The Green Bag

Hidden Treasures

Geocaching -- an electronic geek's treasure hunt -- offers intrigue for 40-year-olds.

Erin Sullivan | Sentinel Staff Writer
Posted August 5, 2006

Greg Hammack and Ed Harris tromp through the woods at Black Hammock Trailhead in Seminole County, looking for a trail that used to be there. Branches hit them in the face. They sidestep poison ivy. It's hot and humid, around 5 p.m. The sun seems to be gearing up instead of winding down. Insects buzz in the explorers' ears. And who knows what creatures lurk under the fallen leaves and bushes.

The two men are businessmen by day. But by night -- and during lunch breaks, after work and on weekends -- they are treasure hunters.

The steep spiral staircase in the lighthouse at Iroquois Point has 72 steps. I climbed them. Twice.

I haven't blogged our Family Fridays in a couple of weeks, but we've still had them. Two Fridays ago, Teri and I geocached our way across Route 30 on our way to Orrville, then joined the girls, and the whole Johnson clan for Emily's Graduation Party and a whole Independence weekend of fun. Last Friday started out with more geocaching and a picnic lunch at Pontiac Lake, then we picked up Saturday afternoon with enough hours at our friends' pool to turn me into lobster man for most of last week.

This week, we started Family Friday a day early, with a drive to my inlaws' cabin in Grayling on Thursday evening. This gave us a good head start on our weekend trip to Sault Sainte Marie.

Shortly after we got involved in Geocaching, we purchased a Magellan eXplorist 100 GPS receiver (GPSr), which has served us faithfully for almost two years. Unfortunately, we started having a problem with the display a couple of months ago, and despite trying everything including checking all of the menu settings, we couldn't figure out why it wasn't working right.

We continued our Family Friday theme last Friday. In the morning, I hinted that I wanted to go Geocaching, and Teri suggested that we wait and go on Sunday, for Father's Day. We talked a little more, and when she said that maybe it would be okay to go on Friday anyway, I asked if that meant I could have my new GPSr now. I was fishing, but Marissa took the bait and blurted "I swear I didn't say anything!"

hehe

So, I got my new Magellan eXplorist 210 a couple of days early, though we didn't get to use it for Geocaching until Sunday, after all. nstead, we started our day with a bike ride around the block, and then headed off to go shop for some birthday presents and whatever.

Dad and Mom have Fridays off all summer, and we wanted to make sure that we didn't just sit around and do nothing, or fill up those Fridays with busyness, so we've declared Family Fridays for the summer. A few Fridays are scheduled for us, like Emily's graduation party, but on our way back from Tom and Tiffany's wedding, we decided to go ahead and plan as many Friday activities as possible. We stopped at the Michigan Welcome Center in Monroe and picked up a whole bunch of flyers, and then added in other items we've wanted to do as well.

Today's activity was a trip to Lansing, where we visited the Michigan Historical Museum. We walked through a couple of centuries of Michigan history in a fairly short time. It would be nice to go back and spend a little more time in a few areas, but at times we were dodging some school tour groups.

Looking out my kitchen window about an hour ago. There's snow on the ground, but it's mostly just a thin cover from the dusting we got after the big thunderstorms that rolled through here on Thursday night. The ground cover in the common area behind our house is all but gone, and I can see in our stand of trees that a couple more of the dead elms are now lying next to the top of the maple tree that split off last fall. It's a beautiful, sunny morning.

Just inside my kitchen window sits the electronic indoor/outdoor thermometer we got for Christmas. Oh, I see it's gone all the way up to 25. Wait, no, that's 2.5 degrees. While I made my coffee, I watched the temperature drop down to 1.9 degrees, then drift up to 2.7, then settle back at 2.5 again.

I had the pleasure of introducing someone to Geocaching today. I've enjoyed getting to know Marshall, a 25-year-old dude from Costa Rico who is the Crew Supervisor of the men performing the work during the re-roofing of the condo complex. Marshall's been in the U.S. for four years, on a work/student permit. Right now he's studying French because he is considering going to Canada to work for a while before he goes home to Costa Rico. I could tell from our early conversations that there are times when he truly misses his family, whom he hasn't seen for a long time. He's stopped by my unit several times to use my computer or fax machine. It's been interesting, listening to him talk about his homeland and growing up there. What a neat way to broaden my knowledge of Central America.

Several months ago (probably long enough ago that I should be embarrassed) our friend Gail bought a new purse. It was a green purse, and it came with a little matching key chain. Now, as it turns out, this was not too long after I'd told her about Geocaching and even introduced her to thegreenbag.com. So the first thing she thinks is that she'll just turn the keychain over to me so we can do "that green bag thing that you do" with it.

From (GCRZZQ) 2006 Midwest GeoBash by Midwest Geobash:

Just a little event for you and a thousand or so of your closest GeoFriends.

I was checking back on our Technorati entry a little while ago, and wanted to see if anyone had submitted any volkswalking tags. None appeared (they may by the time you read this), but I also did a Technorati search for volkswalking and noticed that most of the blog entries that discuss volkswalking also mention geocaching in the same sentence.

I guess that means we're a good mix.