Treasure Hunting

Mark's parents gave us a GPS system for Christmas. There's nothing better than going on a trip somewhere and knowing that no matter where you turn, your map will magically fix the error and get you where you're going. It's definitely something that comes in handy living on the East Coast. However, since we don't have a lot of time to take trips, we needed to find a way to spend more time playing with our new toy. Thus, we officially became geocachers yesterday.

For those of you who aren't familiar with this-- dare I say nerdy?-- hobby, it's basically a high-tech treasure hunt. Somebody finds a nice, clever hiding place to plant their 'cache', which may include trinkets or coins or other tradeable objects. They also include a log for anybody who finds their cache to sign. Then they go online and document the GPS coordinates of the cache and may offer a few clues about the hiding place. We go online and retrieve the coordinates of caches hidden in our area, and then go find 'em. It can be kind of tricky, especially because they need to be hidden well enough that random passersby don't disturb them. If we take an item from a cache, we're supposed to replace it with something else. As you can see from some of these pictures, it can take a little fancy maneuvering to reach the hidden objects.

We got to see some pretty cool spots around Ithaca that we didn't know existed. And that's part of the fun of geocaching- people often try to plant their caches in places that you might not visit otherwise.