Geocaching is basically a world-wide scavenger hunt that anyone can take part in. It's nothing that is organized or costs money or anything like that. If you have some time to kill or are bored one day you can say "let's go geocaching" and just go out on your own terms. Basically people all over the world hide what they call "caches." These are usually small containers hidden in trees, forests, in logs, pipes, etc. They sometimes contain trinkets and you can take one if you leave something in its place, or they will just contain a log which you date and sign to prove you found the cache.
There is a website called geocaching.com where you sign up for free and get information on where caches in your town or near you are located. I typed in our zip code and there were pages of listings for caches in Bolingbrook alone. When you click on one, it gives you the latitude and longitude coordinates for where that person hid it. You then put it into a GPS and go find the cache (hopefully!)
We had 6 caches on our list and I am sad to say we only found two of them! It was a lot harder than I thought it was going to be. The first cache we found was hanging from a tree in a park near our house. Here is a picture of Mark grabbing the cache so we can sign the log. It was a medicine bottle with camouflage duct tape around it. It was very tricky to find.
The second one we found was actually quite simple. On the geocaching.com website the person who listed this cache explained pretty much exactly where it was - under a lamppost in front of his house (the coordinates led us to the guy's block). Did you know those bottom "skirts" on lampposts lift up? Here's a picture of me finding our second cache. This one was also a medicine bottle camouflaged, but given the location, was much easier to see :)
Part of the problem was many of the coordinates I had written down led us to trees near someone's yard or in a very public parking lot - and since there are many people out there who don't know what geocaching is, we didn't think they would understand why we were snooping around near their property. There was on cache hidden at the entrance of our subdivision and I am POSITIVE we had practically the exact location and were somewhere right near it but we just couldn't find it! Mark even crawled INTO huge bushes to see if it was hidden there - still couldn't find it! Eventually we gave up.
It was fun when we found them, and frustrating when we didn't. Haha. If you like a challenge and like the outdoors, this is an activity for you. There are even apps for geocaching you can add to your phone. I would like to give this another go, maybe when it's fall or early winter and there aren't so many leaves on the trees. I feel like then it might be easier to see some of the smaller caches. If anyone decides to try this, or if you have done this before, let me know if you were successful and if you have any tips!
P.S. Remember the Vegan cafe I posted about in the past? I finally went to eat a real meal there and took Mark there after our geocaching adventure. It was so delicious and I think the fact that it was healthy made it even tastier! :) I ordered "taco" bagels. It wasn't really taco meat - I'm pretty sure it was ground up vegetables and nuts, and maybe beans, with taco like spices added to it. That was put onto a bagel and topped with guacamole and "sour cream." It came with two side salads. The apple one was amazing - I think I gobbled it down in record time. Mark ordered lettuce wraps. He got to pick 4 veggies to put in them and there was also pumpkin seed cheese in the wrap.We also split a piece of apple pie. The food isn't the cheapest (it was $41 for our lunch), but 100% of the proceeds go to charity (see previous post on the Vegan Cafe).
--T
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