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  • Writer's pictureMatt Beach

The One Where We Discovered Geocaching

Saturday February 9, 2019


Geocache map
Screenshot from the geocache app. Smiley faces are the ones we found.


In our quest to get outside more often and enjoy the fresh air,  Steph has an idea that we should check out geocaching.   I remember having some friends many years ago being into this past time.   At the time I thought it wasn't really my thing.    Man was I ever wrong.   We downloaded the geocache app (on Google Play) (on The App Store) onto our phones and started looking up some caches near us.  On Saturday we had a couple of hours before David's taekwondo potluck so we set out to find two caches.  Now we're hooked.


Cache 1 - A Concrete Cache

This was an easy find and close to where we live so it made a great choice for our first geocaching adventure.   We hopped into the car and after about a three minute drive pulled into a parking lot.  Having a look at our geocache app we noticed that we were only about 35m away from the cache. The app works great in that it will help guide you to within 3m of the exact location of the cache your looking for.   However the caches are usually hidden pretty well, not buried, but cleverly hidden.  It could be hiding under a log, in a cinder block or up in a tree.   


family pic with geocache
Our first geocache found!

Once we were close enough to the location our phones started to buzz to let us know we where there.   We still didn't see the cache however after some searching we found it and were thrilled.   Keeping to the code of geocaching secrecy I can't tell you where it was hiding.   That would just spoil the fun if you decide to go looking for it yourself.  Part of the fun of finding the cache was to sign and read the log book.  We discovered that this cache had been there since 2015.




 

Cache 2 - Travel Bug Coffee Shop II

We saved this one for our second and last find of the day as it seemed like there was a bit more involved in finding it.    We drove our car over the rushing Twelve Mile Creek to a small gravel parking lot on the west side of the creek.   From there we had a 500m walk into the cache location.  Sounds simple enough however being new to all this it wasn't as easy as we thought.   


Twelve Mile Creek
Twelve Mile Creek

We crossed the bridge over the creek and came to a small trail.   However there was a gate and some "No Trespass" signs.   The signs seem to indicate the danger of the creek itself.   The water flows fast and has some dangerous undertows.   So we continued on down the path staying away from the water.




About 10m in there was a path off to the left that went up into the forest.    Looking at my phone I figured we were supposed to take that path up the hill.   We arrived at the top of the hill exhausted and after walking another 100m or so we realized that we should've kept on the path at the bottom of the hill. 

There was a house and some kind of industrial building with a fence preventing us from going any further. We walked back and found a small path back down the hill and made our way down to the path that runs along side the creek. 


Heavy Brush
Heavy brush that we were attempting to get through.

We followed that path for a short bit until the gps on our phones seemed to lead us back up the hill.   There was no path to follow and we started walking right into the bush following our phones.    At one point we knew we couldn't go any further as the winter brush was so thick.





Back down the hill we go and return once again to the main path we had been following.   We decided to keep on the path until we were in a straight line from the geocache.   Once we could see that we had a straight line we started back up the hill again.   This area wasn't as dense as the previous area of the hill we had climbed.   Suddenly our phones buzzed and we knew we were close.   We began looking around eventually found what we were looking for.


Geocache Found
David holding the geocache

This cache was in a larger container and had a few small trinkets.   We couldn't sign the log book as we forgot to bring a pen and no pen was left in the cache.

After our first day of discovering Geocaching we're hooked and looking forward to more adventures searching for cache treasure.






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