Basically, you are trying to find the stuff seen below: the green ammunition box I'm holding in my lap is the cache container. These may be as small as a dime (and are damn hard to find!) or as large as, well, whatever you can hide adequately without it being found and destroyed by non-geocachers. Typically the containers, if they're large enough, hold SWAG (an acronym for Stuff We All Get). SWAG is just random little things that people can trade in or out of a cache when they find it. Sometimes it's cool stuff, like coins of the world, supplies (spare batteries, flashlights, carabiners, etc), or even gift certificates; other times you find lots of toys, games, puzzles, and other assorted "McCrap" for kids. You should not ever find food (animals would destroy the cache to get at it) or non-family friendly stuff. The other thing I'm holding is the yellow geocache logbook. A find doesn't count unless you sign the logbook, so that's the most important thing you will find in any cache. Sometimes the logbook is a tiny scroll of paper (inside a microcache), other times it's a mini spiral notebook, or even an "official" logbook like the one in this picture. For these larger ones, it's pretty fun to read what others have written about their hike to reach the cache. This logbook's entries stretched back over 2 years, so there were a lot of fun stories about what people did or saw on the way.
The reason people participate in this sport is widely accepted to be twofold: first, hell, it gets you off the couch and outside! In late January-early February here in Payson, it's just barely cold enough at midday to need a light lacket, and partly cloudy so the sun's not baking you. The second reason is the thrill of the hunt. When you were a kid, didn't you always want to find buried treasure like the pirates in stories? This sport provides the opportunity to do so! (By the way, my sister is giving me a look like "did I ASK you to take my picture there, Andrew?")
The thing about geocaching is, you never know where the cache could be hidden. This time, we searched all over this bloody tree until we finally found the cache at its base. Sarah climbed the tree to try and get a better view. Many times, the cache is camoflaged. This particular cache was a coffee can, pretty large in size, but because it was made to look like a pile of tree bark, it took some actual searching. It was definitely worth it when we finally realized what was real and what was not! (Other caches like this I've found include a stump, a fake electrical box on the side of a light pole, and a fake cactus!)
Sometimes, you have to get messy in the quest for the find. Here at the "waterfall" cache, we ended up getting wet after trying to cross this iced-over stream. The pic below is of me PRE-getting wet! In my defense, I totally thought I could make it over the ice without slipping....
Other times, it's just a pretty straightforward hike on a well-manicured trail. But the views are magnificent! Behind me here is the town of Payson with the White Mountains (I think) in the distance. This is the first time I'd been up to the forest again since last summer, and it was AMAZING to be back among real trees that don't try to gouge out your eyes as you walk near them!
Finally, you end up at the end of the trail making the find in the hollow of an old tree, an outcropping of rocks, or under an electrical box in a city. As Ben's father said in "National Treasure," "You found the clues they left behind for you to find.... You did it...!"
Andrew on a break:
Finally, though, we reached the caves. The view from the top is spectacular. To the north, Fountain Hills' fountain can be seen every hour on the hour spraying up into the air. That fountain used to be the world's largest, back several years ago. Every St. Patrick's Day, they dye the water jet emerald green. I grew up in Fountain Hills, and that's still one of my favorite memories! I may go back this year for that party! To the west, just below the mountain is a set of smaller mountains, including the one that says "PHOENIX" in white lettering on the side, which used to be a navigation tool for airplanes a long time ago. I'm not sure if it actually was, but that's the legend. To the south, the caves, and to the east, the rest of the mountain. In the picture below, Scott and I stopped here to have lunch in the outcropping on the left. On the right, in the valley below, is the area surrounding Ellsworth Rd. and McKellips Rd. in Mesa.
We made it to the caves!:
After lunch, at around 1:30pm or so, we decided to try for the geocache on the top of the mountain. This involves going on a rough and rather dangerous "trail" out past the caves. It is marked solely by faded spray-painted arrows on the sides of the boulders up there, and we lost the trail at least twice. Once, I even made the error of thinking we needed to climb straight up the face of a sheer rock wall when in fact, we had just not seen the arrows. But eventually, we did find our prize, about 30 feet off the "trail" and over some rocks. The view from the top was AMAZING. The valley floor stretched out to the west of us (and on a clear day like Saturday, we could see out past downtown Phoenix), and the empty desert of the Goldfield Mountain Range and the Superstition Mountain Range to the east of us. The contrast between the developed west side and the natural east side created quite the juxtaposition! This picture is of me with the geocache, aptly named "King Usury's Treasure":
But, hey, all good things must come to an end. The sun was beginning to sink in the sky, and we still had a long way back to the car with our water supplies running a little low. On the way down, I stopped to pick up the second cache on the mountain, which required a bit of technical manuvering on my part over some VERY loose gravel. But hey, I only slipped and cut up my hands and wrists twice! No snakes or scorpions, though, so that was good! The trek down the mountain was about an hour long, as opposed to the four-hour upward hike and the extra hour on the summit trail. By the end, exhaustion had set in, our muscles were achy, and I wanted three things: water, shower, and sleep, in that order. The "after" photo:
Overall, it was a fantastic hike. Scott was a great motivator, despite the fact that he nearly fell off the mountain, saved only by my mad shirt-grabbing skillz (yo), and he had to put up with my banter the whole day (ask my parents, they'll tell you THAT ain't easy!). My plan is to do something of this nature every weekend - maybe not a 3-mile hike up a mountain, but something! Next time, y'all should consider coming along if you're in the area!
