We started Geocaching around our area here in the Willamette Valley back in the summer of 2015. We stumbled upon the website during our planning of the Pirate Treasure Hunt for 2015. If you don't know what Geocaching is, it's the "world's largest treasure hunt." We've found about 30 so far, just in our area alone. We've now placed one in front of our house here in the city and enjoy seeing other Geocachers come to hunt for it. (For Whom the Bell Tolls)
Our first time hunting for a geocache was kind of tricky. We weren't really sure what we were looking for, but managed to stumble on it by accident. It was tucked away, covered in camo tape, and under a "few" things.
The Bean was the first one in our group, "Boodies Hunters" to pick it up. We marked this as our first geocache and after that, we were hooked.
Inside the container is hidden treasures. Some things are worth grabbing, but we always tend to leave something behind now. We might find old French coins, British sixpence, or a trackable in some. We tend to make it a habit to leave something useful, like a LED flashlight, or glow stick.
Our very first cache was located less than a mile from our town house here in the city. We took a short walk and found it after a few minutes of hunting. The Bean was pretty excited and the swag inside was pretty cute.
We went on a geocache hunt the rest of the week when we were able to. The Mr. had to climb under some stairs to grab this one on the left-poor guy, and the one on the right was stuck in a bolt hole on a guardrail.
We've seen some pretty fun, comical, and even interesting things while out geocaching. This cross was being hit by the sun at just the right angle. We couldn't help but take a candid spiritual shot with it.
Nanos are another crazy cache to find. Sometimes they are in the oddest, most difficult places. They are so tiny, that sometimes they get overlooked. This one was on a chain-link fence colored the same as the geocache. It took us about 45 minutes to find it.
Back in October we participated in International Earthcache Day. We found the closest earth cache to our home.
Where the earth cache is located gave information on what the area used to look like back 15,000 years ago. It was our first Earthcache in our area. Interesting to know that these Erratics (the rocks in the background) were placed here by ice bergs on a lake once called Lake Allison. We would be approximately 130 feet under water back then.
We've taken walks to most of the ones around our home.
Ammo can caches are always fun to find. This one was hidden in some large brush that was located where an old highway used to be back in the 50s.
Our favorite ones are the history caches (or historical caches, as we like to call them). It brings attention to the history of the area and we absolutely love these. There is a lot of history right in our own backyard that a lot of people take for granted.
There's all sorts of containers that people use for caches. The one on the left is a large pill bottle and the one on the right is a key hid container.
We've trekked through some weird places to get a geocache. The one we went for in the pictures here was under a bridge and you had to balance on some loose rocks to grab it. We had a blast with it though.
We found one hidden in an old phone landline box. The person that placed it must have worked for the phone company at one time and knew right where to place this box. There was a potbelly pig roaming around the field while we were looking. He kept snorting and seemed to want to play.
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We tried looking for another cache where a rooster guarded the area. We eventually had to give up because the rooster just did not want to play nice.
Baz loves to come on geocache runs with us. He sits calmly in the passenger seat, or noses around the area and is happy to just be with us. I have ordered him and PITA their own geocache/trackable collars, so we can't wait to put those on them.
We come across some pretty weird stuff while out looking for a geocache. Although, we've been to this fork in the road before, it's always fun to get a picture with it when we pass by. I showed my family the fork, when they were here from Arkansas. They thought it was really neat too.
There is a geocache out near an old schoolhouse called, Rock Hill School. The geocache coordinates are hidden in a math problem and we loved this one. I think it's one of my favorites other than the nano cache, and of course, our personal placed cache in front of our house.
Traveling north of where we live, it took us to a town called Oakland. There is a lot of history packed into such a small area.
It started to rain on us as we were driving through the town, but we did enjoy all of the great things that Oakland had to offer.
When we went back to Arkansas in October, we found a geocache placed by some friends of ours. They are fellow geocachers and we didn't even know it until we found their geocache. This one was located near my parent's house and was really fun to find. We were hoping for a trackable to be inside so we could take it back to Oregon, but no luck. We ended up leaving some fun swag for the next person though.
Since we've been geocaching a lot more we've learned a few "tricks of the trade." We recently, well, for Christmas we placed a geocache sticker on our car to let others know what we are doing, if we are parked on the side of the road, looking in a ditch. We've stumbled across a couple of geocachers since we started. One lady stopped in a busy intersection and asked us what we were doing. She ended up sticking around and telling us about all of her adventures. Another geocacher we ran across was during a hunt for the small geocache called a bison tube or nano.
The Bean is holding a cache called, "Like a Rock" next to our geocache car sticker.
The "Like a Rock" geocache was actually our last geocache of 2015. We found our last cache of the year to earn a souvenir through the geocache site.
We also found our first geocache of 2016 on January 1. We earned a souvenir for that too. It's just a lot of fun.
The Geocache site made it even more fun with a printable to use during your caching adventures.
We've had a great time hunting for geocache treasures. We can't wait to see what 2016 holds for us in the hunt for caches in Oregon and beyond!
If you want to learn more about how to get started, check out the Geocache blog here.
And if you live in the Willamette Valley of Oregon, check out our group page Willamette Valley Geocachers. We share tips and photos of our geocaching fun!
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