Quinn+Bajorek

= We Came, We Cached, We Conquered = “Make sure you take David with you,” were the first words out of my mom’s mouth when I told her that I was going geocaching for class, “We’d like for you to actually return.” Given that I still use my Garmin to get home from the church I have been attending for twenty one years, she was less than confident in my directional fortitude. While her concerns were not unwarranted, they did little to bolster my assurance, and I decided to call in some reinforcements.

 My best friend Sarah was visiting from Wilmington, and since Buies Creek is not exactly hopping on the weekend, I thought it would be fun for us to go treasure hunting in the surrounding towns. Having Sarah along would guarantee that I enjoyed the experience, but her unfamiliarity with the area and my utter lack of spatial awareness did not really ensure that we would make it back without getting lost. We definitely needed a navigator, so I took my mom’s advice and invited (maybe instructed—depends on who you ask) my boyfriend David to come along too.

 We left a little before noon on a beautiful Saturday morning. Since it was the first time any of us had ever been geocaching, we decided to go for an easy micro cache; we picked one called “Does anybody know what time it is?” in Lillington. Once we drove (well, David drove—my sense of direction really is hopeless) to the specified location, the title made a lot more sense because it was by a huge clock. We had to dig around in some rocks for a few minutes, but it was pretty simple to find. The contents (a weird Barbie shirt, a rubber ducky, a soldier figurine, and a very creepy skull) and the log were kind of soggy because we had had a lot of rain in the days leading up to our hunt, but we decided to make an exchange anyway. We traded a key ring that Sarah had in her purse for the skull that we found and headed off.



 Encouraged by our quick success on the first one, we decided to go for two. David used his Smartphone to find another cache nearby, and we drove about a mile to the Bojangle’s parking lot. We got a lot of weird stares because we got there right around lunch time (that was poor planning). This cache was a lot harder to find because its hint was “CAREFUL WHEN CROSSING THE ROCKS” and there were like twelve different piles of rocks. Each pile of rocks had more bugs under it than the last one…it was truly disgusting. While Sarah and I were tip-toeing around the edge of rock piles and screeching at giant beetles, David wandered into a little wooded area with more rocks. After a couple of minutes of searching, he called us over excitedly. He had discovered a water-logged sandwich box cache…and Sarah had discovered some poison ivy. David signed our names and left the creepy skull we got from Lillington in the box, and we got out of there quick.



After our second successful search, we were feeling pretty confident. We were also feeling pretty hungry, so we headed over to the Sonic in Dunn for Happy Hour--because I cannot think of a better way to reward yourself for a job well done than a half-price Slushie. While we were in the drive-thru, David found that there was a cache within 400 feet of us (near Walmart). We decided to take our Slushies and explore. As we got closer, the GPS on the phone was pointing us towards a fence that enclosed a detention pond (for parking lot runoff). We decided to abandon the mission…I draw the line at dirty detention ponds.



 Slightly shaken by our failed attempt, we moved on to another cache hoping to end the day on a high note. We looked for a micro cache in Dunn’s Rite Aid parking lot. After about twenty minutes of wandering around in the heat, looking under every bush and by every sign, we got discouraged and gave up. Feeling down, we drowned our geocaching sorrows in milkshakes and burgers from the Cookout on the other side of the parking lot.



Although we only found two of the four caches we sought, we had a great time AND managed to make it home in one piece without getting lost—now that was something we of which we could be proud.



LESSON PLAN