I heard about geocaching a few years ago, but paid it absolutely no mind.  It sounded overly complicated and I didn’t have a GPS.  That was the last time I thought about it, until the other day when my other half brought it up that we should try it.

“But we need a GPS,” I said.  “And besides that, how do we know where to look for them? Isn’t it a club type thing?”

“No.  They’re all over and there’s apps for it.”

There’s an app for it.  Well, that one sentence was too much of a temptation and I started looking into it.  Sure enough, there’s tons of geocaching apps on Google Play and they have all sorts of user levels and prices.  So I downloaded one that looked user friendly.

Once it was downloaded, I searched for caches.  There are TONS in my area.  So yesterday I picked one that was about 1.5 km away from my house, hopped on my bicycle and went out geocaching with my father who’s in the country this month visiting.

So the geocache I picked has “playing” in its title.  I won’t give the full title in the event any dutchies in the area are reading this, I’d hate to give spoilers.  But when I picked it, I thought I knew where the geocache would be…in a playground in that area.  No, actually it wasn’t.  There was really nothing in the area except a few benches.

Well, we hopped off our bikes and got bewildered looks by some folks working on a building about 5 meters to the right.  We were looking under benches, in bushes, under the trash can but really there was nothing in the area that even looked like it could be a geocache (they’re usually in a water tight type container).

After about 5 minutes of searching, dad called me over because he found it.  It was under a loose flagstone.

And then we discovered why “playing” was in the title.  Whomever made this geocache put the trinkets in a bloody puzzle box!

So this was my first time geocaching and I’m bloody well hooked.  I have several in my area picked out that I’m going to go to next, and I even have a few around my work place that I plan on jogging to instead of coming home and jogging.  I also have several in the UK picked out so I can go find them this Thursday when my parents and I head over, several in the German area we’ll be vacationing in come September…yea, my other half just shakes his head and mutters, “I’ve created a monster.”

But I’ll tell you, it’s a fun way to get outside, see things, do things, and be healthy.

Now I’ve just got to see if I can get one of my cthulhu figures from my bag of cthulhu sent around the world!