In 2011, Jon-Michael and I decided to join a geocaching group.We got as far as forming a username. Then while were at breakfast this morning, something reminded me about this awesome, rapidly popularizing hobby so we headed back to the house to look up some local treasures.
As it turns out, there are countless gems hidden all over Dunnellon and Rainbow Springs. We set out for a nearby cache with a difficulty level of 1.5 ... and we never found it. Maybe we're not cut out for this after all. We came home, incredibly discouraged and resigned ourselves (so JM thought) to not finding a geocache today. While he played some FIFA, I went back to the drawing board and started over. Found another cache at a familiar horse farm nearby and headed out again. This one had been found by 69 cachers, one as recently as July 4th. We parked, compass in hand, and started walking. We found nothing. This time I was beyond upset. Returning back to our neighborhood again without discovery, we found coordinates for another cache. Several people had found this one as well. We pulled into the location and begin walking. How hard could this one be - there were even clues about it's shape, and location. Yet still, we found nothing.
At this point, Jon-Michael is ridiculously over it. He has hurt his ankle stepping into a depression in the grass, he's been eaten up by nosee'ems, and he's mentally checking out. We return home again. He takes a rest and plays some FIFA while I return again to the drawing board - this time, for a couple hours. I read the beginners' guide from cover to cover. They touch on everything from what the containers may look like to what types of hiding places to consider. They also suggested viewing the area from a different perspective - squat down, look up, stand on the other side of the area and look back ... that kind of thing. They also recommend stopping while you're in the location and really soaking everything in - sometimes this helps clear your head.
I started a thorough evaluation of all the caches in our area -- looking for ones with no higher than a 1.5 difficulty level that had been found within the last few days. This would give me better chances of finding one. As I'm doing my research, JM mentions he's hungry for dinner. I suggested we go out (obviously I had ulterior motives). We ate, then we head over to a locally-owned bakery called Go For Donuts. And there we found our first geocache.
After peeping at all the contents, taking a couple pictures (first picture) and signing a the tiny discovery log, we returned this cache to it's delightful home and, somehow, I convinced Jon-Michael to make one more stop. This one turned out to be more difficult than we anticipated; as it turns out, our GPS was ineffective. We actually ended up finding this one solely based on clues from the name of the cache and from previous hunters (second picture). And in this one, we actually found what's called Travel Bug. They're items with serial numbers and are continuously relocated by cachers. I'm thinking we'll be hitting the beach some time in August, and I'm hoping we find a geocache we can drop Acts 2:38 (the name of the Travel Bug) in. The other contents in the ammo can cache included a stress ball in the shape of a rubber ducky, a faith necklace, a bird feather, a piggy bank magnet, a wooden toy car, a journal for us to write in, a Goofy toy, a Mickey Mouse magnet (we swapped this out for a bag of coal that says "you've been naughty"), two miniature frog statues, and a bunch of other trinkets.
After the rocky start to our new hobby, I think we've started to figure it out.
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