The Rewards and Reasons to Geocaching

A year ago this week I discovered a hobby that would take me to so many interesting locations, I can't begin to describe them all here. I upgraded my pre Vietnam-era cell phone to a brand new smart phone with GPS capabilities and an application known as c:geo. After I set up my free account on the Ground Speak website, I was able to log in, on my phone and began seeing geocaches all around me!

I ventured out to a small roadside park The Hills of Hyland in a foot of snow and walked around staring at my phone until I came upon a knot hole in a small tree... bingo! A small plastic container wrapped in camouflaged duct tape contained many small trinkets that users trade out, as well as a log to sign. It was so interesting to think how many other people had taken the same journey and found this hidden treasure. I suddenly became part of a secret society of "geocachers". Thus became the addictive treasure. Suddenly I found myself walking through every nearby park looking in knot holes, under bridges and every other nook and cranny of public spaces. I soon found myself having to travel further to find new caches and discovering all kinds of hidden natural wonders.

One of the first such that our entire family took part in was Tree House, a very fun/unexpected discovery in a nearby state park. Many of these "hidden" treasures we have driven by 100 times and had no idea they were there. One thing that most every geocacher will tell you is that "they would have never discovered this site/location without geocaching". Another great example is an awesome water fall we discovered beside a major highway in Columbus of all places! While the cache itself La Cascada Escondida (The Hidden Waterfall) is pretty boring, the waterfall we discovered while looking for the cache was amazing! What a suprise to hear the roar of a waterfall while walking down a sidewalk in an urban neighborhood. One of Carly's favorite geocaches was Just Desserts Geocache which was a puzzle/multi-cache, where we had to find clues in a cemetery to find the final hiding location. The "cache" had cooking themed prizes, pretty cool! We also found "Freddy Kruger's" head stone! Would we have ever taken the family to see a cemetary in St. Marys, Ohio and see that without geocaching? Of course not!

After discovering my 100th geocache I felt I was ready to hide my very own geocache, and so Lily Pad Leap for Dummies was born. My favorite kind of geocache to find was one that required a long walk in the woods and an easy to spot cache, so I reviewed the local public parks in Google Maps and found the furthest spot from any road way. To date, only a handful of people have made the journey to the cache site, but I have had very good reviews, including this one:

"This. Was. Incredible! Especially doing it with 3-4 inches of snow on the ground. What a fantastic time. Of course when you start trekking in you think this is going to be a piece of cake. Well, let me tell you, after you spend about 15 minutes on the path... there is no path. And, if this was during the summer... well. All I can say is you best come with a football helmet on. You have to protect your noggin. This is one tough bushwhacking experience in the winter and I can only imagine the difficulty going way up in the summer.

Placed my feet in a stream once going through a little ice. No big deal I was ready for it. But then I got whacked in the face several times by small tree limbs. Fortunately none of them were nettles or thorns. I had my share of working my way through thorns and tightly packed trees, branches, downed trees... this was just too much fun.

Then, I arrive at GZ... or what I thought was GZ. Now remember, I have at least 3 inches of snow I am working with. So, the cache is supposed to be on a boulder in clear site in a small clearing... Right heh. I find a clearing and a boulder thinking this is it... and boulders are not that easy to find with the snow. Course I picked the wrong clearing and the wrong boulder. Thinking maybe the cache fell off I started clearing the boulder and looking ... no luck. So I backtrack and start combing the area. More trees, nettles, fun stuff.

I look around and see something that looks like a boulder, and its bigger than the other one. I reach it and slowly start to clear the top and woooohoooo the cache appears out from under the snow! What a relief. I was determined not to log a DNF. Needless to say I start yelling I was so excited. This was a great time, fun hike, and incredible cache. Thanks for the great time today. And I am quite satisfied being Third to Find. TFTC!"

I now have plans for a night cache, a tree climbing cache and an underwater cahce! But I figure I need to find a few more hundred caches before then. I would encourage you to get out in our parks and take advantage, after all, we all pay for them and we could use the exercise, right?!

While geocaching doesn't require a lot of special equipment, you can get some basic geocaching supplies and/or a GPS unit from our friends at Indian Lake Outfitters. They are the only place in Logan County that carries geocaching supplies and they can special order items in for you as well. We here at FastTrack Signs can also produce a variety of geocaching stickers should you need them.

The Ground Speak website tracks all your geocaching statistics, I thought you might be interested to know mine:

• You've found 117 caches (114 distinct) since your first cache find on 02/20/2010.
• You find the most caches in April and usually on Sunday.
• Find Rate 0.3324 caches/day.
• Longest Streak 5 consecutive days with finds from 01/02/2011 to 01/06/2011.
• Longest Slump 73 consecutive days without a find from 08/19/2010 to 10/31/2010.
• Best Day 8 caches in one day on 04/04/2010.
• Best Month 32 caches in April of 2010.
• Best Year 95 caches in 2010.

Happy caching!

This has been a guest blog post by local geocacher dennisschaub. Thanks to Dennis and Carly, of FastTrack Signs for introducing us to the wonderful world of Geocaching one year ago!