Geocaching in the valley of caches

The Saturday was supposed to be a hiking day and I had really been looking forward to it, but when a couple of hikers came equipped with GPS’s loaded with geocache data, it was clear a new adventure was afoot.  My son had gone geocaching a few times and had returned generally unharmed (not sure if the strange behavior was from geocaching or just expected from a teenager. Started about age 13… ), so I was interested to tag along and see what this was all about. 

We headed up the Wind Caves trail, a route that takes one to the Wind Caves, a set of caves in the rock that was formed by wind. One of the geocaches was named the Wind Caves Cache. Got some clever namers at work! Not long after we started, we stopped, and the 2 geocachers told us geomuggles that there was a cache nearby. But I knew that before she said anything… I could smell it!! (Later I learned it was a sandwich from my previous hiking trip in my backpack, but for now, it was the scent of a foe! A pretty disgusting foe…) I was handed a GPS and after being shown the basics, I jumped downhill from the trail in search of my first geocache!! The screen showed the distance from the cache and as long as the number was going down, it meant you were getting closer. I found a spot where the number was really small then would get larger and then smaller as I walked around a tree. Didn’t make any sense. One of the geocachers said that sometimes you just had to use your eyes. I looked up, and there it was!! A large military ammo box at the base of the tree! Gleefully… I mean, majestically, I opened the ammo box to discover the treasures hidden inside. Someone thought I was taking too long and told me to lift some latch over some catch and twist it backwards twice or something like that. I knew how to do it but was just savoring the moment. Savoring for a long time. Kind of like I’m doing now in this paragraph. Finally open (she didn’t need to do it. I would have got it eventually), I was ordered to hand over the log book, which I quickly did. Inside the box were children’s books mostly, and a few teen and adult books. I wanted to read them all!! This particular cache was called the Library but I didn’t see any tables or chairs so I grabbed a book and plopped down.

“On to the next one, Huffyboy!”

“HuffyMAN.” I reminded. “And what about reading?”

Someone pulled the book from my fingers and put the book back in the ammo box.

“Library’s closed, Huffyboy.”

Before putting the box back where we found it, I was shown where my name was listed as one of the discoverers in the log book. That was very cool. And one of the geocachers was doing this challenge where she had to bring 100 people with her to find caches. Turned out I was number 100!! I was pretty stoked about that, and she was too, I think, cause she kept trying to verify it with her friend…

“Are you POSITIVE I didn’t already get number 100? Can’t we lie and say it was someone els…”

The end of the sentence was drowned out by my loudly singing out the tune to “Taps” in excitement for the quest to the next cache up the trail!

We found the geocache near the Wind Caves after enjoying the beautiful scenery created by the unique features of the cave and the gorgeous colors of the foliage around us. Exultantly, we headed off to the next trail, where we found 3 more geocaches. We tried to find another but after fruitlessly searching for 15 minutes or so, we had to give up on it. It was pretty tough to walk away from the quest because there was the feeling of failure looking above. We finally all agreed that it just was not there and moved on up the trail, just like George Jefferson.

This second path was the Jardine Juniper Trail and the end was marked by the majestic yet creepy Jardine Juniper that has been alive for an estimated 1600 years – which is slightly longer than the Rolling Stones have been performing. After taking some pictures, we headed along the side of the hill for about 50 yards to the indicated area of the last geocache we would be searching for. We ended up at the base of a small rock outcropping and the GPS’s seemed to say it was right there. We searched all over and thought we were going to come up empty again. One of the others climbed the outcropping and was about to push some big rocks over the edge.

“Hey, Huffyboy! Come stand where I drew the X in the dirt down there!”

I was looking for the X when he shouted that he had found the cache! Turns out we were seeing 0 on the GPS because we were almost directly below the cache, which was at the top of the outcropping and not the bottom. We were elated! Though oddly, the same searcher kept asking me to go stand on the X at the base of the cliff anyway… He really looked sad when I told him we needed to go so we could get off the mountain before dark. He must really love the geocaching.

It was a great day of hiking (almost 14 miles!) with really fun friends and a new hobby discovered. I love finding those ammo boxes now. When I was in Smith and Edwards last week, they had to pull me away from a big display… I knew one of those ammo boxes had to be holding some treasures!!