In December of 2004 I somehow stumbled on to this outdoor "game" called Geocaching on the internet. My parents had given me a small handheld GPS for Christmas the year before and I had still not found any practical use for it. That all changed when I discovered that Geocaching combines my inner
ninja geek with my love of hiking and the outdoors and games. 9 years later I have my geowifey and 2 geokids to join me! There are over 2.1 million geocaches hidden worldwide and all though we have only found 77 of them in 9 years, we love it. We've been through 3 GPS's (on our 4th and hopefully last). Last summer I sort of kind of might have lost a GPS. After waiting a year, I got one for my birthday. We're back in the Geocaching world! We've found 4 since. I took Rhylan out to find one at the windmills. There was one in Point Tupper we looked for but couldn't find it. So we went home and got Wifey. Of course, she found it (she always does). Rhylan found the next one under a tree. Yesterday, I got bored so I took Cooper for a hike with intention of finding a cache. I calculated the hike to the cache to be about 2 miles. I didn't calculate that I'd only be moving at 2.5 miles an hour! I put Coop in his backpack, hoisted him on to my back and we set off. 15 minutes into the hike and I feel him twitch (li'l bugger fell asleep!). He slept while I hiked. Excellent combo. He woke a 1/2 hour later, just a few minutes before we got the cache. We looked around for a bit before finding it in a log. We signed the log book in to to prove we were there and then headed for home. All total, it was a 2 hour hike.
Today, Rhylan wanted to go. So we went (duh). We brought Cooper with us (in the backpack again). I thought it was going to be an easy hike in (an ATV trail like yesterday). Nope.. it was an unmarked, barely visible single track. We made it, but not without a few guess. That's where GPS came in handy... It showed us which direction to walk and mostly kept us on track. And it was hot today, too. Rhylan complained of being hot, needing a drink, wanting to carry a stick to fight off wild animals and enemies. But every time I asked him if he wanted to go home he answer with a definitive "no". So we kept walking. We didn't find the geocache today. It is buried under some rocks and we couldn't figure out which rock it was under (there were LOTS). Frustrated, we headed for home. But geocaching isn't always about the finds. It's about the journey. No matter how much Rhylan complains, he'd rather be
geocaching. And Cooper loves the ride!
*Next blog will be about the rules taught while hiking... Like Rule number 3) Don't drink stagnant water.
