I missed the class geocache activity yesterday. To those who were in my group, I am sorry. I ended up with food poisoning. (Don't eat at Red Lobster.)
I have geocached before. "Geocache" - is that a verb? Oh well, it is now. To anyone who considers themselves an outdoor person, I'd suggest this as a hobby. I first heard of geocaching this past summer through my brother and his friends. Summers in the Goshen/Elkhart area tend to be pretty boring. Whenever we got bored, we'd log on to geocaching.com and search the local geocache sites. Its actually surprising how many geocaches there are. I didn't realize this was such a popular thing. The geocaches are rated on level of difficulty. Some are easy to find. For example, the directions on the website would say "under the big rock at the end of the church parking lot." Others have vague directions. Perhaps only the coordinates are given. Sometimes we would make a day of it, we'd print out the pages and go from site to site. Its fun to write in the logs and read about the experiences of other people who have been there. Its also entertaining to see the objects people put into these boxes. They are usually worthless trinkets - toy machine rings and keychains. We found a dirty beanie baby in one once. We like to leave "homies" in the caches. (For anyone that doesn't know what these are, they are little plastic figures you get in the toy machines at Meijer or the bowling alley. They are basically little gangster figurines. Kinda wierd, kinda funny, whatever...)
All of our geocaching adventures have been small scale, but there are some hidden way far out in the woods. We thought about hiding our own cache along the Elkhart River in a place where you'd need a kayak or canoe to get to. Maybe next summer. Someday, I'd like to go hiking at Turkey Run or Warren Dunes to find some caches. It makes hiking more fun. Instead of just walking around in the woods, you are actually looking for something. I've heard of geocaching being compared to a treasure hunt. I guess it kind of is. It is amazing that hiking and outdoor adventures have even become technological. You'd normally think of those activities as a way to get back to basics and escape technology. What will they come up with next...?
To those who are interested, here is the link to a video clip on the "getting started" page on geocaching.com. It shows just how fun geocaching can be.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_vSWSXaAyP4
Thursday, October 8, 2009
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