geocaching adventure

For Memorial Day Josh and I wanted to do something exciting outdoors, but weren't quite up for a long hike (the original plan), so instead we broke out his new handheld GPS and went geocaching right here in Charlottesville. We printed off the coordinates for seven caches at a local park, and headed out...



We found the first one! As you can see, it was a micro cache.


Josh is recording our find.


We ran into a creek next to the river at one point and had to find our way around. This part of the park was wooded and felt like we could have been miles away in the mountains.


The GPS is kind of fun because you know what direction to go, but you don't necessarily know where the trails are. Sometimes the GPS seems confused though, and you have to wander around in clearings until it figures itself out.


We couldn't find two of them, and we bipassed one when there were people around (apparently you're supposed to be secretive about geocaching and not let "muggles" see you). But we found four, so that's exciting. Here is Josh finding another one in a tree.


People trade out little toys and other random stuff. We added this to the cache.


At a different cache, we traded a finger puppet for this sweet eraser.


All the walking and searching for two hours, plus the 90 degree heat, meant a break by the river was necessary. Here you can see my first temporary tattoo of the summer.


We also ate snacks.


Overall we had a lot of fun being outside and finding "secret" caches. It was also nice to be reminded that the river and wooded parks are so close by. It was a successful first try at geocaching, and I'm sure we'll do it again.