Corsmor & I have had some wonderful adventures in our time together. Every where we would go we would find something interesting to do & something neither of us had seen before. Almost a year ago we discovered something that facilitated these adventures & has taken us to places we would never have otherwise visited.
My Dad (Sparky) mentioned it in conversation over coffee one morning & I was a bit miffed that I had not heard of it before. So we looked into it & we have been hooked ever since.
So I headed to the internet. I found www.geocaching.com & read the FAQ’s. I signed up & made up a team name for Corsmor & I. I bought a handheld GPS. I looked up, tracked & found my first Geocache. I was hooked.
So for those of you who have not heard of Geocaching – here is my run-down. It is an orienteering treasure hunt. It runs world-wide & is constantly changing. There are multiple treasures & maps to that treasure. It is fun, exhilarating & at times exhausting.
Participants use a hand-held GPS (or if you don’t have one, there is ‘an app for that’ available from Geocaching.com) to search for, hide & locate containers called ‘Caches’ that contain all manner of things from information, toys, swaps, & trackable items.
The search for these containers can take you to a quick roadside stop, tourist attractions or places of interest you may not have known existed. For us, this was the best part. Heading off into the bush or down dirt roads we had never travelled before has landed us in some quirky, beautiful & wonderful places – often with breathtaking views, something to have a bit of a giggle at; we have even watched whales in the ocean.
Usually a Cache will be a small water-proof container. In this you will find a log where you must sign your team name & date. Usually the container will have trinkets as mentioned before & you can make swaps for a bit of fun. Our emblem is a sparrow so we always put in a silver sparrow charm for someone to swap & we try to pick up something interesting we can trade somewhere else.
There are many nuances to Geocaching. Much too many to count or relay here. What I can say is that it is highly enjoyable & highly addictive. Corsmor & I have been known to spend entire weekends geocaching. The great thing about is that it gets you out in the world. You see new things, meet new people & you learn to communicate in an even better way.
At times, I will admit, I can grow quite frustrated. Corsmor is our driver & I am the navigator. This can cause friction – but it usually ends in laughter. Especially when I have turned the map around so many times I might as well be looking at a blank sheet of paper. What it has helped me with is my sense of direction. My instincts have improved as far as direction & what looks like a certain ‘cache location’. It’s also great exercise.
We have also met some great people in our travels. Fellow Geocachers who are doing the same thing we are doing while pretending not to do it at all. It is a lot of fun.
So if you like adventure or find yourself with a boring day ahead check out Geocaching.com (I promise, they’re not paying me to write this!) & get started. You won’t regret it.
Here are some of the amazing & weird things we’ve seen along our travels we never would have known were there otherwise:
‘Astro La Vista, Baby!’ – GCM4N8
Cache Owner – TeamAstro.
Hidden: 24th November 2004 / Found: 16th September 2013
Pump Station in the Gilbert Valley, South Australia
This was a ‘multicache’ where you head to a certain set of GPS coordinates provided on Geocaching.com & from there you find & receive new coordinates. You keep doing this until you get to the final location where you will locate the final cache. In this case it was a disused heritage pump station & Corsmor had to attach a guide line to his belt & disappear down a long tunnel counting the steps until he found the cache.
GeoHubby at Astro
Astro La Vista Baby
‘Ghostly Gum’ GC27GD9
Cache Owner – OrangeAngels
Hidden 26th April 2010 / Found: 30th September 2013
Back roads of Coffin Bay, South Australia
It was a quick ‘drive-by’ cache with a funny looking tree. It gave us a bit of a laugh.
Ghostly Gum
‘Top of the World’ GC16TQA
Cache Owner – TheMundsters
Hidden 20th October 2007 / Found: 31st March 2013
Beautiful view from a hill at Mount Crawford, South Australia
Top of The World
Top of The World
Violet Ashes 