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Wednesday, October 21, 2015

Geocaching & Mushrooms

A Geocaching Adventure 
Saturday October 10, 2015

We had never before even heard of Geocaching, and now we've done it! 

Elder Jim & Sister Rosemary Hanks, from West Bountiful, here on a Family History assignment, invited us to tag along with them for a day of Geocaching.



This one almost fooled us. 



Their handheld GPS guided us to the locations through the website. There were lots of caches hidden in the forest where we went; we selected just one trail for our "treasure" hunt.


Half of the fun was hiking the trails through the forest on this beautiful fall day in Germany, passing other hikers as well as a horse & rider along the trail.

Here's an easy one!

See that tiny dot under the bench? There it is! 

This one was in a fake rock.

We found 6 of the 7 hidden along this trail, to help the Hanks reach their goal of 1500 caches.

This was definitely not the kind of forest we're used to seeing in the Rocky Mountains, with mushrooms, ferns and moss all around!





Sister Hanks and I quickly started spotting mushrooms. Interesting that they mainly grow around tree stumps. This is just a small sample of the many varieties we found!

Geocaching began in 2002 when someone in Seattle got the idea of hiding things to find. The idea quickly spread and now is in every part of the world except for North Korea. You can sign up on www.geocaching.com and, just using your cell phone as a guide, start hunting wherever you happen to be. The website tells where they are within a general area, the size, level of difficulty to locate, and the level of difficulty of accessability.

When you find a cache, you sign the logbuch (logbook) hidden inside, then report online which ones you have found. Many caches are located at points of interest. A person who finds one and takes or moves it, without knowing what it is, is called a "muggle." The person who sets them out is supposed to maintain them.


Enough tromping around, we were hungry! We drove to Kronberg and found a cutely decorated cafe run by a man and wife team, where we enjoyed a great dinner! Ken had cheese stuffed rolled pork wrapped in bacon, and I had a cheese stuffed vegetarian patty. Even the salad, garnished with red currants, was delicious! I liked the fall centerpieces made from fresh foliage and fruit. 

We'll have to return to see the Castle in Kronberg im Taunus because the daylight was gone. It's not far from Frankfurt. It was a fun day!

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