Treasure Hunting

Everyone,

One thing that Butterfly insisted on doing for her birthday was a treasure hunt. I made up this cute little story about Soot hiding some toys and needing the kids help to find them before they are lost forever. I took pictures of the places I hid them, and Butterfly led the guests around the house looking for them. They all had a ball.

One thing I was able to get for this road trip is a GPS unit. The last time we drove across the country, we got lost in Nowhere, North Dakota. There was construction along our printed route, and the detour suddenly stopped with no direction on where to go. There was a lot of searching the map and we stumbled our way back on our route. I really don't want to do that on this trip. It was bad enough with 6 of us shoved in a camper towing my blue car behind us. At least we were adults and knew what was going on. I don't want to get lost with the kids in the car.

So I went researching GPS units. Some were hand held, some only for the car, some were cross overs that could do walking or car. I was leaning towards getting one of those (for when we go downtown it might be nice to be able to set it on walking mode and have it tell us where to go instead of me blundering around eventually finding where to go). While I was researching, I came across this thing called geocaching (pronounced geo-cashing). Apparently, it's a search for a specific set of coordinates with a little box or treasure at the end.

This is totally treasure hunting for adults. And when I found a car GPS that also does geocaching, I purchased it on the spot. I've used it twice for geocaching and once in the car so far. It gets me close, but not exactly on the spot. Kind of fun for geocaching (more searching) but not so fun in the car.

Our first geocaching trip took us to a tiny town nearby. I love this town. I want to live there but it's horribly expensive. They have a lake they offer swimming lessons in and everything. Seriously, an ideal spot for us. But since we can't live there, we go walking there. We found our first geocache with toy lizards in it. Butterfly was thrilled. I was too. It was fun! (This is a picture of Juice with our first find.)

Until I came home to log the find on the geocaching website and found out the little one we found was a decoy. There's another box out there just waiting to be found! I must go get it. Since Pirate and I have been sick, I haven't had any energy to get out and walk over there. But I'm hoping to soon.

There is another cache nearby that has a traveling bug in it. Yes, it's a little traveler that you can pick up a dog tag with a bug and a number imprinted on it. The purpose of these things is to go traveling. I'm thinking about going to pick up the little bug and take it to Utah and another cache. Would be fun!

I am totally hooked. Probably because it gives my walks some kind of purpose. Maybe it's the searching. I'm not sure. You'll hear about it some more!

Safire