Sunday 8 August 2010

Geocaching with Sunny’s Family

Geocaching has led Jess and I to discover some absolutely beautiful off-the-beaten-path areas during our travels. I could write all day about the benefits of geocaching (everything from exercise to simply spending time with your loved ones), but I’ll save that for some other time. Besides, it’s always better to experience it first-hand.

Jess and I have introduced our hobby to countless people already, and Sunny’s family was more than eager to learn about this mysterious treasure hunt where according to the site (www.geocaching.com), “You are the search engine.”

We located Andong on the geocaching website, and to our excitement, found a few “caches” located nearby. I let her daughters plug the coordinates into my GPS, and we headed out in search of the elusive treasure boxes.

The first cache was located on a newly-constructed wooden bridge, crossing over a beautiful river on the outskirts of Andong. I had used the trip over to explain to them what they were looking for, so when we arrived, they immediately took off in search of the hidden log book. Once at the approximate site of the geocache (at what we call, “ground zero”), the girls started to poke and prod in every nook and cranny of the bridge. Within minutes, the oldest daughter called out that she had found it! We all crowded around her to glimpse at the contents of the container, and passed around the log book for each person to sign. We took a few group pictures, and headed off in search of the second geocache.

Fueled by the excitement of our first geocache find together, the group persistently marched the 600m climb up the hill to the second geocache. The daughters took turns as GPS navigators, Jess and Sunny scouted, and I busied myself digging through every spider web-filled hole I could find. Sunny’s husband stood off to the side, and watched us on our frantic (and seemingly futile) search. After about fifteen minutes, he casually walked over to a stone wall and pulled on one of the pieces. It slid out to reveal a small hollow chamber with a Tupperware container neatly tucked away inside. He took it out, and stood for a few brief moments with a beaming smile on his face, not quite sure what to do next. His daughters quickly took it from him and opened it up to see what was inside. It contained the usual log book, pen, and geocaching rules, but in addition to these things it also had a trackable “travel bug” which was later logged on the website and mailed to Krystal to hide in Canada (it’s “mission” is to travel as far as possible from geocache to geocache). After we had all signed the logbook, we sealed up the cache and placed it back in its hiding place.

Never a dull moment when you’re out geocaching… especially with great people.

- Ken

2 comments:

  1. Great! Nice to see you sharing this family-friend -bonding hobby with so many people. I remember the excitement when I found my first geocache with Krystal on Mother's day! Looking forward to going geocaching with you guys when you're back.
    love you lots
    mom

    ReplyDelete