Spiders,+Sand+Spurs,+and+Deer+Tracks+all+lead+to+a+Geocache...+Eventually...



It all started with an assignment from Dr. Roukema, an assignment that would entail going geocaching. Now if you have plenty of time and no life (such as not having practicum, school, work, etc.) than geocaching sounds pretty fun. But, like many of my fellow classmates, I do not have the luxury of having plenty of time this semester (although it does feel like I have no life). So back to the assignment...

One of the first things that I think of when hearing "geochaching" is that you must have a good sense of direction, which I do not! So I felt like geocaching would be the perfect opportunity to actually get to spend time with my boyfriend, since he enjoys walking through the woods, hunting, and just your average outdoorsy stuff. We set our geocaching date for Sunday.

After church on Sunday we rushed back to my house, ate lunch, changed clothes, and set out on our geocaching adventure. I had previously looked up coordinates so I knew there were plenty of geocaches at the Bentonville Battlegrounds (which is only about 5 minutes from my house). We picked one of the caches, had our coordinates, and headed out towards the battlegrounds. When we arrived Stacy put the coordinates in his GPS and we were on the way to find a geocache!



Little did we know that the geocache we wanted to find was 1.5 miles away! So we start walking, and walking, and walking, and walking. After about half a mile of following the GPS through the woods barely on a path we come to a point of no advancing. What we see is...



At this point I am not very thrilled with geocaching. Stacy says he hears a stream and apparently that means we will not be able to cross any farther, especially since we have basically ran out of path. So we start heading back to the car so we can regroup and start again.We decide to go back to Stacy's house (which is about a mile away) so we can look up a new geocache to find. We see that there is a geocache at Howell Woods (which is only about 5 miles away) that is marked for beginner geocachers. Yes, if I had realized it, I probably would have looked for this one first. After regrouping, we were on our way to Howell Woods to find our geocache!

We arrive at Howell Woods and get both Stacy's GPS and the GPS from my car ready to go find a geocache ( this time we are going to find one). If I had actually know how to read a GPS this process may have been a lot faster but I don't. So, I ended up going around my elbow just to get to my thumb. But, we finally found the geocache! It was a bucket inside a box just clue said! When I finally saw it I was so excited, I rushed up to retrieve the bucket.





When I finally had my geocache we went over to the table nearby to see what the bucket contained. I was very excited about everything that my geocache contained and that I had finally found one. I decided not to take anything from the geocache but it was very interesting to see what everyone had added and written in the book.



After looking through everything in our bucket we signed the book to mark our journey and put everything back where it belonged. After we had put the goecache back in it's hiding place, we were able to go see the birds of prey at Howell Woods because our geocaching job was complete.



Geocaching wasn't so bad after all, but I would have to say it could have been better if I actually had a sense of direction! When my four-year old nephews found out that I was going on a treasure hunt they wanted to go too. I told them that once I learned how to do it I would take them too. Hopefully I will be able to take them this weekend and add our story. I am sure it will be much more interesting geocaching with four-year olds! :)

Just a word of advice-- Watch your head on the box (my head still hurts)!!!

Charley's Geocaching Adventure Homepage