A Life of Adventure: Geocaching

Some of you may know that Todd and I are really into Geocaching. It's a sport that people participate in world wide. It's basically a big, giant scavenger hunt. People will hide a cache (container with goodies in it) somewhere in the world, and post the latitude and longitude coordinates to it on the Internet at www.geocaching.com. If you want to find a cache, go to this site, get the coordinates of caches in your area, plug 'em into your handheld GPS, and go find a cache.

The idea is, when you find the cache, is to take a goody and leave another goody. Usually there is a log in there too, so we write in the log, and some people even include a funsaver camera so you can take a picture of yourself to leave for the cache owner.

We learned about geocaching one night while goofing around on Google. Todd likes to search on random words he hears on TV, or words that I'll say when talking. On this occasion he searched on his pet name for me (no, I will not tell you what that is, it's kinda private, OK?) and we stumbled upon the Geocaching site. It was around 10 PM, and we called up a few friends, explained what we were doing, they were game for an adventure, so we all set out for Goddard Park around midnight with a backpack filled with beer, along with goodies for the cache, and our trusty GPS.

It's great fun, and we always get to see a new area in the Ocean State. It's an excellent way to explore a new area too. Here are some pictures from a cache we tried to find a few weeks ago. This was a multi-cache (cache contains a clue to another cache, which contains a clue to another cache until you find the one that contains the goodies) but we only found the first cache in the series of caches. This area was so beautiful, we may have to go back soon, and find the rest of the caches in the series.

We were at a park called George B. Salter Grove for this cache. This park overlooks Narragansett Bay in RI has a rock wall breakwater that you can walk out to and walk on. The first cache was out by the breakwater, so we had to walk on the rock wall to find it. There were people fishing off the wall, as well as swans galore. Dozens and dozens of swans! It was a cloudless day, warm, and just all around fabulous.

This is me, on the rock wall, on the way out to finding the cache. I think our GPS was telling me that we were about 500 feet away at this point.

Swans galore. Look at them all! You should have seen Griffen jump into the water to scare them. Swans don't scare that easily, I think they would have eaten Griffen if he got any closer to them.

They are pretty though, aren't they?

This is me, just after we found the cache. The cache itself wasn't all that exciting. It was just a small container that had the hint for the next cache in the series. Normally when we find just a normal cache, it's more interesting than that.

Cormorants on a rock, sunning themselves.

This is Nemo in the high grass. He's in his natural element in the high grass, as beagles are bred to flush rabbits out of the high grass so the rabbits can then be hunted. Interesting, the white tails on beagles were also bred in, so the hunters can see the dog when they are hunting.

So, that was my Cliff Claven moment of the day.