Have you ever been Geocaching? Do you even know what this means? Well let me fill you in. Geocaching is like a treasure hunt. People from all over the world hide containers of various sizes, mark their location on a GPS, and then upload the coordinates to a website. Your job is to download these coordinates, find the hidden container and “claim” your treasure.
We have been geocaching for quite a number of years, and was introduced to this by my dad. We go to the Geocaching.com website, create a username, then search for geocaches in our area. It is amazing at just how many of these are located in one area. As you read up on some of the “rules” of geocaching, you will notice that there is some secrecy to this treasure hunt. Regular people are called “muggles”, and you do not want them to see you searching for these items. A cache is the actual box you find at the coordinates. Inside the cache you will find a piece of paper (the log) where you can sign that you have found this location, and some caches will have little treasures to claim. The rule for this is “if you take something, leave something”. As a family we tend to just sign the log and then continue to find the next one.
Once you have located all the caches on your adventure, you go back to the Geocaching website and log your visit. This can either be Not found, Found, Write note, etc. As your geocaching screen updates, you will see happy faces instead of the green cache boxes. If you notice from the screen below, there are many green places we have not found in our area.
On this particular adventure, we headed out to Massassauga Point Conservation Area to hike the trails, and to do a little geocaching on the side. If you click on the link above, you will get a better file with information and a map, but as always, I take a picture of the map at the trail head so that it is on my phone for future reference. Our goal was to locate the 5 caches here today (we actually only found 3), and we would end up taking the outer red trail.
This trail offers spectacular views of the Bay of Quinte and this area is popular for boaters to anchor in the summer and enjoy the waters.
As you can see, the shoreline is beautiful with the layers of limestone that frequent this bay.
As we clamber through the trail, finding and not finding those hidden geocaches, we come across this old vehicle. We figure that these were dumped before this conservation area was established. It is really neat to find something like this while hiking around, but it is also a reminder of the amount of garbage that has and was dumped here.
We did try to enjoy this little gem of a find, and interesting enough we also found a turquoise plastic camper that matched this vehicle perfectly. It’s like there is a sign for us to get out camping again.
As we continue the trail looking for the geocaches, of which we had a hard time with one in particular. We even had someone yell at us from the trail “I couldn’t find that one either”. So much for being stealthy. However, my persistence paid off and I found the hiding spot. It was neat to see an old video reel being used as the “container”. Inside was the actual log to be signed, and as you can see in the picture, there is only a log and nothing else. As a frequent geocacher, make sure you always carry your own pen or pencil, as there might not be one located with the cache.
Our trail was coming to and end and we had been outside for over an hour searching and walking the trails. We have been here many times, and I shall return to find those other caches that we left with a DNF (did not find) on the website.
Please remember if you are using our local conservation areas that you pack out what you pack in. As always, “No Hunting”!