Geocaching at Lake Logan

View near Murphy Law Geocache site

Today I went geocaching all on my own. Feeling guilty about how long we’ve held onto a travelbug we picked up in Florida, as well as a geocoin we’ve had for two years, I thought I’d better get them out of my possession pronto! First a few explanations. Geocaching is a worldwide, outdoor treasure hunting game using a GPS and the web site www.geocaching.com. Using your GPS, you navigate to a specific set of coordinates and then find the “cache” hidden at that location.

Dave and I have been members since 2004. Our username is HockingHunters and we have found 62 caches since we started. We don’t work at this very hard, and mostly geocache while we are on vacation. We are now using a very nice Garmin eTrex Vista HCx, but started back in 2004 with one of the the first Garmin GPS units available to the public. Not user friendly in the early days. I also have the free c:geo app on my Droid phone, but use it mostly to identify nearby caches, not actually navigate to them. Travelbugs and geocoins are trackables. Each trackable is engraved with a code that can be used to log its movements from cache to cache. So, you see, if you pick up one of these things, you are supposed to get it into a new cache ASAP.

So I was on a mission to get these things off my hands. Originally, I thought I’d put them in an easy location near the Inn at Cedar Falls, but then I got adventurous and decided to try to find Murphy Law Cache. The drive sounded fun. It turned out to fun and beautiful, but finding the actual location of the cache involved a lot of poison ivy and spider webs, or at least how I did it! Eventually, I spotted the well concealed cache, signed the log, dropped in the travelbug and the geocoin, then managed to get a little lost coming home! Once home, I logged onto geocaching.com, logged my visit including giving up those trackables.

Geocaching is a great hobby. When you are visiting a new part of the country, it’s also a great way to learn more about it’s history and nature. When you next visit the Hocking Hills, give it a try – I know you’ll get hooked.

Mary at Marsh Hollow

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