I know when you think of adult treasure hunting you think of real dorky guys who wish they were born in a different century where they got to wear swords and believed there was treasure to be found. But, have you ever heard of Geocaching because it is adult treasure hunting but in a much less intense way. I got to do it on Monday and had so much fun.
Some of my friends from church had done it before so we set out into the little wilderness that Abilene has to find our treasure. The way it works is that people place a cache somewhere and then log it in on the website by its coordinates and telling the size it is (micro, small, large). Then people like us decide we want to go find that cache so we put the coordinates into our gps and go stomping around until we find it.
The fun part is that the gps can only be so accurate so within about 12 feet of where it is supposed to be you start searching. If it is a micro it is obviously very small. We never found any micros. Once you spot it you log your name and date and then take a little treasure that someone has left inside and replace it with a little treasure that you have brought. The technical term for treasure is swag.
We got swag that was a free coupon for ice cream, a bouncy ball, and a Texas flag. We put swag in that was post-it-notes, 3D glasses and a fake mustache. What is fun is that it is not like you are in a flat parking lot where you just walk a straight, uninterrupted line to the cache and find it. The terrain we were in caused us to take many detours around cactus, trees, ponds, deep mud, and other obstacles. It was so great!
So, for us it was really about hanging out with friends, outside, doing something different and active. The treasure is not really that great but the adventure finding it totally is. I had a blast.
The only negative thing is that now we are all covered in chigger bites and I cannot stop the itch!!!! I read up on home remedies and many of them said Listerine. All I had was store-brand mouth wash but I gave it a try. I think all it did was make me smell minty...
Did you cover the bites in nail polish? That works best!