Cooped Up? Get Uncooped.

This weekend my camping partner and I headed over to Interstate State Park along the St. Croix River in MN for a long weekend. Besides our usual camping activities (biking, hiking, reading and napping) we took along our new GPS to attempt a bit of geocaching. All I can say about the first cache was that we found it in spite of ourselves. As we walked a very easy trail within the park, our new friend Garmin told us we had reached our destination. That, of course, was totally exciting! We searched off the trail a bit, looking for a good hiding place like a hollowed out log. Soon we found ourselves going in circles and cursing Garmin, the sport of geocaching and–especially–the mosquitoes. We were about to give up, when–for no reason that I can remember–I looked over a nearby information ‘kiosk’.

There, under its roof, was the cache which amounted to a sign with new coordinates leading to the next cache. Okay, a bit of fiddling with Garmin’s buttons and we were off for the second leg of our search.

We dutifully went where Garmin’s arrow took us, which was about a hundred yards off. What the #@%&! We fiddled with a few more buttons on the GPS and this time our destination suddenly moved its location. (It must have been one of those magic caches.) We did a 180 on the trail and retraced some steps. A turn to the north and soon Garmin was telling us we hit pay dirt. This time my partner found the stash in–where else–a hollowed out log.

So, what did we learn on our inaugural geocache adventure? First, there are different kinds of caches, not all in hollowed out logs. Second, caches in state parks probably aren’t too far off groomed trails, which means we could have avoided about a dozen mosquito bites. Third, we really need to read Garmin’s instructions.

• geocaching
• GPS
• Garmin