Trees, bees and dirty knees

A few blogs back, I went on a downtown library date at the suggestion of Ben with On Purpose Adventures/Dating. We had such a good time with his first suggestion that I decided to look back at his other ideas and the man is full of great local freebies. If you ever catch yourself saying,“I have nothing to do!”ask this guy for date help, or just check out his FB page to make you look really boring. That man is way too busy! Did you see his awesome RiverDog ZombieDog?

I digress, but another one of the date suggestions he gave to us was to go on a Geocache. What the heck is Geocaching, you ask? Well, it requires a good GPS app like Google Maps, some passion for treasure hunting, a bit of patience and an eagle eye to seek out your pot at the end of the rainbow. Are you waiting for a dinner reservation somewhere? I can guarantee there is a Geocache within scouting distance. I initially dismissed this date idea since I’m just not tech savvy. GPS/smart phone gadgets intimidate me, but my man, Mr. D, who doesn’t prefer a flip phone from the old ages, wanted to give this date suggestion a whirl. How could I say no? It was another chance to explore our fabulous city for free.

We took on North Charleston/Park Circle for an afternoon. Pulling the truck into a church parking lot, we unloaded our bikes and headed down the street to the first GPS coordinates, just down the way from EVO. The geo community site offered only one simple clue to help guide you in locating the smallest of small caches. It’s shocking…hmm.

We were an entertaining sight to others who watched as Mr. D wandered around with his giant phone outstretched in front of him, trying to narrow down the location. I got down on hands and knees to peer under cob web and dirt encrusted possibilities. We even got asked if we needed help finding our keys. Well, I’ll be honest; that first one was a bit tricky. I experienced first-hand what other “cachers” had rightly warned me about in their online feedback. It took me looking in the same place three times to finally find the little bugger, but it was me – competitive me – and not Mr. D who found the small-as-my-pinky, silver, magnetic bullet that held a book of signatures curled onto a piece of paper tucked inside. I was proud of myself for not giving up when draft beer at DIG was calling my name and found that I was immediately addicted to the hunt. Excited to find the next hidden booty, we peddled to the local pond and as I ranaway from some scary geese, Mr. D hauled the medium sized container out of the bushes. We plopped down on the grass and looked through all the little tokens that people had left inside the green container. The afternoon went on with one cache that must have been stolen, one snuggled next to a bunch of busy bees, and if any of you ever find the one on the Frisbee golf course, you must tell us where it is!

The only thing missing was a picnic basket full of Southern Season cheeses and a beautiful red wine stashed at our last find. Since then, we’ve found a great hide after a visit to the Frothy Beard and I also had the skills to find another tiny, silver gem in a West Ashley parking lot while we waited for my foster dog from Carolina Coonhound (I haven’t lost another one yet – cross your fingers). You will never look at your environment again without wondering how many caches there are out there. So, get out into our city with a friend or your family and start looking!

A warm Welcome Back to Tatiana Fisher as our main contributing writer and blogger. We look forward to sharing more adventures of hers! You can check out her blog for more fun times.