Credit to Drew Johnson and Chase Pray

Picture this – an outside scavenger hunt, but you never know exactly what you are looking for. It could be a box in the middle of a tick infested woods, or it could be a capsule about the size of your fingernail hanging in a 100 foot tall pine tree. What is leading you to these spots? Well, it’s an online compass that is never exactly 100 percent accurate.

Every time I have gone geocaching, it has always been some sort of new experience. Of course all the treasure, or “caches’’ you are looking for are in public parks, but that doesn’t mean they are always so easy to get to. I can’t even begin to count how many streams I have crossed (or failed to cross dryly) just to try and find a cache that is out in the middle of nowhere. What is worse is that sometimes, it can’t even be found. No matter how long I trekked, how much my legs hurt, or how bad my insect bites itched from being outside, sometimes it just was simply all for nothing.

Now don’t take this the wrong way, I mean it when I say that geocaching is fun. All of this is just part of the challenge of never knowing what to expect when you’re out doing it. I once watched a deer give birth in the middle of a bike trail all because I happened to be there while geocaching, but on the other hand I have also found a creepy plastic baby as the cache itself that would give anyone chills.

However, in the end it’s all worth it. The scratches and mud stains I would have on my legs from walking through the parks were not seen as a bad thing, but as battle scars to show that I earned the satisfaction of finding a cache and that I had fun doing it nonetheless.