ackthpt's Journal: GeoCaching

A friend hears about this, and I've heard about it for about a year in various articles. GeoCaching, a social activity of planting little treasure boxes, or in some cases virtual treasures, around the world and providing coordinates, clues and instructions on www.geocaching.com He picks out 5 likely candidates squirreled away in Toro County Park near Salinas, California, and we set out, a party of three (He, his ~12 year old son and I) take off in search of our first cache with compass, map, clues and my Garmin etrex GPS.

Getting the hang of finding a location in a park crossed by canyons and ridges can be trying. We first tried to get the north coordinate, which was easy enough. Homing in on the west coordinate, while maintaining the north one involved crossing a couple ridges and a ravine. Ulimately returning to the picnic area, accessible from the main entrance road, and a short hill climb yielded the cache.

Clearly establishing ahead of time the compass points and getting a feel for how rapidly N-S (latitude) degree changes versus E-W (longitude) can keep the activity from the realm of masochistic endeavor. Learning from our first mistakes, we located the next two with little difficulty and nice hikes, although some spilled rootbeer made the papers a tad messy.

Our second cache we pursued through a thicket and collected a number of ticks, which were quickly encouraged to rejoin their cousins in the grass. A different approach through a grassy field would have saved us the worry. The third was cache was offset slightly away from the central reading amid a thick clump of poison oak. We searched a while, with a few red herrings before locating it stashed neatly under a bush.

The fourth and our last was in high country and quite a hike to get to, hence we elected to leave the fifth for another day. Logs indicated it was located in a spot with a beautiful view, which was on the money and quite breathtaking. I held the etrex at arms length, as we zig-zagged though sparse, high brush along a fence-line and located within a small clearing nearly the exact coordinates. My friend's son scanned the undergrowth and exclaimed with excitement, it had been found. After a quick signing of the log and exchange of treasures we headed back out of the park considering our next opportunity to GeoCache and creating a few of our own for others to find.