A Perfect Day for Treasure Hunting...

This past Thursday, Steve, Cookie and I spent the day outside in the absolutely GORGEOUS weather treasure hungting. Ok... so technically... it's called "geocaching"... but I like treasure hunting better. We had such a good time... and we had some great finds!!

I had been reading online about geocaching (http://www.geocaching.com/) and since Steve and I both like the outdoors, I thought it was something we might enjoy. It's alot like treasure hunting in that you need a "treasure" map (lat/long coordinates are provided on the website), and you kinda need to know what your looking for. Basically... all you need is a GPS unit, a pair of gloves, some bug spray, and some cheap little trinkets to trade. Once you find the "cache" using your GPS unit, you log the time/date you found it, and also what items you traded.

For example... We set out with a list of 5 caches that we wanted to find. The first one was located about a half mile from my place and was titled "Ball Exchange" ... so we knew we need to take some kind of ball with us to trade. We entered the lat/long coordinates into the GPS, and realized that the cache was located somewhere behind the local library. We parked and the library and followed a paved walkway back into a small wooded park area. Once we got to where our GPS unit told us we needed to be, we started looking around. Steve saw a large tree and figured it had to be somewhere around there. Turs out... He was right! He found the cache down inside the trunk of the tree, and it had been covered by a large piece of tree bark.

I wasn't about to stick my hands down inside that tree... I DON'T DO BUGS!!! (This is where the gloves and bug spray will come in handy.) Steve had no problems with it though. Once we got the medium sized plastic container out and opened it up, we knew exactly what they meant by "Ball Exchange". Inside, we found a pen and small notebook to write in, and a bunch of different balls to choose from. We took out a squishy ball that we thought Cookie might enjoy playing with, and we put our small bouncy ball inside. We wrote down our names, the date and time, and what items were traded. I was SO excited to have our first find!!!

We did this 4 more times that day and only had one cache that we could not find. We looked and looked for that one, but the only thing we came up with were a bazillion mosquitos. We figured we'd just move on and try that particular one again another day. Throughout our day... we found all kinds of little treasures, enjoyed exploring our local parks, and just had an all-around great time!

If any of you are outdoorsy people and this sounds like something you might like to try, check out http://www.geocaching.com/ . You do have to create an account in order to get the coordinates to the caches listed, but it's free. You can enter your zipcode and find pages and pages of caches in your area. I have already looked up Steve's zipcode, my parents' zipcode, and also my brother's zipcode, and I was amazed at the number of these things that are out there! They are all over the world!!

If the weather clears up a bit tomorrow, we're going to head back out to see what we can find... I'M HOOKED!!!