Geocaching

The following are words I never thought would pass my lips, "I went hiking today at Oscar Scherer State Park."

Seriously.

My little sister (Big Brothers Big Sisters) Dalecia and I signed up to do some activities with the local Girl Scouts and this was one: "geocaching". Unfortunately neither of us actually knew what geocaching was when we signed on or we probably would have begged off right away but instead we showed up to see what it was all about and it was all about hiking through the freakin' woods!??

Dalecia is a city girl like me. She's a far better athlete than I could ever dream of being but, still, she prefers not to get dirty and I'm with her 100% on that.

She's a girly-girl.

Something told me... a little voice whispering in my ear... to wear pants, long sleeves, and sneakers with socks just because whatever this turned out to be, it was happening at a state park; that means woods and woods mean bugs. Neither of us is a fan of the insect kingdom!

I figured "geocaching" was a misprint. Thought they might've left out a "t" and we were going to be caTching something (maybe butterflies?) there at the park. WRONG.
The 'caching' was from the French: cacher - to hide. Come to find out this is a hugh worldwide thing where people take trinkets, put them in a waterproof container along with a log book and pencil then hide the container somewhere. In this case, at Oscar Scherer State Park!

There were six girls and as many adults searching the park for trinkets today. The girls all got a GPS-on-a-rope and there was list of cleverly named sites we could seek. The sites were linked to the GPS so once we clicked on the name we wanted, finding it was a fairly simple process since the GPS unit knew where it was.

Except for the hiking. Aye. There's the rub!!

Pooh (aka Dalecia)and I decided we'd seen enough, hiked enough, and swapped enough trinkets after three containers had been sought and found. Thank God Melissa, the GS leader, brought us back to the starting point then for lunch! We thanked her and all the other participants for a fun event but explained we had to go - and left!!

The remaining geocachers had another three or four sites they planned to find after lunch. Pooh and I believe that is overkill.

Instead, we went to Denny's for a nice lunch in air-conditioned splendor, shopped for new bathing suits at Beall's (Pooh found two excellent ones!), stopped at my house for a little computer time and Dove bars then I dropped her back off at home.

Our outing probably took as long as the diehards at the park but we were a lot happier having stopped the madness and reverting to type!?

"Geocaching", who knew???