I blame Jen for this! (that’s her over there in my list of followers) For a few weeks now she has been blogging about Geocaching.
It sounded like fun but I thought we didn’t have it here…it turns out that it’s pretty much everywhere.
What else could I do but get a GPS and learn how to use it. I used to be in the YMCA* so I know how to use a compass and map but this is very different and much easier.
*The outdoors type…not the dancing, prancing, mincing type.
This week I finally got time to go out searching for my first cache, a little to-ing and fro-ing to work out how to use the GPS then straight to the first cache…which was surrounded by people drinking latte and talking BS. (bullshit) Although I got within a few meters of it I simply could not search and give it away.
Oh well! Plan B then… Another nearby cache looked promising so I chose the co-ordinates and moved on.
Plan B was at the very top of a hill in the centre of my hometown. I drove around the hill until I found a way up and went for the relatively short ten minute walk to the top. A little more to-ing, (fro-ing would have seen me fall off the hill at this point)
This was a favorite place when I was a kid, we had forts and cubbies here and there on the hill and I once caught and released a Thorny Devil here. (small thorny lizard that eats only ants)
As I walked in circles the GPS beeped it’s warning that I was standing on ground zero...I looked around and very quickly saw a few stones out of place, moving one stone I saw the cache hiding there.
It was great to get my first find, and it is a bit of fun… the girls* and grandkids are looking forward to coming with and probably spoiling it for me, but still I'm looking forward to many more. *I have three daughters...Ahhh! (run screaming from the room)
As you can see from the pics, Rocky Hill is an apt name for this spot…if lacking a little inspiration. You can imagine the hiding spots for such a small plastic box in terrain like this...
One side of the town has a distant desert vista, a little green after recent rains…and the other is a huge steel furnace and rolling mills and everything that comes with it.
