Amazing Camouflage

Spent this morning geocaching with my friend, K.  We were 4/5 and all 4 we found were done by the same couple.  They love their little town and they're so generous with their time and talents for the caching community.

One of the goals of geocaching is to get people out see things they might otherwise miss.  While looking for one near a fence, I found this empty cicada shell.  It reminds me of how beautifully complex God has made ALL of His creatures...but I'm glad no one was home anyway!

Sometimes in caching, you just need to look at things from a different point of view. This was on a traffic island in a sleepy parking lot.  At the ends of the island were two planting areas with messy (hence good for hiding things) areas. In the middle of the island were two small leafy trees, and two huge oaks.

We explored the planting areas a bit but then reasoned that since one of the tenets of geocaching is "do no harm", it wouldn't make sense for the hide to be in an area where one would have to trample flowers to find it. Next we looked at the leafy trees.  First, we knew that the cache had been placed in 2006, and these trees didn't look 5 years old.  Additionally, they were deciduous, so any cache would stand out like a sore thumb once the leaves fall.

So we were stuck with the oaks -- but they were tall, and had no branches or anything around them!  Nothing to conceal or hide a cache!

Well . . . are you aware of the concept of 'hidden in plain sight?'  Yep.  If it doesn't jump out at you, click on the photo.  This is MASTERFUL, BRILLIANT camouflage.

Sorry for the blur on this -- but this shows it a bit closer up.

It's a small tube (called a bison tube) that the top bottom unscrews from and then you pull the paper log out and add your name and date.  Later (or at the same time if you have wireless in the field) you log it via computer with www.geocaching.com.

This afternoon my kids went with me to a travel bug hotel.  Nope, had nothing to do with bed bugs.  It's where trackable items are stowed awaiting a ride to a new cache.  This one is near the airport, so people who are visiting can drop one of from wherever they've flown in from, and pick one up to take to wherever the owner wants it to go.

There was only 1 TB in the hotel, and it wants to go to Australia!  Here's a photo of it:

The Shark is the TB. The notebook is the

log book.  The other things are just small

trade items for kids who get dragged along.
Seriously though, the kids usually love it.

Try geocaching.  If you like hiking and seeing things

you'd never have seen otherwise, you will love this.

And wear long sleeves and pants.

Tomorrow, photos from the Udvar-Hazy Annex of

the Air & Space Museum.

Do You Geo?

Have you heard of geocaching?  It's the high tech game of taking a walk with a purpose. If you have a GPS device or a smart phone, you can do this!

The easiest place to start is www.geocaching.com and read the stuff there.  Put in your address and it will show you all the hidden treasures in your area. It's up to you to read the description and hints and figure it out.

We've been doing this since 2004 but really slowed down after the first year. Our GPS device was clunky and the kids got very involved in other things. Then I got a smart phone and we're back on the trail.  In the last few weeks, I've used my bike to get to the locations and try to find the stuff!

It's a game of physical and intellectual curiosity, and you can do as much or as little as you want. There's no cost for the basic entry to the website, and gets you outside! You see places and things you might never have known were there -- like the park the other day where I found the bunny and the snake!  And yesterday morning my friend and I went all over the small town next to ours, following a history clue/cache. We even had to do some math to get where we were going!

Yesterday afternoon after caching in the morning, I went to the Farmer's Market, so here are three photos to make your mouth water!