If you don't know, you can
learn what geocaching is. Pretty much some dude makes a waterproof container and goes and hides it somewhere. They take a GPS and mark the coordinates when they place it. They then give these coordinates out and other people can use their GPS units to go find the containers. Theres usually a pad of paper and a pen inside to make a note, and often little trinkets you can take (only if you brought a little trinket to trade). So its one big scavenger hunt type thing.
Today the local conservation district held a little rally. There was a 3 cache rally for the n00bs and a big 6 cache rally for the l33t folk. We of course did the 6 cache. It was a long walk through the park, but the caches were right off the trails...and half of them you'd find because other people were already at them. Each cache had cool goodies. I got a water bottle holder, a fishing bobber, a cool flip out pen thing, whistles (with compass and light), and wildflower seeds. Nothing too major, but neat none the less.
Each cache also had raffle tickets, so each group could take one. They also had a question that you must answer. Each correct answer earned you another raffle ticket when you got back to the main tent. The questions were themed for each cache and their locations (like the cache near the fishing docks had a fish question, and thats where I got the bobber).
We ended up being one of the first groups to complete the rally, which was fairly surprising. The other groups seemed to have done this quite a bit more than we have, they even had special group names and knew of each other through the geocache web site. They kept asking what our group name was...we don't have one. We're "The Smiths", because thats what everyone knows us as. Esp the conservation people since we volunteer for stuff.
The raffle was ok. Just more trinket stuff but still nice. Some hippies won a backpack and another group won a free camping stay at one of the parks. We got a visor and some other misc items. My dad wears visors, so it worked out.
Geocaching is quite fun, if you like doing ourdoorsey stuff. If you're out hiking in the woods anyway, its neat to find these little treasure chests that few other people will know about. Maybe next OWmeet I'll bring my GPS and we can go find some. If we're not playing games and eating fatty foods.
