Cache (not Cash)

Spent portions of the last two days cleaning up, repairing and refurbishing my Geocaches. For the majority of you that have no idea what I'm talking about, Geocaching is a game (sport?) where you use a GPS to locate a hidden container in the woods (forest). When you find it, you sign the log and move on to hunt the next one.

I have always loved hiking in the woods. I discovered miles of trails in Charlotte I had no idea existed due to hunting Geocaches. I also have had a lot of fun creating puzzles for others to solve.

The truth is, the hiding has always been my favorite part of the game. I actually no longer hunt caches hidden by others. Too many poorly hidden, never maintained, tupperware hidden under a stump caches, turned me off to the hunting part.

Nowadays I do my best to keep mine refreshed and I have a number of caches that are either at the five year mark or are very close. I'm also the current owner of the oldest Geocache in North Carolina (Octopus Garden) and one of the thirty oldest active caches(112th hidden) in the entire world. There are over two hundred thousand caches in two hundred and nineteen countries, so that's quite a feat.

One of my favorite creations is "Don't Be Afraid of the Dark". It requires you to hunt at night and uses a "light trail" to lead you through the forest. The light trail consists of luminescent tacks placed on trees and requires a good flashlight to find the cache.

The Don't Be Afraid light trail

Another favorite is "Mystery of the Birkhead Ghosts" which is based on the Three Investigators Mystery series and requires a four mile hike in one of my favorite wilderness areas, Birkhead Wilderness in the Uwharrie National Forest.

Birkhead Ghosts doesn't get a lot of traffic because the truth is Geocaching has a lot of weenies. Folks that have no business being in the woods, people that can't follow directions and people that can't put a lid back on a cache when they do find it.

Since Birkhead is a puzzle cache and requires a hike, most of these folks never get anywhere near it.

Sadly they all seem to find "Lara's Tomb", which is the first Geocache I placed back in 2001. They leave the lid off, move the cache, fill it full of garbage, remove the logbook and do everything you shouldn't do. Lara's Tomb is an easy cache. You really don't have to do much of anything but walk a half mile down a casual trail. Because this is my first hide, I'm rather fond of it, but the cache rookies almost make me want to close it down.

Virtual caches also solve the "rookie" problem. They have no container and no logbook. They require you to visit a location and send proof of your visit. I have two virtual caches, "The Wind Blows Through Time" in Blowing Rock and "Crockett's Wilderness Adventure" near the Wilderness Lodge in Disney World. "Wind Blows Through Time" has been a perfect no-trouble cache, but "Crockett's" has caused some pain because Disney kept closing and reworking the nature trail. I eventually changed the route and thus far it seems to be working.

My most difficult cache is "Hunting for Hidden Gold". It requires a lot of bushwhacking and during the summer this means lots of spiderwebs in your face and wading through (or around) fields of poison ivy. To solve this cache you must earn it. That also means a lot of rookies whine about it. "It's too hard, it was way off the trail." I guess I'm just a hard-ass, I have no sympathy. There are lots of easy caches, go hunt those.

If you received a new GPS for Christmas, there is no better way to learn how to use it.

'til the whiners learn to play the game

Keep the Adventure Alive,

AT

Comments

[gnumoon]

This is so cool- I didn't know anything like it existed! I'm off to Google and find out more.