Desert Geocaching



This little guy was friendly!

Desert geocaching has some unique challenges over caching in the Illinois praire!  Not only are there are different animals out there with different spikes and stingers on them, but also the bushes and plants can really do a number on you with their thorns.  I carry a walking sturdy walking stick to poke around the cache before I reach for it.  This helps scare off any little critters and then I use the walking stick to push the thorns away.  You just have to keep your wits about you and everything will be fine.

There's a cache here somewhere!

This morning, I took a three hour geocaching walk through the desert.  I started out early, 6:00 AM, to beat the heat.  I was a little frustrated at first because the Geocaching Mobile App wasn't working, but finally it kicked in.  I found nine caches on this walk and one cool Traveler from the Czech Republic. 

The caches here are different, too, in that they really don't have to worry about getting water in them.  Seldom are the logs in plastic bags and the caches are often just laying in the sand.  You can't get away with that in Illinois without ending up with soggy logs!

Caches come in all shapes and sizes...the smallest we've found is the size of an eraser.  The largest we've found so far was a 5 gallon bucket.  One of the more intesting ones we've found this week in the cavity in the picture to the right.  If you look closely, you can see teeth.  We had a lively debate deciding who was going to put their hand in there to retrieve the cache!  I lost.



Sprinkler junction box

Be careful around those wires!

Another of our favorites was one that had something to do with holy water...It took us two visits to find this one!  We found this sprinkler junction box and opened it.  All looked normal inside...wires and what not.  No cache.  No cache anywhere!  The next day we came back...the coordinates brought us right back to this spot.  We already knew it was a sprinkler junction box, so looked elsewhere.  Finally, about to give up for the second day in a row, I take a closer look inside this box....darn, those wires move too easily!  It's the cache!!!  At last we can log this smiley!

As you can see, there are some very creative cache hiders out there!  Can't wait to get home and hide a few ourselves!