Last year when everyone was into Pokemon Go (is that still a thing by the way?), a friend of mine said there’s something much cooler to do, more real, and I might like it. Geocaching. People “cache” little containers of knick-knacks, upload the coordinates to the geocaching site, and other people go around and find them and log them.

It actually did sound interesting. My friend, who has been all over the world and even under the sea to collect caches, was going to take a trip to High Park in Toronto to find some caches there. I tagged along. This is her logging a fun find:

It was tucked away in the crotch of this tree. I found an old tree stump and moved it over so I could reach up to get it. My friend had some BBQ tongs with her, and I used them to pull the cache out. Very cool!

We were pretty successful that day. I think we found 6 or 7 caches. Here’s one of the tiny ones we found…only enough room for a log sheet:

So I was hooked.

Up at the cottage last summer, I roped in a couple of friends to go geocaching with me around the MacTier area. I felt so clever. Because of my first outing, I knew the kind of thing to look for. We found a tricky one just outside the cemetery. Another one hidden in a hemlock tree along a side road. The one at the MacTier sign was so obvious, we almost missed it. I couldn’t wait to do the two in town, by the new CP bridge, and by the MacTier Caboose. They’d be a cinch, no doubt.

Well.

Those two blue sad faces? The CP bridge and the caboose. We looked everywhere at that damn caboose. Under, on our hands and knees, up the stairs, everywhere. Nothing. Clearly I wasn’t as good at this as I thought. I kept re-reading the clue. Reading other people’s posts, “I found it! Fun cache!” And I felt so stupid.

We had no luck at the bridge either. What the hell?

In our defence, these are very out-in-the-open structures. And there are a lot of “muggles” around (yes, borrowed from Harry Potter…people who are just there and will find it odd that you’re down on your knees under the caboose…) I’ve been back to both structures several times on my own. No luck. Mind you with the muggles, I DO feel a little conspicuous.

I am determined to turn those blue sad faces into yellow happy faces. There are so many nearby caches I want to get to:

But I won’t move on until I’ve captured those prizes! Stay tuned!