 miles since 2006).

Yesterday we traveled to Chelan to eat lunch with my nephew and ex-sis-in-law. He recently turned 21 and this was a great chance to get to see him. It didn't take me long to narrow down some caches in the Chelan area and so after lunch we went to find a few of them. The ones in town weren't difficult and didn't show any great sites, but then we took the "scenic" route out of town to search for two more. I've never driven down the old dirt road that leads along the Chelan Gorge and it was a real treat. It had it all, impressive scenery, cleverly hidden caches, and beautiful sunshine. My grandson, who was along for the ride, made out since in both of these caches were matchbook cars as trading items. Nothing says COOL to a 2 year old better than Grandma handing over new cars to him. :)

We made one last stop for a micro cache along the way and there we got skunked. My husband even got into the act of looking for it and he couldn't find it. We both have different hunting skills. I tend to look at the big picture and hope something jumps out at me before painstakingly narrowing things down, while Hubby is great at focusing on small things and picking them out. He is always picking faces of people we know out of crowds in the most unexpected places. He's not an official geocacher (no handle or username), but occasionally helps me out when I drag him along.

Anyway, I found five out of six we attempted for the day, so that was good. Today I have a few more to go out and find. and it looks like a good day for it. Who knows, maybe the new cache I placed earlier in the weekend and that was just published early this morning will be plundered by someone else who is out looking for a little bit of exercise on a sunny Sunday morning. It's supposed to be rainy and cool during the work week so maybe I'll do some machine quilting then.

Have a wonderful day.

SB#3