Friday, September 23, 2011

Glad for Cache

An easy find out by Utah Lake (note the GPS )
So about one week before I took my daughter off to school, I was up late one night watching KBYU and the annual fund raising drive.  I was sort of depressed because I was wondering what the heck I was going to do with myself with my youngest cub leaving the den.  Just as I was about to go to bed some really handsome geeky guy came on to KBYU tv to help with the fund raising drive.  The show this man was from was a show called Treasure Trackers.  It told about a world wide game called "Geocaching"  or others describe it as "high-tech-hide and seek".  I was intrigued.  I had known about Geocaching from watching an episode of my favorite crime drama ,"Law and Order: Criminal Intent"  episode Unblinking Eye.  (In fact, I am watching the episode as I write this.)  But, I didn't really pay attention to it then.  But the documentary on
KBYU was right what I needed at the time to soothe me during the sadness of my empty nest depression.

It showed a bunch of people from all walks of life who hunted with their GPS systems for caches that were hidden all over the world.  Caches that are hidden in plain sight! But- camouflaged from everyday folks.  Well what do you know, a game I can play anywhere in the world for free?  I am a really good seeker of things; I just seem have a gift for finding things.  Just ask my mom, I always used to know where she hid her crap.  So as I went to the website Geocaching.com and I began to do my homework.  



  • First, I registered for free on the website.  
  • Second, I typed in my zip code
  • Third, I dropped my jaw at the sheer amount of caches just on the west side of  Provo.
  • Fourth, I went to get my first cache at the Walkers just around the corner from our house.






It has all been so much fun since that first cache.  I bought myself a really great GPS unit dedicated to geocaching.  All I have to do is log on to the website and then I download the caches I want to seek out.  Since August 10,  2011 I have found  over 40 caches and have hidden 13 of my own in various places all around the city.  This is an activity that I plan to stick with for many years. Some of the benefits are exercise, good company*my daughter Jordan loves it*, and learning so much about the areas I visit.  I cannot think of a better family activity.  I only wish I knew about this activity when we lived overseas.  I could have really logged some great caches then.  I guess I will just have to start over and go back to revisit those places again!