cache-tastic

Yesterday when my son got home from school, he reported that he had chosen not to go to the cafeteria during his lunch break but had instead remained in his AP Calculus class so that he and his friend could continue working on breaking a geocache code. When they showed their teacher the elaborate math problem they were working on for fun, he remarked, “You two really are the kings of the nerds.” The guys took that as a compliment.

My family took our first stab at geocaching on a vacation out west in 2007. During that 13-day journey we made the rounds of seven national parks in Utah and Colorado – Zion, Bryce Canyon, Capitol Reef, Arches, Canyonlands, Mesa Verde, and Great Sand Dunes. While we were in the Moab area, we made the drive out to Dead Horse Point State Park, whose most prominent feature is a natural overlook from which visitors have a stunning view of the Colorado River as it winds between the canyon walls 2,000 feet below.

As we entered the park, among the materials that the ranger handed to us was a special promotional packet about geocaching in Utah’s state parks. Geocaching is a high-tech treasure hunt in which participants use GPS devices to find hidden containers. According to geocaching.com, there are currently 636,975 active geocaches around the world. We had a handheld GPS with us on the trip, so when we discovered that there was a cache hidden near the visitor center at Dead Horse Point, we decided to try our hand at the game. That first geocache proved to be fairly easy to locate – in fact, we actually guessed the location based on the clue and didn’t really need the GPS coordinates – but it was a positive first experience.

A month later when we were in Madison, Wisconsin, visiting our niece and her husband, we tried to locate three caches near their home – we found only one out of three – but by then we were hooked. This year Chaney and I gave Paul a new and improved handheld GPS for Father’s Day, which has definitely helped them bolster their geocaching stats. Chaney and three of his friends have been working both independently and corporately to locate caches, and Paul and Chaney have hidden some caches of their own. Chaney is even blogging about his geocaching exploits, so check out "Cache-tastic: a chronicle of Stoogeteer geocaching."