Category: The Monkey Goes Geocaching

As many of you know, I have a real passion for the game of geocaching, and in my world passion=obsession, which leads to over-achievement and eventual burnout. But I will have to say, my passion for this game has far outlasted most other things in my life, so who knows, maybe I will stick with it. Whether it lasts or not I have had a great time exploring all over the U.S. tracking down these hidden treasures and getting to see some really great locations that I would have otherwise missed and I have met a metric bunch of really great people. As it turns out, if you do something hard enough for long enough, people begin to think that you have some knowledge or wisdom to impart. I am happy to say that my tendency toward bombastic showmanship is occasionally tempered by my true desire to share and teach, and I have been been asked on several occasions to share the “secrets” to my geocaching success. So I am sharing here, a little piece that I wrote to answer some questions for a “soon to be released” guide to geocaching, and if you make it through that to the end, I promise to share the real secret to successful geocaching.

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Jeepzilla rides again

I had heard lots of stories about how beautiful the Walls of Jericho is, but I had never been there. Well let me just tell you, words cannot do justice to this incredible natural area, you just have to see it for yourself, so I placed a cache here to give you an added incentive.

In the late 1700s, Davy Crockett first explored the area since his family owned this land. In the lates 1800’s a traveling minister came upon the Walls of Jericho and was so captivated by the cathedral-like beauty that he declared it needed a biblical name and the name stuck. You can travel to the bottom of its 50-yard-wide limestone bowl and look up at 200-foot-tall cliffs on each side. In a heavy rain, water shoots out of holes and cracks in the rock, but I sure would not want to be here during heavy rain.

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I am always up for an adventure, I guess that is what keeps me young, or at least that is what keeps me sore and complaining about not being young anymore. When Scoot (my wife) and I discovered Geocaching in 2003, we knew that the gang in Seattle had created a hobby that was nearly perfectly designed for our lifestyle. Rather than getting bogged down in the details of caching, here is a quick description of the game from the Groundspeak website:

“Geocaching (pronounced geo-cashing) is a worldwide game of hiding and seeking treasure. A geocacher can place a geocache in the world, pinpoint its location using GPS technology and then share the geocache’s existence and location online. Anyone with a GPS unit can then try to locate the geocache. This high-tech treasure hunting game is played throughout the world by adventure seekers equipped with GPS devices.”

For much more information or to get into playing the game yourself, check out Geocaching.com.

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Last December I had the honor of being chosen as the final interview of the year for the Cache-a-Maniacs podcast.  We set things up and one night last November we talked for about an hour about my experiences geocaching.  It was interesting to get to tell some of the stories first hand, but what was really great was the incredible response I got from it.  I was truly amazed at how many people listened to the podcast and contacted me directly to comment on it.  I have also been surprised to find that as we travel the country attending Geo-events, just how many people introduce themselves and compliment the interview.  I have to give all the credit to DarrylW4 and Firefly03 who host the podcast, they did a great job of making me sound like I knew what I was talking about.  So many thanks to them for the interview and for hosting this great podcast.  Rather than having me type on and on about how much I enjoyed this, and how great it was, why not check it out  yourself, and after you listen to me ramble, check out some of the other interviews, there is some great stuff in there.

Cache-a-Maniacs Podcast, Episode 55- Monkeybrad

I am a big fan of abandoned places and I love to explore them. If you sit quietly in an old building you can almost feel the echoes of the events that happened there. I often wonder what happened to make people leave, how were they able to abandon an often beautiful structure and leave it to the mercy of the elements.  Weekend before last we had the great pleasure to visit the geocache, Korn Grain Co. about 20 miles west of Erin, Tennessee. As we approach the season of the witch, I thought I would share some of my photographs. I desaturated them and blew out the highlights to give them an artsy, pretentious feel. This will hopefully convince you that I am a deeply sensitive, tortured artist.

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This is a teaser we created for an incredibly complex cache by TOM Creative Group called The Key to the Cryptonomicon.  It truly is the next step in the evolution of mystery caches.

For several years, Laura and I hosted a “Haunted Hayride and Caching Cookout” on our farm, the first Saturday after Halloween.  Themes have ranged from Pirates to the Wizard of Oz and most everything in between.  For our fourth annual event we created an interactive Civil War themed mystery. Our guests mounted the haywagons on the way to meet characters and collect clues in hopes of finally deciphering the cryptic carvings of McGuffin’s Bluff to reveal the location of the Pentia.