Geocaching Afternoon

These are Geocaches. You use a hand held GPS device to locate these hidden treasure boxes. I thought you should see two that were hidden( top pictures above) and two that we opened. The left top one is the smallest we have found and in a perfect hiding place. We found it right off of a busy street in our town, right next to the CA. Highway Patrol. That's just to let you know that it's an accepted and legal seek and find game that all law agencies approve of. The larger the cache the easier it is to find. We went 4 for 4 today. We signed the record inside the containers and, if there was room, left a trinket. Then we put it back where it was hiding for the next person who comes along.
One of the biggest reasons that I love doing this is because you get to see places like this....
You have to drive down country roads, past old farms and California cows. It's fun, entertaining, and good exercise for two old retired folks that like an adventure that doesn't get too difficult but requires us to get out and walk or hike a bit. Each cache is designated with a degree of difficulty so you can pick the ones you want to try. There are lots of levels..., "easy" or " all uphill" or "better bring some food and water". You get the idea. The level is your choice. We are in the "easy" to "small hike" caches right now but we will try to up our game little by little. How could you not want to drive to beautiful places in Amador County and look for little treasures.
OK! This one was not funny. It was behind our Hospital, outside of town, in the staff parking lot. It was inside the casing of a light standard. I will have to say it was the most creative one that we have found so far but I'm sure glad that the Prospector found it first. I think I would have had a small heart attack or, at the very least, I would have jumped back a few hundred feet. This one took the longest to find. Then the Prospector leaned on the concrete to look down at the ground around the standard and the metal casing moved. When he lifted it up there she was..., the Merry Widow. ( That's what the cache was called. ) The comment told us it was "scary". It was. Inside her was a film container with a sign in paper. The little caches don't have trinkets but I'll bet that someone takes the Merry Widow home with them. It's a "treasure" all by itself. You're not suppose to take these things but we've been to places where we couldn't find the cache and no one had for quite a while. That's when you wonder if someone found it and took it. I hope no one takes this spider because it's kind of cool and a very clever cache.
We probably won't play this game in the summer because I would not want to open up a casing like this and find a Rattler coiled up inside, or under a rock, or waiting inside a tree root. Nope, I'm not that adventurous and about the middle of June those beautiful, hungry snakes come out of their Winter hiding places and start roaming around until late fall. I know this..., I'm on a first name basis with some of them.
Anyway we had a lot of fun this afternoon. Carl, the Pupster, was with us. He mostly stayed in the car because it seems he wants to "herd" everything that walks on all fours and makes a nuisance of himself with every cow, sheep, goat, dog and horse that he sees. He even barked at a Highway Patrolman in his car. Oh Carl, what are we going to do with you. Next time you may have to stay home.

I'm going to save the "What is it?" photo for tomorrow. I need to get permission from the owner, first, to post pictures of her farm . I haven't yet but I will call her tonight.