Night Creatures

Did you see strange lights bobbimg around outside your house tonight? Do you live in or around Bend? If the answer to these questions is Yes, you may have seen me.

Tonight we joined D & V on two night caches. The first geocache was out towards the town of Alfalfa. We made our way to the coordinates listed for the cache, within a field of pine trees and scrub brush, then turned in a slow circle while holding down a button on TV remote controls we'd brought from home. Eventually, we triggered a little green light in a nearby tree. Mounted on the tree was a black tag with more GPS coordinates. So we all navigated to the coordinates provided and repeated the process with the remote controls.

After doing this for a half dozen more trees, finding the right one that lit up with the remote control, then getting the next search location from a black tag, we found the booty hidden inside a hidey-hole... a water bottle containing various trinkets, and a log to record our names. This was lots of fun.

Casting my gaze to the heavens at the end of this particular treasure hunt, I spotted the Big Dipper (Ursa Major) shining brightly, and my favorite constellation, Orion, high overhead. A good omen.

We had a wonderful middle-Eastern dinner at Kebaba on Bend's west side. My beef kabob was the tenderest kabob I've ever had, and well seasoned. mmmmmmm

After dinner, we proceeded to the next night cache. For this one, we walked to the first location specified by GPS coordinates, then shined our flashlights on all the nearby trees until we spotted one with a gleaming FireTack on it. A FireTack is a thumb tack with a dime-sized reflector for its head. When you shine a light at it, it reflects back brightly.

We walked to the tree with the bright spot on it, then shined our lights again on all the surrounding trees until we found the next FireTack. We continued this way, tree after tree, following a trail of about thirty FireTacks until we found the final cache. Within the cache I took a little toy Indian with a tracking number on it. I'll leave him at one of the next caches I encounter for someone else to find.

Oh, and we saw deer... and... and... a bunny!

We love night hikes. We enjoy puzzles. We enjoy geo-caches. I felt like a little kid again, following a trail of notes to find my birthday present. kewl!


Posted by Dave    Blog Tag: Chatter