Scavenger Hunt

While my wife was away last weekend, Pappy and I tried something new. For some time our friend and irrepressible enthusiast, 3DogCache, has been extolling the virtues of geocaching as the perfect activity for owners and dogs. Typically it involves following a GPS receiver to some coordinates in search of a "cache", or hidden box placed there by some other geocacher.

It works something like this-- first you go into your desk drawer and locate a geegaw, such as your souvenir keychain from the trip to the Florida swamp country. Then go to the geocaching.com web site and pick a nearby cache location, load the coordinates into your GPS device, and follow it blindly into brick walls and off cliffs in a line towards your destination. Having arrived in the vicinity, look around until you spot a likely poison ivy patch. Wade straight in until you find a hollow tree containing a moldy tupperware container. Open the container, swap your geegaw for a plastic Happy Meal figurine from the cache, and sign the soggy log book for posterity. Repeat.

In placing a cache, I guess one has to be pretty wily so that non-geocachers don't mistake it for a pre-Columbian lunch box and carry it away. As a result, they aren't placed on the beaten path. For me, the biggest challenge wasn't figuring out where to go but rather how to get there. After our lovely walk through Rock Creek Park towards our cache, Pappy and I found ourselves standing on the shoulder of East-West Highway, cars whizzing by, staring at a solid wall of foliage between us and where the GPS was stubbornly telling us to go. We bushwhacked our way towards our coordinates, fighting off boa constrictors and man-eating plants, until we reached a glade next to a creek. Of course it was in plain sight of a little side road, but GPS devices are kind of dumb that way.

Given that we like to walk, we'll probably do some more geocaching. It's a good excuse to explore new places on a nice day.