Saturday, March 30, 2013

Spring Geocaching

Yesterday was a good day for Geocaching.  I'd gone out on a couple of good days over the winter when the snow cover was light, and of course on my trip to South Carolina.  It was nearly 60° during the day yesterday and I had to head south to get a tooth filled.

One thing they have in Geocaching is something called "Challenge Caches."  These are caches you can only log as found once you complete some sort of challenge associated with it.  A popular one among the Geocachers in New Hampshire is called the "234 Challenge" (GC36PAC - Premium Member cache).  For this Challenge, you have to find a cache in each of the 234 towns in New Hampshire that have geocaches in them.  I'm only at 60 towns, so I need a lot more.  Yesterday I crossed three more towns off the list as I geocached near to where my dentist is an hour south.

I'm also on the road to the 1,000 cache milestone.  After yesterday, I'm at 979 and there's a good chance I can hit 1,000 next week.  Go me!

As for yesterday's adventures, most were simple park and grabs.  You might not believe it as you're whizzing by on the highway, but a popular place to hide geocaches is in guardrails.  I have a friend I geocache with who is partially disabled.  These types of caches that don't involve long hikes into the wood - know as "park & grabs" - are great to do with her.  As we drove the hour south to my dentist office, we grabbed 4 of these along the main artery headed south.  We had lunch at Buffalo Wild Wings, then did more caching.

Another place people will frequently place caches is around cemeteries. Cachers are respectful and usually place it in the stone wall or other area, not right by the headstones.  I find it fascinating to go to these old cemeteries and read the dates on the headstones, and inscriptions if any.  When I look at the dates and see how young so many people died 100-200 years ago, it is sobering.

Geocaching is fun, and it's also a great time to take stock of the things in life we don't normally pay attention to.

On to 1,000~~!

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