Our+Story

=Alison's POV =


 * It was an unusually warm afternoon for October, but the smell of autumn loomed the air. Ms. Watson and I arrived at our starting location with a greeting from an angry woman managing the day care center. This very curious woman was not exceptionally happy to find us in her parking area, but after explaining we were traveling on time sensitive orders from Dr. Roukema, the woman was more appreciative of our investigations. As we began our journey to find the desired treasure, we both were filled with excitement and anticipation. So much excitement, that we forgot one of our most important instruments for the hunt, a pen! In an effort to conserve the valuable time we had to spend on this particular cache, I made a dash to the vehicles to retrieve a writing instrument. I was one with the wind! After my return, we were on our way once again! This Geocache was described as easy to find and not too far off from the road. Once Ms. Watson informed me that we were about twenty feet from the desired location, we decided to split off and search the area. My senses were on high alert; trying to find the most obvious location for this cache. Unexpectedly, I stumbled upon a green, four-legged friend as I was scanning a large wooden sign. As I yelled to Ms. Watson to show her the adorable little lizard, I realized that the cache could not be near the sign. If there were creatures roaming around, that probably means there have not been any people here for a while. Even though the cache was not in the immediate area, we snapped a picture for thorough documentation. I continued my search and came upon an extremely large rock, which to me is a flashing sign for, “the Geocache is here!” As we crept slowly to the rock, our GPS indicated we were only a frog’s leap away from the treasure. Very carefully, we searched around the misplaced rock. I had to think to myself what such a large rock was doing there? Anyway, just as I was about to turn my attention to a different location, I decided to look way underneath the rock. Ah ha! I had found it! This container presented some interesting items that other adventurers had left behind, such as a silly straw, a chess piece, a stick of gum (just in case your breath was feeling a little stale), some pennies and a few other trinkets. Ms. Watson thought it was best to leave her gym membership card behind as a sign of our visit. After signing our names in the log book, it was time to place the cache back in its cozy home. We left the cache with smiles on our faces knowing that another successful day of investigations had past. Shirley Holmes and Ms. Watson will solve mysteries another day! **

= = =Rebekah's POV =

=
When first hearing about our geocaching adventure I was pretty excited. I have geocached before, in North Carolina and Virginia, but I will admit I'm not very good. I looked up geocaches near school for Alison and I to look for, but only found one that wasn't a "Camel Cache"- as those are off limits! So we set off to Keith Hills to see if anyone had hid any there, we went on the geocaching site via our phones and saw that someone had his one not too far from there. When we tried to see where it was we couldn't; the member had decided to only make it available to platinum members. So we headed back to the one named "rocky" that I had noticed on my way to class. We parked at the Daycare and loaded up the GPS via the geocache app on my phone. We decided to take a picture of the daycare to show where we started off, when all of a sudden someone from the daycare came out and asked what we were doing. We explained that we were Campbell students and we were trying to find a geocache nearby. She looked at us and asked, "What is a geocache". ====== In simple terms I explained that it was a worldwide treasure hunt where random people hide caches and others try to find them. She seemed satisfied with our answer, now knowing we weren't trying to harm any children and we went on our way. As we go out of the parking lot Alison remembered that we didn't have a pen to sign with ( the irony in that later), so she ran back to her car to retrieve one. She came back rather quickly and we were again off to find our cache. We reached the cross-country trail and didn't know where to start. We started searching around the sign trying to find some sort of secret compartment, but there wasn't one. We looked at the clue given to us and it said an "easy park and go", well it didn't seem that easy since we had been roaming around the same spots over and over again. We then turned to comments which did not help us either. I kept trying to find a point in which the GPS said we were 18 ft away and work from there. That was when Alison shouted, "I found it!"

We were so excited that we quickly emptied the contents inside. The irony know came when someone already smart left a pen inside the cache for others to sign. I signed out names and then looked for something we could put in (as we forgot to bring something). I had brought my key ring and saw that I had my old gym member card and decided that I could discard it. I tried to get my member ID off of the card by removing the tape, only to see that they had put the tape there not to smear the print. I decided it didn't mater that much and placed it in the cache anyway.

In retrospect I know see why the cache was so easy to find and why others did not have a problem finding it. The name gave it all away- Rocky. I feel silly now seeing that it took us so long to figure it out. I then decided to look at a few examples and what others found during their cache adventures and saw that someone found the same cache we did last year! Geocaching really puts into perspective how small a world we really live in!

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