Christmas treasure

Guess what I did on Christmas? No, actually, I didn't go to Home Depot, but good guess. In addition to spending quality time with family, opening presents, and eating way too much, I went geocaching for the first time! Not what you were expecting, huh?

"What is geocaching?" you may be asking yourself. Well, people create caches and post their locations on the web. Then others can find the caches by using a handheld GPS. Treasure hunting with a reliable map!

The Christmas geocaching episode was spurred by my cousins from the panhandle who are just getting hooked on the sport. To be perfectly honest, we had a little trouble finding it. That doesn't seem so bad until I tell you that this cache was rated 0.5 on a difficulty scale of 1 - 5, 5 being the hardest. I think our difficulties arose from the fact that we just didn't trust the GPS.

In addition to coordinates, the website gives you a description of the location. So we were second-guessing the GPS in favor of the description. In hind sight, that doesn't make much sense since none of us were familiar with the area.

It was all worth it, though, when we found the cache. I didn't think I would be so excited, but it was really thrilling to find this secret treasure box hidden in a public place. So many people walk right past it without even knowing it's there. It's like being in a secret society.

The cache we found was an ammo box. It had a logbook and various treasures in it. We signed the logbook, took a treasure, and left a treasure. That's how it works. You can take something out of the cache as long as you leave something in exchange. There were magnets, matchbox cars, some seashells, a couple of golf balls, and some various small toys. We took a sea bean because they are supposed to be good luck, and we left a small mouse toy that belonged to my aunt and uncle's cats.

I checked out the website today, and there are thousands of geocaches in our area. Amazing! I think we'll have to start finding them. It's always fun to pretend you're a pirate.

Arrrrrh.