March 14: Geocaching

It was a pretty nice afternoon and I needed a picture so I logged on to get the coordinates for a cache that was placed at a local park. From the description it sounded like a fairly easy find. 

I walked down a paved path and my GPS pointed me in the direction of an old, hollowed tree. I glanced at an opening, contemplated sticking my hand in to reach for the cache and then thought better (mainly because my geocaching exploits have left me covered in ticks, with poison ivy on more than one occasion and some nice looking scars). Instead, I decided to peer into the hole I was about to place my hand in and I am thankful that I did because I saw a pair of eyes staring back at me. I took a few steps back, caught my breath and checked again, just to make sure my eyes weren't playing tricks on me. Nope, that was definitely a pair of eyes staring back at me. I am not certain exactly what it was and I wasn't interested in finding out either, but my best guess is that it was a frog or a toad. I moved around to the other side of the tree and saw a large opening, which contained the cache, TNLNSL and was on my way!

Geocaching is an outdoor treasure-hunting game in which the participants use a Global Positioning System (GPS) receiver or other navigational techniques to hide and seek containers (called "geocaches" or "caches") anywhere in the world. A typical cache is a small waterproof container containing a logbook and "treasure," usually toys or trinkets of little value.

Currently over 823,000 geocaches are registered on various websites devoted to the pastime. Geocaches are currently placed in over 100 countries around the world and on all seven continents, including Antarctica.