The Birthday Hikes - 5

Jan 17, 2014

Total Miles Hiked:                            38.6 miles
Required Miles to Date:                    35.7 miles

GEOCACHING

Geocaching  is an outdoor recreational activity, in which the participants use a Global Positioning System (GPS) receiver or mobile device and other navigational techniques to hide and seek containers, called "geocaches" or "caches", anywhere in the world. 

A typical cache is a small waterproof container containing a logbook where the geocacher enters the date they found it and signs it with their established code name. After signing the log, the cache must be placed back exactly where the person found it. Larger containers such as plastic storage containers  (Tupperware or similar) or ammunition boxes can also contain items for trading, usually toys or trinkets of little financial value, although sometimes they are sentimental.      (Wikipedia)

Shortly after I started my hike today I noticed a couple walking around a tree while kicking and poking at the ground.  I knew immediately what they were doing, they were Geocaching.  

I stopped, went over to them and asked “Geocaching aren’t you”.  Well of course they were.  Jeff and Shanon from California were spending the afternoon trying to find a cache that a Geocacher named “Blade Runner” had hidden.  I knew this because it was just one year ago that I had been kicking and poking the ground at that very same tree looking for that very same cache.

This Blade Runner fellow is a clever one.  He hides a “cache” with such cleverness of disguise that often the seeker leaves tired, frustrated, and empty handed.  I found it only after searching for more than half an hour with my friend Al, and then it was just by luck that I stumbled upon it.  The cache was hidden in a five inch diameter candy tin.  The lid of the tin had been built up with epoxy and painted to resemble the surrounding terrain and was most impossible to see.  Once I did find it we signed the log inside, put the tin back and made it blend in with the surrounding terrain.  We started to leave the site when Al said he had a little trinket in his pocket that he would like to include in the cache with the rest of the prizes.  We had not gone more that fifteen feet from where had re-hidden the cache, and we could not find it.  It took us another five minutes of searching before we found it again.  That is one cleverly disguised cache.

I told Jeff and Shanon my story and gave them a good hint as where to look for the cache, then  I started off on my hike again.  I have no idea whether they left triumphant or frustrated.  All I know is that I have decided that in order to retain what little sanity I have left I am refraining from any further geocach hunting.

So, back to the hike.  I did not leave until around 12:30 AM today.  It was a hot day, 74 degrees, and there very few hikers on the trails. I managed to stretch my Silly Mountain hike out to 4.9 miles by taking the long route down to the mountain and then  zigzagging back and forth around on some of the trails. 

None the less, 4.9 miles and I am now ahead of my goal…barely.