Team+Odom

The day was beautiful. The air was crisp, 62 degrees to be exact. Afternoon football games were over and little did my husband know, geocaching was about to take the place of his post-football nap. Luckily, Kurt and I have both had experience in the area of geocaching. However, his experience has been much more intense than mine. Where I have geocached around sweet little Buies Creek in the past, Kurt on the other hand has geocached in the woods of the Western North Carolina Mountains. Let’s just say, //big difference//. My caches have been found in light poles and on top of semi-high locations and he recounted his to have been found in tree stumps and under rock ledges. So, with our high levels of confidence for this game of hide and seek, we left our little home in Angier, NC to take on some caches!

 I took out my phone with my handy dandy Geocaching app and located our first stop. We arrived at the “Welcome to Angier” sign coming from Fuquay-Varina and my first thought was “IT IS IN THE SIGN!” I quickly hopped out of the car with Kurt following behind me, and started searching frantically for this little “35mm black tube” as it was hinted on the app. After about two minutes of searching round and round this rather large sign, Kurt asked, “Okay Em, where does the GPS say to go now?” I embarrassingly replied, “Huh? Ohhh the GPS, I left it in the car. Whoops!” With a semi-irritated grumble, Kurt unlocked the car and brought me the much needed GPS. After expecting the cache to be near or around the big landmark sign, I was sadly disappointed when the GPS started to guide me away from the sign and to a very unattractive light pole covered in vines.

We searched high and low for this extra small cache and after what seemed like a century, I flipped upside down to check under the box attached to the light pole and found tucked in a cranny, a black film roll! Inside the said film roll, was a mini plastic bag filled with three mini sheets of paper full of signatures of those before us.

We signed the sheet **“The Odom’s – First Geocache as a married couple!”**

Still on our exciting geocaching high, we trekked on to yet another location. This geocache was titled “I SCREAM YOU SCREAM”. I thought, “Umm, //excuse me//?” Since that hint was obviously not going to help us at all, we simply followed the trusty GPS. It led us to one of our most favorite locations – SUNNI SKY’S ICE CREAM! “Okay,” I thought. “I scream you scream, we all scream for ICE CREAM! That is pretty clever”.

As we arrived, Kurt’s only question was “Do you have cash on you?” Before we made our way into getting some of Sunni Sky’s famous ice cream, I made sure my dear husband understood that we were here first to find the cache and that if we were successful, we could reward ourselves. To be completely honest, we really looked like lost idiots, staring at a cell phone, wandering around the parking lot going here there and everywhere. We even received a few honks from the road. The hint for this cache was “Maybe we are, maybe we aren’t”. Being the smarter Odom of the two, I headed straight to the flashing “OPEN” sign that passerby’s can clearly see from the road.

Thankfully this time, my intuition was correct and the GPS was basically **//screaming//** that we were right on top of the cache! We once again searched high and low and once again the cache was found by looking upside down. Side note: who ever placed this cache was an extremely clever cache hider because it was very well camouflaged. At this point, Kurt was just ready for me to sign this cache so that he could retrieve his reward.

The Odom’s did agree on one thing, **this was our favorite cache!**

After replacing the cache and ensuring that is was very well hidden for the next seeker, we ventured inside to grab our Caramel Swirl and Sugar Cookie prizes. As we were riding home with our ice cream in hand, Kurt must have felt my sense of accomplishment and excitement over this adventure and asked, “So I’m guessing that wherever we go from now on, you’re going to pull out your phone and check for local caches”. With a sly smirk on my face I replied, “Well, let’s just say that in the past five minutes, I have already checked for caches at Biltmore Estate for our trip in November”. I think I see a new Odom tradition for our future.  