Treasure in them thar hills!

Cousin DotnFL drove over from PC Monday. Somehow, she managed to get an unbelieveable airfare from here to Boston. The plane was an early one though, so she spent the night in my newly cleaned and freshened up computer/guest room.

After she arrived, we chatted a bit, then headed over to the gigantic chinese food buffet for dinner. Storm clouds were gathering as we went in, and we worried about not having an umbrella for when we came out.

We didn't need it. The clouds still hung heavy and low, but no rain fell.

As we headed for home, DotnFL pulled out a GPS and proposed that we search for a cache on the way. Since the rain was holding off, we said SURE! The cache was supposedly in a churchyard (there are a few nearby), so we began pulling into church driveways. On our second try, we were very close. The only clue we had was "It's not in the dumpster."

Apparently there is a 16-foot rule. The GPS can get you within 16 feet of it. The readings go off a little when there's rain or dense cloudcover, so we had a lot of terrain to search. As we scoured the edges of the parking lot, lighting flashed and thunder grumbled. ZBoy was freaking out a little, but we continued searching.

'Round behind the air conditioners. Under the propane tank. Looking in crooks of trees and under leaves, behind bushes. We found a football, poison ivy and LOTS of mosquitoes.

The thunder was rumbling again when DM made one last dive into the woods. He wandered around and around while ZBoy hugged the car door handles and DotnFL pondered the clue and the numbers in the GPS.

Then came the shout "EUREKA!!!" Darling Man found the cache. ZBoy forgot the thunder and raced to join him in pulling the box out of its hiding place. DotnFL joined them and explained how it works. She pulled out the notebook and signed it with the sharpie I brought from the car. And she had ZBoy sign it too, because she knew he would do this again.

She'd forgotten the bugs for the cache, so donated a $5.00 parking token instead (which actually works in our downtown parking garage). ZBoy pulled out some kind of action figure as his prize. The box was duly sealed and returned to its hiding place, and as we climbed back into the car, ZBoy asked if we could go looking for another cache.

As punctuation, lightning split the sky and we decided that perhaps it was actually time to go home. No sooner had we stepped over the threshold, the heavens opened and a true downpour swept the neighborhood.

But the mission was accomplished. DotnFL made Geocaching converts out of us. I see the purchase of a GPS looming in the near future!