What is Geocaching?
We have mentioned geocaching a few times in our videos. For anyone who is confused or interested about what the heck that means, we will explain. Ten years ago we discovered a website that showed little boxes hidden all over the world. We created a profile on geocaching.com and got access to all the GPS coordinates of these little containers. Geocaches can range in size from an old school film canister to a coffee can, and contain a logbook to record your find. Sometimes they even contain other little trinkets to find like toys and stickers. Speaking of stickers, we have been leaving our ‘retiring from normal’ stickers in as many geocaches as we can. You may ask, what is the point of finding a box just so you can write your name on the log? The fun is in the hunt.
On the Hunt
The Whalers Rest Thousand Trails had some geocaches within walking distance. Wookie actually sniffed out the first one on our walk to the beach, and we grabbed the other one in the dark, which was a new experience for us. Later in our stay, we took a drive down to South Beach Boardwalk on the hunt for a Ninja Turtle trackable. ‘Trackables’ are items that travel from geocache to geocache. People pick them up at one location and drop them off in a different container. You can see on geocaching.com all the places they have been to. Some of them make it around the world. Unfortunately, there was no Ninja Turtle trackable in the box. Though we were a bit disappointed, we enjoyed the walk and found another geocache in the area. From South Beach, we drove to Yaquina Bay Lighthouse. This landmark had a virtual cache. In order to count it as found, we had to answer questions about the location and email them to the creator of the geocache for verification. Hunting for details instead of physical containers can be fun too. We tried to find a micro (mini size) geocache at the lighthouse as well but we ended up just chasing our tails for half an hour before giving up. Some geocache puzzles remain a mystery.
