First, Bitches: Geocaching

First, Bitches are a series of blogs about me discovering new things. They may not be new to you.

I recently noticed a friend on Facebook posting pics in an album called, “Geocaching.” I didn’t know what that was, but the pictures were all of rivers and trees so I figured it was a whole lotta something I wouldn’t be interested in. Then she posted more photos last night and my nosy ass decided to google “geocaching.”

I found the main site that describes it as:

Geocaching is a high-tech treasure hunting game played throughout the world by adventure seekers equipped with GPS devices. The basic idea is to locate hidden containers, called geocaches, outdoors and then share your experiences online. Geocaching is enjoyed by people from all age groups, with a strong sense of community and support for the environment.

The word “outdoors” immediately turned me off, but it was surpassed by words like “high-tech,” “treasure hunting,” and “GPS devices.” The competitive, amateur sleuth, with a gadget fetish in me was overjoyed.

I signed up for a free basic membership and read up on different types of caches. I did a search by zip code and was pleased to see that there were pages full of hidden treasures just waiting to be found. I woke Donny up to show him the site. He grumbled, rolled over, and went back to sleep. When he was awakened again a few hours later because I’d been hogging the covers I asked him, “Do you know what we’re doing tomorrow?”

Blank stare.

“Geocaching.”

Blank stare.

“Do you know what that is?”

“Treasure hunting?”

“So you were paying attention!”

We went to sleep.

I was so excited I woke up much earlier than I usually do on Sundays. I did some work and then over coffee, Donny and I tried downloading the necessary GPS apps to our phones. Two hours later I was ready to throw my phone, laptop, and Donny out the window. When we finally got our act together (or so we thought), we prepared to leave.

And then it started raining.

I took that opportunity to get more work done while Donny read up on Geocaching. When the rain stopped, we headed to the first cache at a park two minutes away. We stopped for fast food and ate in the park’s parking lot. And while we ate the sky opened up. I was starting to think that me and geocaching weren’t meant to be. Donny said he thought the storm would pass quickly and despite having no reason to believe that he actually knew what he was talking about, I decided we’d wait it out. Thank the Lord for headrest TVs with a DVD player. The kids kept themselves busy with a movie while Donny and I played around on our smartphones.  After about 30 mins the rain let up considerably. We all donned zip up hoodies and took off in search of our first treasure.

One of the first things they tell you about geocaching is to look out for Muggles. Much like in the Harry Potter books, Muggles are people that don’t know what the fuck is going on. You want to search for the caches and replace them without letting the Muggles around know what you’re doing. The idea being that Muggles will fuck it up for everyone by moving things and being general pains in the ass.

Because of the weather there were, thankfully, not many Muggles around. We set off in the direction my phone’s GPS said to go, jumping over puddles and stepping in mud. I regretted wearing my new $100 sneakers, but it was too late to do anything about it. I took solace in the fact that the hoodie was protecting my new $140 hairdo.

When we got to the designated spot, we began to search the area; we kicked around leaves, twigs, and rocks, we looked up into the trees in case the canister was tied to a low branch, and we checked all around light posts. Nothing. The GPS wasn’t very helpful as once we got close to the coordinates the needle started spinning all willy-nilly. We were miserable.

We decided to go to Best Buy and buy a real GPS. I figured we’d buy one for the car, one that we could also carry around for cache hunts. I figured wrong as the Best Buy associate explained that for geocaching you’d need a handheld that has geocaching built in. The prices were too high for something I wasn’t even sure I’d enjoy yet. We went home.

While I worked again, Donny did some research and found a handheld GPS device exclusively for geocaching for $199, but reminded me that we had a shitload of reward certificates for Best Buy. He ordered it online and went to pick it up. It cost us $80. We logged back in to our geocache account and pulled up a bunch of caches in our area. We read the descriptions and other helpful hints posted by the people who hid them and people who’d previously went looking for them – sometimes successful, sometimes not. With the GPS plugged into my laptop it was as simple as clicking “send to my GPS” when we found caches that appealed to us. We loaded a few and left again.

People try to get pretty creative in the containers they use to hide the cache. The first one we attempted kept hinting at “nut” in the description so we figured the container might be a fake nut of some kind. It was located at an intersection that can be pretty busy sometimes, but not too bad on a Sunday late afternoon. It was also located, if the GPS was to be believed, down a ditch in front of a private residence. Jack and Donny waited in the car while Kali and I stepped over a guardrail to find it. Crickets leaped at our ankles and I felt like things were crawling on my neck. After a few minutes, Donny and Jack joined us. It was pretty clear that the GPS was directing us down the ditch and it was very steep. Also, the whole “in front of someone’s house” thing made me afraid. I was pretty sure Muggles don’t play that. I pulled up more information on the cache and when I saw, “Beware of ticks,” I called a big fat, “let’s get the fuck outta here” on the whole operation.

We got back in the car and loaded up the next cache. It turns out it was in the parking lot of a supermarket strip mall near our house. The GPS seemed to point us smackdab in front of a light post. That area of the parking lot was completely empty. I stayed in the car with Jack while Donny and Kali got out to investigate. There was a Muggle on a skateboard nearby, looking at us curiously. He got bored after a few moments and looked away. Whew!

After a couple of circles around the post, I saw Donny lift up the base around the pole. “Did you find it?” He nodded. I told him to bring it to the car. They got back in the car and I locked the doors. I don’t know why I was all Deep Throat about the whole operation, it just felt like the right thing to do.

Our first successful cache location!

Some caches have items in containers that you are welcome to take, but it’s proper etiquette to then leave items of equal or greater value in return. Some just have a log for you to sign. This one was a log only and it was pretty neat seeing the names and dates of the people that came before us. That cache had been there for almost three years!

Donny opened the first cache to reveal the baggie protecting the log sheet. He said he felt like we were making a drug drop.

We signed the log and then Donny returned the stash. We decided to sign it with our last name, the date, and then I threw in two little stars ’cause I’m a fucking girl. Sue me. We’ll use that until we come up with a badass geocache team name. We headed to our third location.

Because of the name and description we figured it was in a park with ducks, beavers, and other wildlife nearby. My city slicker, me-no-like-animals ass completely blocked all of that info out due to being so high off our first find. We figured out we needed to park at a dead-end with a big ass “no parking after 6pm” sign… it was after 6pm… to get to the next cache. Since Donny and Kali had gotten out and found the last one, Donny said that I should go with Kali this time, but warned that we should hurry cause if the po-po came, he was going to leave us. That’s how he rolls.

Kali and I started off, me carrying the GPS. We walked down a trail with woods to our right and trees that backed up into a lake on our left. The lake looked dirty and lonely. Ahead of us I could make out a brown bridge. It looked sinister. I started thinking, “This is where the white folks die in movies. What the fuck am I doing out here with my baby?” At the foot of the bridge I stopped.

“Kali, maybe we should go back.”

“Noooo, this one has treasure. I want to see what’s in there!”

Just then I heard a branch snap to our right. I’d seen enough movies to know this is usually the appetizer to a dismemberment entree.

“Come on, Mommy!”

We stepped on to the bridge. It didn’t cross water, just more dirt, so I suspect it was just for show. It felt reliable enough, but the sounds of our footsteps on the wood gave me the heebie jeebies. At the other end, I stopped once more.

“I don’t think I want to do this.”

“COME ON!”

I think it’s safe to say that this was my daughter’s white half kicking in. I’m sure her black half was yelling, “RUN, girl, RUN!” She’d apparently tuned that half out. According to the GPS we had to hook a left though we didn’t need it to tell us that – directly in front of us and to our right was thick woods, the path continued to the left only.

As we turned left, I looked ahead at what was waiting for us. I didn’t like what I saw.

More fucking woods

We kept walking with me checking the GPS every few seconds. We were 80 feet away. I’d already decided that should a rapist, mountain lion and/or deer appear, I would yell for Kali to run for her life, back to her Daddy, brother and safety, and I’d go down fighting like a true Brooklyn bitch. Cause that’s how I roll.

When we got to the point where the cache should have been 6 feet away, I stopped walking. I turned in a complete circle, taking in everything around me. I was looking for anything out of place, a color that didn’t belong. I wanted to make sure we were alone before I dropped my guard to look for the container.

I was sure we were alone, but just in case I dialed Donny’s cell with my own, put it on speaker and handed it to Kali. I told him we were looking, but I was too freaked to concentrate. After I minute, I decided I was heading back and he’d have to come do it. When I got to the bridge, I could see Donny and Jack outside the car. I waved that he should come to us. He and Jack met us at the bridge and the four of us made our way back to the cache site.

Donny spotted it within ten seconds, a few feet up an embankment, resting against a tree, covered with leaves.

“You know, I’m sure I’d have found it quickly too, but I was distracted by all the bricks I was shitting.”

I didn’t want to fuck around looking at the loot in the woods and I didn’t like leaving the car unattended so we practically ran back to the car.

This cache had a lot of little toys and knick knacks. We took a toy of plastic hands that clapped when you shook it for Jack and deposited a big, hot pink, die in its place.  (Donny made it back safely and we headed to our fourth location).

This one cleverly had “PUBLIX ENEMY” in the name and we could tell by the location marker that it was very near the Kroger supermarket near our house. (Publix is another supermarket chain). We also knew that the person who hid the cache had left a simple two-letter hint that when decoded, revealed LP. I figured it stood for “light post.” Also, someone who had quickly found the cache left a comment that they had to wait to replace it because a Muggle parked his truck near the hiding spot. It turned out it was in a light post behind the Kroger where the deliveries are made.

I hopped out and looked around. Much like the first one we found, the base lifted and out rolled an old film container. I grabbed it and hopped back in the car. This one had a tiny scroll of paper inside a little ziploc bag. Sure enough, when it was time to put it back, a Muggle truck driver came out to move his truck. While he was trying to do that, and his back was turned, I jumped out and returned the cache.

Light post hiding the third cache.

3rd cache container

We gave the first one from earlier that day – in the park – another attempt, but still couldn’t find it. According to the log online, someone just found it 7 days ago. We wondered if it had been muggled in the meantime. Damn Muggles!

We had so much fun doing this as a family. I’m grateful to my friend Cathy for bringing it to my attention and that GPS was worth every cent of the 80 bucks we spent on it. It was so much more reliable than the program in our phones and easier to use. When we found a cache we could mark it as found and leave comments about our experience straight from the device.

As we get better at it, and maybe on some days when it’s just Donny and I, we’ll attempt harder ones with more rugged terrain. The caches are identified by their difficulty level in both finding the cache and the terrain you’ll have to cover to get there. There are also multi-caches where the first coordinates lead you to one cache which provides a clue to the GPS coordinates for another location and so on. And there are many that have puzzles you have to solve before you leave the house. Once you solve the puzzles, they reveal the coordinates which you can then load into your GPS and go hunting like normal. We’re going to try those next weekend. Some of the puzzles look pretty easy, but we found a local geocachers that has dozens all around our area and her puzzles are challenging. We can’t wait to try those!

If you think you might like to try it, I’d love to hear about it. We’re thinking we may start hiding some of our own caches with items specifically for people people with children. It really is a fun family activity.