Geocaching in the prairie

The best part of geocaching to me is getting out there and finding places you never would have gone otherwise.

we found this pretty prairie quite by accident while out searching for a cache

 

For those who don't understand what this fun sport is all about I'll try to explain it briefly.  It's a high tech hunt using GPS units to find junk hidden in plastic containers.  Yup.  That's pretty much it.

 You can limit your search to either very easy or very hard.  We like the easier ones where you don't have to crawl up hills or use an ATV or boat or swim to get to the hidden treasure.

You load the caches found on the geocaching website to your handheld unit and then head out in the car.  This always inspires a lot of fights...I mean discussions.

this was tucked under a dead tree so the bark glued on hid it very nicely

Left Brain tends to be the driver and I'm the navigator although it might work better the other way around as I'm pretty lousy at reading maps and finding my way.  I think he does it this way to torment me.

When you find the cache you open it up and sign the logbook hidden inside.  Some of the tiny ones are itty bitty and you need a tweezers to extract them.  Good luck rolling them back up and reinserting them again.

My favorite caches have travel bugs.  These are metal tags encrypted with a code for the finder to log in online so you can track the progress.

When we were in Arizona I placed my first (and only) travel bug into one of the caches we located at a little museum.

The story attached to the Arizona Buzzard states that he wants to travel to cities,
 states and  countries with the letter "A" in them.

To my utter surprise this was picked up and taken to Guam and from there has found its way to Japan.  Who knows where it might go next?  I need to get some of the other ones I've purchased ready to roll and leave them along our way as we travel through Canada to Florida.  Yeah, it's kind of a round about way to get there, but this is what happens when I read the maps!

Long Live the Queen of Geocachers