Geocaching: New Year's Eve

I discovered a new hobby this year. Actually, my sister Trina introduced me to it. It's called Geocaching (pronounced Geo"cash"ing) and I've been participating since May of 2008. It's a worldwide outdoor "sport" in which one uses multi-million dollar technology in the form of a hand held GPS receiver to traipse through the woods in pursuit of tupperware or ammo cans filled with happy meal toys and other trinkets. This type of treasure is a.k.a "traditional cache". I like to compare it to a glorified Easter egg hunt. It's really loads of fun and my kiddos love opening up the boxes to find Mardi Gras beads and other items. These little boxes of trinkets are hidden EVERYWHERE! There are many variations of the game but my favorites are virtual caches and traditional caches. Oh, a virtual cache is like the traditional cache, but they don't contain a physical treasure chest such as an ammo box or tupperware container. Instead, the geocacher is treated to a special place that should be easy to recognize as the "correct location." This place might be strange, interesting, unique, or special in some way.

Me and my gang have now found 64 caches this year and we've even hidden 1 in a little park in town. I had set a personal goal of finding 100 by today but, well, fell short of that goal. So, I'm setting another personal goal of finding 100 of them in 2009. If I meet that, then I'll tack on another 50....maybe.

If you ever want to start geocaching, check out Geocaching.com to find out how to do this. I was up at midnight last night doing all my mapping and planning for today's adventure. So, this morning we left the house at around 9:30 a.m. We had to take 21 y.o. DD to work before we could start enjoying our day. If we didn't have to do that, we could've hit a lot more geos today.

Anyway, so our first geo was waaaaaay up in Greensburg, LA at an old slave cemetery. What a neat area! The following information (not the pics) comes from the site that I use to get my geocaching information.....Geocaching.com!

The cemetery.

This place dates back to way before the Civil War. Lots of graves here are marked with stones. No names at all. There is one recent marker but even that one has the name faded away. The place was once owned by a prominent local family before and after the Civil War. After the war, the owner had to set the slaves free. The majority of them chose to stay for whatever reason. The owner also gave each of the families that stayed a small piece of land and just enough lumber from his sawmill to build a small private house.

Of course, after the war, times were hard and the property was broken up and sold off piece by piece. The final blow was the Great Depression of the late 20's and early 30's. There was no money and the remainder of the property was sold to "The Company" to raise money to pay property taxes. "The Company" was Southern Timbers, which eventually became Crown Zellerbach, then Cavenham, and now Weyerhaeuser.

The gang shows off their first find of the day!

After we left this particular geocache spot, we moved on to another which was located down a hunting road. As we were driving along, awestruck by the countryside, we rounded a curve where I was so surprised by what I saw that I just slammed on my brakes and shouted, "What in the world!?" If I hadn't been out geocaching, I would never have seen this with my own two eyes. I don't know the story behind it but it sure was a funny sight to see in the middle of nowhere!

Cowfield 1942 Steam Locomotive?

Incoming!!!

The gang finds a cache!

Layne attempts to open the treasure.

Kyle says, "Lemme show ya how it's done."

This geocache also gave us our first travel bug of the day! "What's a travel bug?" you might ask. Simply put, it's a trackable tag that you attach to an item. Then the item becomes a hitchhiker that travels from cache to cache via real persons. You can track it's travels and progress on the geocaching website.

Kangaroo shows off a travel bug!

We moved on to cache #3 for the day, Camp Moore. This is the site where confederate soldiers from several states were trained, the largest camp in the confederacy. A minor engagement was fought near this location on October 5 - 9, 1864. The men who are buried in the cemetery here died of disease while in the service of their cause. The historical marker at the entrance reads, "One of the principal Louisiana Confederate induction centers and training camps during the war for Southern independence. Named for Governor Thomas Overton Moore. Over 400 soldiers buried in the camp cemetery."

Before leaving the house this morning, I was wise enough to stock a cooler with picnic items for snacks. I figured we would be looking for our treasures in locations that did not provide us with needed facilities or food. When we first arrived at Camp Moore, the place was deserted. No cars anywhere! I couldn't figure out what was going on until I found a sign that said they were closed until Friday but pedestrians were welcome to roam the grounds during daylight hours only. I figured, "Well, that's us!"

Before we could go off hunting for this cache, I needed to eat. I mentioned lunch to the kiddos and they responded by stampeding to the cooler. Very strange kids. So, I haul out the cooler, we make sandwiches, and seat ourselves in the back of the surburban (the picnic tables were too far away to haul the cooler). As it turns out, our surburban seats were the best!! A freight train came by at that very moment to amazement of the girls. We all waved at the engineer and the girls were so excited when he tooted the whistle and waved back!

The lone sentry stands guard over the fallen soldiers.

Posing with a "soldier".

Layne found it!

Sorting through the treasure.

Little Bird finds another travel bug!

Our next few caches were in the town of Amite, LA. I learned a lot about this area today. I had no idea that Amite was such a pretty little town! It's amazing what one discovers when they get away from the house!

A beautiful little church that hides a geocache.

Our last cache of the day had us enjoying nature with some cows. The smell brought back so many childhood memories! I phoned hubby and said, "Can we buy some farmland and raise some cattle?" He said, "Why would you want to do that?" I said, "For the smell!" Now, don't get me wrong, I certainly wouldn't want my home to constantly be filled with Ode de Elsie, but the scent is wonderful in it's own way.

Eat more chikin!

At any rate, we grabbed the cache for this one and headed the burb for home. I'm so excited that we found 7 out of 8 planned caches today for a total of 64 found for 2008! I really should plan another run for tomorrow and get 2009 started off with a bang!!!