 |
| clevernickname in the spooky darkness |
Now when I say "night cache" I don't mean just finding a normal cache after the sun goes down. This is a cache that is specifically designed to be only found in the darkness, when scary creatures roam the earth in search of food, and good children are tucked safely in their beds. This is a cache that screams adventure.
I picked up my caching buddy, clevernickname, at 8 PM, a half hour after sunset, and armed with flashlights, GPSs, and hiking sticks, we drove off into the night in search of adventure.
With a normal cache you arrive at the end of your journey at specified coordinates, and within 10-15ft (usually) there is a container with a log book to be signed.
With a night cache when you arrive at the coordinates and you need to find the start of a trail. So we were at ground zero and we shined our flashlights around to look for trail markers. Suddenly something in the corner of my eye catches my attention.... off in the distance there is a reflective dot on a tree, ... how odd.
We walk over to the dot to check it out and as we get close we notice another dot further down the trail.... then another... and another...
Those dots are called fire tacks, basically thumb tacks with reflective material on them, which means they can really only be seen when a light is flashed on them, and this essentially only works at night when the contrast is high enough.
So we follow fire tack after fire tack and soon we are a half mile deeper into the woods. Eventually we ended up at a place that has a lot of tacks clustered in one spot on a log on the ground. We took a closer look and found the treasure that we were seeking for A nice shiny cache container with a crisp log inside just waiting to be signed.With log signed and container replaced to its hiding place, we then followed the long line of fire tacks back to where we started, got into the van and drove back to civilization.
That, my friends, is one awesome way to go on a geocaching hunt.
