Misadventures in Geocaching

In August, my husband and I will be going to Italy for our 10 yr. anniversary. Trying to find ways to blend in and yet not get lost, led to DH buying a new GPS for the trip. We already have one but apparently it wasn't quite as "cool" as this one--or something like that. While he was checking out maps and other things that techy guys like he came across Geocaching. Both of us had heard of Geocaching and once upon a time I had even registered at a Geocaching site after a friend of mine told us about it. For those that don't know, Geocaching is where you search for "treasure" left by a person (or persons) after you put in the coordinates. They can be little items, logs, bugs (for logging info--not the creepy crawly kind, although I guess you might run across those too), and other fun things. Needless to say reading the logs and FAQ's re-ignited our interest. When DH found that a cache was down at the park (a mere half a block from our house), we decided to take a quick trip down and see what we could find.

At 9:30 p.m. After the sun had gone down. With no flashlight.

After writing a note to our kids (in case they woke up and thought we really did join the circus like we told them we would one day do), and with wine and GPS in hand, we trekked to the park determind to find our first cache. After about 5 mins. of searching by the light of the GPS screen (think cell phone bright--cut in half) we decided that a flashlight was in order. Back to the house we went.

9:45 p.m., flashlight, pen (for the log), GPS, wine in hand, and after reading what others had written about the "cleverly hidden" cache, we flip-flopped our asses back to the area we had combed only this time we were armed with extra knowledge. The people who had come before us had said it was tough for the vertically challenged. Naturally we looked up. And up...and around...and up some more...until we finally convinced ourselves that it had to be inside of a fence post surrounding some kind of water tank thingy.

10:00 p.m., flashlight, pen, GPS, a screwdriver, and more wine in hand, we started lamenting about what big losers we were. After all, all these other people found it and said it was easy. The site listed it as 1 1/2 stars for degree in difficulty. "Maybe we should start with a 1 star." "Do they offer 1/2 stars?" Each time a car drove by I'd yell, "Kill the light" and we'd hold our breath like some high school kids up to no good. In the meantime DH tried to gently pry off the top of the fence post but it wouldn't budge. We stuck our fingers in holes not meant to be stuck in, felt along the tops of walls, inspected the porta-potty way too close...you name it...we tried it.

10:20 p.m. we headed home empty handed. The wine glass now half empty (or half full).

"We better hope no one dies there tomorrow."
"They're going to think we did it."
"The neighbors will tell the cops: 'We saw these people last night fooling around with flashlights, and a screwdriver, and something that looked like a detonator.' We're like Al Qaida"
"We are so screwed."
"And we're losers because we didn't even find the damned cache."
"1 star from here on out."