What+all+happened?

What all happened?  Lake Norman, North Carolina is full of places to go and things to see. However, my cousin Lily and I knew that there is more around than meets the eye.

“Are you ready to go Geocaching again?” I asked Lily excitedly.

“Yeah, but I hope we find more than last time. It got boring after a while,” she replied.

We set out from the church parking lot and began our search. I searched for nearby caches and a few popped up on the geocaching app by Groundspeak, Inc. We chose the “Kinder Cache” to begin because as Lily put it, “it says Kinder so it must be easy.” According to the map, it looked like the cache was in Hope Park behind Lowes YMCA. It was just across Highway 150 and we quickly got on our way.

“I can’t believe we’re doing this!” Lily giggled as we wandered through the park full of little kids. I had to agree with her. It did seem odd to see a 21 year old and 10 year old just wandering through a playground. We kept searching and getting closer according to the app. 100 fee away…50 feet away…30 feet away…

The geocaching website states that once you’re within a certain distance it’s better to search high and low instead of relying solely on the GPS app. We began looking in the bushes, under the fence, inside the endcaps on the equipment. It was nowhere to be found! After about 20 minutes of searching, we decided to call it quits and move on to the next cache.

“Alright Lily, we have two options. One is called “Going in Circles” and the other is “LPC – Little Pink Cache,” I told her. We weighed the options and decided to look for “Going in Circles”.

“I think it is over there!” Lily shouted pointing toward the shopping center with Best Buy and Bath and Body Works. We hopped back in the car. I drove until the backseat navigator informed me that we were close. We parked and hopped out, eager to make a find. Lily and I looked at each other. We saw the traffic circle and immediately thought that it was the “circle” the title referred to. Unfortunately, there were many cars actually going in circles around it. We looked at the provided hint. It simply said: you light up my life. Of course! The lamppost smack in the middle!

“I’m not going over there! You have to!” Lily commanded with a smile.

“Okay, fine. But you have to keep watch!” I told her as I somewhat reluctantly began crossing the street. I made it across thanks to a break in traffic, and saw my fellow hunter cracking up across the road. I looked around the base of the post and it wasn’t there. I looked under the box at the bottom of the post and again, it wasn’t there.

“Lily – I can’t find it!” I shouted. She waved for me to come back.

“I think we should just go to the next one. This is too dangerous,” she stated.

“Alright, “Little Pink Cache” it is,” I said as we hopped back into the car. We took one good look at the map and Lily began navigating again. This cache took us back across the highway and into the Sam’s Club parking lot.

“Okay, let’s brainstorm. There aren’t a whole lot of places it can be in a parking lot,” I told her. We started to make a list of the places the micro-cache could be: inside the fence, under a lamppost, or inside a hole in the building.

“Do you think we should check the hint?” I asked.

“YES!” she blurted exasperatedly.

<span style="font-family: 'Century Gothic',sans-serif; font-size: 14pt;">“Lift the lamp skirt” was our only clue. The Sam’s Club parking lot was gigantic. We jumped right to work, scrambling from post to post, all the while trying to be inconspicuous to shoppers.

<span style="font-family: 'Century Gothic',sans-serif; font-size: 14pt;">“Come here!” Lily called. She found the coveted cache. It was a micro-cache, which means it was tiny. It was a film canister covered in stickers. We opened it and prepared to sign our names. After our names and the date were all filled in, I took a photo of her to text to her mom.

<span style="font-family: 'Century Gothic',sans-serif; font-size: 14pt;">“Okay, I’m done,” she said. That was fine with me! The long searches were definitely worth our time, but it was getting hot out and we had been gone a while.

<span style="font-family: 'Century Gothic',sans-serif; font-size: 14pt;">“Can we go to QT and get slushies?” she begged. How could I say no? We went to the gas station and she filled up her cup with every flavor imaginable, we checked out, and headed home. It was a great day!



<span style="font-family: 'Arial Black',Gadget,sans-serif;">Fluffy Mutters Home

<span style="font-family: 'Arial Black',Gadget,sans-serif;">@Meet your hunters!

<span style="font-family: 'Arial Black',Gadget,sans-serif;">@Inspiration Behind the Name

<span style="font-family: 'Arial Black',Gadget,sans-serif;">@Were we successful?

<span style="font-family: 'Arial Black',Gadget,sans-serif;">@Our tools

<span style="font-family: 'Arial Black',Gadget,sans-serif;">Lesson Plan