Our first find!

First, a quick update on my couponing adventure. I’ve been saving money all right. I took Sara’s advice (she left a comment on my last post) and joined Coupon Sense for a trial month. I think I’m figuring out what the real savings strategy is — use coupons when something is on sale. I have been saving as much as 30-40% on each grocery shopping trip, but hopefully my savings will go up and my grocery bills will go down even more as I get my pantry better stocked.

Now for the main subject of my post. When Dale was here in October, he told us about geocaching, an adventure activity he participates in. Here’s how the geocaching site describes the game:

Geocaching is a high-tech treasure hunting game played throughout the world by adventure seekers equipped with GPS devices. The basic idea is to locate hidden containers, called geocaches, outdoors and then share your experiences online. Geocaching is enjoyed by people from all age groups, with a strong sense of community and support for the environment.

That sounded like a really fun activity to do with Nathan. So a couple weeks ago, we headed out on our first geocaching trip. We selected an easy cache just a block from my house. We hunted and hunted, but could not find the cache. Nathan was very disappointed (as was I!), but we had to give it up. (Note: I’ve since discovered the cache was taken and the owner is planning to replace it. I don’t feel like such a dud that we couldn’t find it.)

My neice, Karen and her three boys are visiting from Pennsylvania this week, so we decided to try again. I had my eye on a multi-cache site near LIFE, that was supposedly hidden by a leprechaun. Heather, Mark and Camden joined us and we drove over on Wednesday afternoon. We all hunted and hunted in the little park area, until Karen finally located the first cache unit which sent us across the street. We had Nathan check a spot that required small hands and he came up with the second unit. That took us back across the street to a different area of the little park and Camden found the treasure! It was very cleverly done and we allowed the boys to take a little souvenir from the cache box, but we were sure to replace it with treasure of equal value.

This was our first find, but it will not be our last. There are nearly one million geocaches hidden around the world. I think we will not run out of free fun as long as we can get outdoors and hunt for treasures. There are thousands of caches hidden in metropolitan areas, but also thousands hidden in wilderness regions. So whatever kind of adventure you are looking for, there’s a cache for that.

I have not revealed the exact location of each of the cache clues because I don’t want to spoil it for any of my readers who might decide to try solving the Leprechaun of Shamrock Estates.