Geocaching - 8/1/10

While I was on vacation in New Mexico, my cousin Cindy mentioned we would be trying geocaching.  At the time we had no idea what it was, but gave it a shot.  Printed some coordinates out, packed some gear together, and headed out.

The first cache was a micro, which is the smallest size a cache can be, so it was quite a big jump to make for it being our first cache.  The cache's coordinates lead us to two large pillars, and the hint was, with the correct angle you could see the cache.  So we put our packs down and began scrounging around the pillar for over an hour and a half.  After much time lapsed, we finally decided to climb straight up the pillar before giving up.  Once I made it to the top which was fairly difficult, I looked around and to my amazement, when I looked down I saw the small orange waterproof container jammed between two rocks on top of the adjacent pillar.  After a bit of climbing I made it to the cache, and opened it to find the log signed with the other cachers who have found it.  Since this was our first cache, I wasn't prepared and didn't have a pen on me, so Cindy attempted to throw one up to me, which failed.  After a couple throws I finally grabbed it barely and signed the log and had to fight the piece of paper to get it to fit back into the cache.  Climbing down the pillar was worse than up, seeing as how I don't enjoy jumping when it would have been easier than just climbing down.

Was not easy coming down. Not at all.

With our first cache under our belt we headed back to the car and onto the second one.  For the second cache we choose a cache that was rated easy and well, it was.  After a bit of walking we found it in the middle of some Joshua trees.  Near the location of the second cache was a deteriorating graveyard, which we got a closer look at.  Being so close to the Mexican border as we were, some of the gravestones were craved with a stick or a sharp rock and were written in Spanish.  Some dates were as old as 1910.  Few gravestones had new headstones which were placed recently from the deceased's family.  It was overall a very cool place to see, because you can't find many old graveyards that like anymore.  After my first two caches, we picked up some lunch, and headed home! Ever since then, I have been addicted to finding caches!