Geocaching

I mentioned my new handheld GPS receiver in the post about Dutch's hunts, where it helped guide the hunters on a methodical, efficient path. It worked very well. A popular activity for people with these devices is called Geocaching , (pronounced Geo-cashing). All over the world people have placed little boxes and packets of trinkets, and log books and other ephemera, in out of the way places. They then put the coordinates on geocaching websites.. which look something like this, along with hints, and a little description of the location. Once armed with this knowledge, you grab your GPSr, (ours looks like this), hop in your car, (or 4WD vehicle as the case may be), and head out for the cache location.

The Greenleaf Mine Rd Cache we were looking for yesterday looked to be an easy drive, about 8 miles outside of Deming, until-

It took a couple of minutes to make the herd move out of the way, and then we were on our way again.. our target was somewhere near that first low hill on the left side of the image, above.

We parked as close as we could, and began walking toward the coordinates... (geocachers apparently are easy to spot, as they're usually in the middle of nowhere, walking in little circles, and looking at their hands.. something like this)-

If you see them about to step off a cliff, or into the path of a speeding packmule train, give them a shout. We found the cache within about 5 minute of parking; there were fun goodies inside the little tin (about the size of a bandaid box). Having nothing to trade, we just signed the log, and returned the cache to its hiding place.

This was our 2nd find, and it's a lot of fun. You can see our log entry at the website referenced earlier. In the Deming zipcode alone, there are currently 472 caches, some of them accessible only by Jeep, and serious hiking boots. Others are right at the side of a busy highway. See what's hiding in your neighborhood.