geocaching

Over Christmas break, we discovered a new game, geocaching, known better to Juma as treasure hunting. The game involves following satellite coordinates on a hand held GPS device (we use the one from our car, which isn't perfect, but works well) to spots around town and wilderness, where others have hidden items, or caches.

We were pleasantly surprised to find that there are numerous sites around Merced, and we've found several so far. Some of the caches are nothing more than paper logs to sign--the reward is the search itself--but some have larger containers with trinkets that Juma calls pirate treasure. Once he found a jewel, another time a fruit roll-up, and once a yellow-green paint ball. Geocaching courtesy dictates that if you take something, replace it with something else--we've left coins from Tanzania, small toys, etc. Caches are listed online, and when you've found one you record it there, so everyone can see the "finds."

Here are some pictures of our first geocaching search (one success, several failures).