Caching Out

This weekend we decided to try something new. I blame the wine from the night before. Dear Husband and I had heard about this cool international venture called "geocaching," and it sounded so much like a big Easter egg hunt that we had to try it. I should mention right here that no jelly beans are involved, which sort of makes it not as good as an Easter egg hunt to me.

Anyway, if you have never heard of geocaching, here's what happens. Someone puts a log bog and some doohickies in a cannister or lockbox or box disguised as a log and hides it. They record the coordinates and post the location on this big bulletin board at geocaching.com, with a few hints. Then people go looking for it, navigating with a GP, and if they find it they put their name in the log book, trade something in the box for something they have, and put the cache back the way they found it for future geocachers. See, it's a sort of international scavenger hunt.

So we thought, "Wow, this is neat! What a great family activity!"

The first cache was at a pharmacy right around the corner from us. All the comments mentioned what an easy find it was - a park and grab - perfect for a first time. Well, we wandered around the parking lot for an hour poking at the grass verges, peeking through the fence, trying to avoid looking like miscreants. Firecracker and I bought candy. It went like this for several more caches. We spent a long time staring in disbelief at a lamp post in front of a church. By the fourth stop DramaQueen had written up a sign and stuck it to the window - "I hate geocaching." We persevered and finally found a tupperware box near a bookstore. Rather DramaQueen fell upon it with a crow of triumph. By that time we didn't really care who saw us. If people wondered why we were dragging a plastic box out from under the shrubbery, they refrained from asking.

I gather that geocaching is particularly popular along hiking paths and such, part of getting out in nature and so forth. Given that the girls think nature should be thoroughly washed and everything "icky" removed from it, I'm not sure they will go for that. They might do it if they could wear gloves and a hazmat suit. I myself felt a bit woozy when I turned over a piece of wood and ants pured out across the grass.

I wonder if anyone has ever found a corpse doing this? I'm waiting for geocaching to turn up on CSI. If it hasn't already.

See that little red line peeking out? Yeah, well we didn't see anything like that.