Geocachin' In

I made an unofficial goal to visit all 22 City of Fremont parks while I'm still here. Today I went a little out of the way to visit a park I had never even driven near before, and I also tried out a new hobby.

I have wanted to go geocaching ever since I found out about the concept. It's pretty much a treasure hunt for grown-ups. It all started with an article about geocaching in Brio magazine. After reading about that adventure, I was ready to set out on my own, but soon found out that I was lacking a several-hundred dollar piece of equipment. I remember when I was in my young teens and going for a walk with some friends, and my best friend's neighbor showed us a geocaching container he'd found before. While it was interesting to see it, how much cooler would it be to spend weekends actually finding these things? Since I got a Garmin for Christmas, and the weather has (finally!) warmed up, I decided that, at last, I would try out geocaching on my own.

This morning, I logged onto Geocaching.com and found an easy cache near Fremont, and wrote down the coordinates. After church, I ran a few errands, and then I drove over to Wildwood Park, which is in the vicinity of Fremont Lakes. It was a very beautiful road and reminded me a lot of the Rogue River area- minus the mountains. In fact, it was such a nice drive that I didn't even care that my GPS took me right past the entrance and told me to turn on several roads that didn't even exist. (I had just learned a few minutes earlier how to enter coordinates instead of an address, and soon after this I learned how to switch from driving mode to pedestrian mode- that made things easier!)

Wildwood Park is a natural park, with a trail looping from one entrance to the other. I knew this cache was a pill bottle. I thought it might be difficult to find such a small cache, especially with beer bottles and vagabond belongings strewn about. Yes, this is a place where I definitely wouldn't go to after sundown, but I felt perfectly safe walking it alone in the middle of the day. I only ran into one other person in the park, and he was very nonthreatening. He asked if I was mushroom hunting. I told him I was actually geocaching, and I had to explain to him what that was. As I got closer to the target coordinates, I began looking intently for the cache.

I was so happy when I found it. I literally said, "I found it! I can't believe I actually found it!" I'm actually surprised that I found it right away. The bottle was wrapped in camouflage duct tape, and it was hanging by a wire in a tree. I guess it was a good thing it was close to my eye level, because I noticed that there was something odd stuck to the tree before I realized that it was exactly what I'd been looking for.

Inside were two slips of paper- one was instructions and the other was the log list. I proudly added my name and date- in bright orange marker, no less. I put everything back in the capsule, and then continued on the walking loop back to my car. (The other guy at the park found me again, and I proudly told him about my finding!)

I took a scenic drive home after that, with a smile on my face and a desire to set out on another geocaching adventure soon. Of course, this is just one of many things that I ended up doing this weekend (others included giving a speech at the homeschool co-op, discovering the delicious flavor of cherry avocado smoothies, having a late-night Duck Dynasty marathon with friends, making giant peanut butter cups, having the kids over, and discovering that I can have semi-intelligent conversations in my sleep). But out of everything, geocaching was definitely a highlight!