Extreme Geocaching

 

“Geocaching is a real-world outdoor treasure hunting game. Players try to locate hidden containers, called geocaches, using GPS-enabled devices and then share their experiences online.”   http://www.geocaching.com/

My Dad and sister have been really into geocaching for quite a while ago. Darcy recently found her 800th cache and I think my Dad is past 2000 caches. Whenever they are together or away from home they can’t resist finding a few caches. As a result of hanging out with them I have found a decent amount of caches myself.

This summer Michael has been doing a lot of hiking and has gotten into caching as well. He likes to find the caches that require a long hike to get to. This week he found a few up on top of Y mountain.  When we go to a park with the kids he likes to look up a few caches nearby. Last week we went to the playground behind Provo Peaks Elementary to play a find a few caches.

Generally caches are hid in a place you can reach from standing on the ground. This one ended up being about 30 feet up the tree. I climbed trees like a monkey when I was a kid so I decided to try and get the cache.

That’s me, way up in the tree, holding the cache in my hand (it was a micro so it’s hard to see.) It was fun to climb a tree again, and my kids thought I was really cool, but I got sap all over my pants so I ‘m not sure if it was really worth it or not.

On Saturday Darcy came down to visit. We had some errands to do and after our errands we went caching. Michael had found a cache on a little island that you could wade out too. From pictures that people had posted it looked like it got about knee deep. So we decided to try it.

Here we are with the island we are wading to in the background. The water was a bit murky so it was hard to tell how deep it was.

Wading back. Its way more than knee deep. The cache ended up being on the opposite side of the island from where we went ashore. So we had to bush whack through prickly trees to get there. But we found the cache and Michael and Kathryn decided to wade out and get it too.

Kathryn was the only to find the cache and stay dry in the process.

Me and Michael after finding it. You can see from his shirt how deep the water got.

After our adventure Darcy and I were talking about it. She said if someone had said, “I will pay you ten dollars to wade through that slimy water out to the island.” She would have said no way. But for some reason decided on our own to do it because there was a cache on the island wasn’t that big of a deal.

Usually geocaching doesn’t involve wading through a lake or climbing a tree, but it was an exciting departure from the norm.

And just for kicks here is one more picture of Darcy and Michael finding a cache on our way home. I stayed in the car to watch the kids while Darcy and Michael got one more cache. I wonder what people who drove by thought when they saw  to adults, hanging out by a rock on the side of the road, with towels wrapped around there waist.