Sunday, February 5, 2012

Geocache Bash!!

Our Sunday School class held a Geocache Bash a few weeks ago and we had such a great time.

What is Geocache?  Let's just call it 2012's version of a treasure hunt. There is a website you can go to, create an account, and it allows you to view where "treasures" have been hidden in your area. There's even an APP for smart phones so you can do this on the go!  It tells you the location and you can use the GPS in your phone or car to lead you to the treasure. Some are hidden in large containers, like a plastic tub or ammo box. Some are hidden in containers smaller than your finger. Most include a log that you sign, and sometimes you must exchange a small item. Then you can log onto the website to tell the owner you found their geocache.

Our youth pastor, Pastor Josh, got hooked on this and showed a lot of people how to play when several people from our class went to Gatlinburg back in the fall. Then someone got the idea we should do this as a class social. Buddy and I were excited to participate, since it was our first event to go to since he has come home from working out of town.  Some of the ladies stayed back to watch all the kids....the rest of us divided into 3 teams and went a-huntin' for treasures!  We were assigned a starting "cache" to look for and then we were on our own, with each "cache" counting for a certain number of points.

I was on a team with Buddy, my friend Pam and her husband (our driver and navigator), another guy from our class, Curan, and Pastor Josh's wife Abby.  My team was very courteous to let me not climb up and down the hills or anything else dangerous, as it had rained for several days and all was slippery.

We tied for 2nd place....a nice way of saying we lost. But it was a blast. Here are some pictures of some of the Geocaches that we found. Abby took a few pictures and I took the rest. Given that it was at night, rainy, and we were on a time-frame, please excuse the blurry, not so great quality of these pictures!


This was #3 out of 8 that we found....took us all of about 3 minutes. Curan is not bored with the pic...he is looking for our next location!

We wasted so much time at this location, not realizing until after 10-15 minutes of looking for the treasure, that we were at a "Virtual" geocache....meaning there was nothing to find. We just had to arrive at the location.


This one was neat....it was 1 of 20 along a roadside. This particular location held 2 separate Geocaches!
 

This was #2 out of the same location....notice everyone holding up 2 fingers!


This one was called a "skirt lifter". No we weren't being dirty....we had to lift up the "skirt" around the bottom of the light post.

This was the last one we found, although we did attempt to find one other after this. The top of the box that Curan is holding said "This is an official Geocache".....Abby was extra excited about this one!

We attempted to find 11, and were successful with 8 of them. The team that tied with us had 8 out of 11 as well. The winning team found 10 out of 12. So all in all, it was a good time. And what did the winning team win?  The privilege of eating the first slices of pizza! 

2 comments:

Beth Cotell said...

Can you tell me where the skirt lifter was? Was it at an old Winn-Dixie that is closed in an old strip mall I think on Hwy. 64. There is a nail shop and a restaurant and maybe one or two other businesses still left in the strip mall? If so, this might be the very first geocache we tried and we failed to find it. And if it is, then it's because we didn't know to "lift the skirt"!!!

Ashley Beth said...

I thought preggo ladies always got the first bite of pizza - lol!