I’ve been curious about geocaching for a long time, but until recently it was mostly a theoretical interest. A few weeks ago it ocurred to me that DFW might have more to offer geocachers than Anza did, so I checked it out and sure enough, the whole Metroplex is teeming with caches. During the week before the kids and I left to spend Winter Break in California, we went searching for four nearby geocaches. We only found one of them. Since I don’t have a real gps unit, I just use an app on my iPad that pinpoints the location of the cache; unfortunately my iPad only connects to the Net via wi-fi, so it can’t always pinpoint my location with much accuracy when I’m out and about. If I’m looking for a cache in the woods, for example, the app can’t really tell me where I am beyond just guiding me to the right general patch of trees.

When I mentioned my interest and troubles on Facebook, a couple of my California friends who are active geocachers offered to take me around their own stomping grounds and show me some tips and tricks for finding caches. I happily agreed.

Brief tangent: by the time I got to California the Saturn was overdue for an oil change, and it had also developed an unsettling steering wheel shudder whenever I used the brakes. So two days after Christmas I took it to my regular mechanic in Temecula to have it looked at. I got there bright and early, but they were already having a busy day, so all they could tell me is that my car would most likely be ready to pick up by the time they closed at five. I left them to it and walked the three miles to the Temec library, where I settled in to work on my book.

I had only been there for an hour or two when I got a text from my friends, asking if I felt like going on a geocaching adventure/tutorial. Whoot!

They drove up from Rancho Cucamonga to pick me up. They had never done any geocaching in the Temecula area, so we decided to search out a few local caches until my car was ready and then head back to Rancho Cucamonga for the advanced class. In their basic geocaching tutorial I learned about lamppost caches and “boogers” and magnetic “stickers” and the ubiquitous popularity of ammunition boxes and Altoid tins. Somewhere in there the mechanic called to tell me that my car was suffering from a case of warped rotors and that they couldn’t get to the repairs until the next morning. So I left the Saturn in Temec, rode back to Rancho Cucamonga with my friends and embarked on a geocaching adventure extrordinaire.

Without revealing any actual locations, here are a few of my favorite caches:

There was a trackable in the gauge, so I brought it back to Texas to place in a local cache.

The weather has been cold and dreary since I got back to Texas, but the kids and I managed to go on one small geocaching run the day after we got back. We found two out of three that time, using the tricks I learned in California. As soon as it warms up I’m looking forward to devoting more time to it.

More California pics to come!