Geocaching Roanoke: Day One

I'm sure you've heard about geocaching. It's where you take your GPS, plug in coordinates, and take an adventure to find hidden containers in or around your area. Sometimes they have cool trinkets in them to swap out with your own; other times you sign a logbook or put in geocaching coins that travel all over. Almost any area has them - sometimes several of them.

Ironically, www.geocaching.com is a great place to start. Normally, of course, the last place you go when looking for info on something is the .com address of the subject (as many visitors to whitehouse.com have found out). But in this case, the geocaching site is really all you need to get started.

Well, you also need a GPS, which we have. It's a model meant for car travel - nothing fancy. Not really meant for traveling by foot, but we've used it in that capacity in DC, so off we went.
There were three geocaches in our immediate area, and since some of them have to be sought out with some old-fashioned creativity, I figured we'd keep it close to home.

Alas, we've come from the desert, so we set out with shorts and flip-flops: not advisable. Our first geocache was very likely in the hollow of a tree. I say "likely" because I only went as close as flip-flops in pouring rain could take me. Amid briars and sloshing around a pound of dead grass that had embedded itself in my flops, I wasn't able to find the cache.

The wife also insisted we bring the girls - our poodle and Staffordshire terrier, Maddie and Trisha. They had about as much faith in our mission as we did after several minutes of searching within the confines of our attire.

The second cache was no different, requiring crossing a six foot wide stream full of mud after wading through foot-high grass for a while.

We found out that the GPS might not be up to the task, though it's absolutely vital for road trips, of course.

The third cache was what geocachers call "muggled" meaning that someone took it, likely thinking that they were in luck to find a coffee can full of trinkets.

Next time, I'm wearing boots, jeans, and gloves, waiting for a nicer day, and renting a suitable GPS from Roanoke Parks and Rec. Then perhaps I'll have something a little more exciting and a little less comical to report.