"Haunted" Geocaching: More fun than a barrel o' monkeys

Joey and I are fortunate to had friends who are cooler than we are. This is advantageous for us for two reasons:
1. They make us laugh
2. They have good ideas for double dates

Haunted geocaching was one such good idea. Laura Stiller gets major kudos for suggesting we go geocaching in the first place, and the doing all the legwork to get the series details and maps set up. Sadly, as you will discover later, there is nary a picture of her from the entire event because she was the one taking the pictures. (With her flippin' sweet camera too, I might add. Pictures turned out great!)

Anyway, on to geocaching. For those of you who do not know what it is, please refer to the dictionary.com definition:

Main Entry:	geocaching
Part of Speech:	n
Definition:	a type of scavenger hunt for waterproof containers bearing treasure using the containers' exact geographic coordinates and Global Positioning System devices

So the geocaching series that Laura found was "haunted" sites in the East Dallas part of the Metroplex. None of us believe much in ghosts, so we thought it might be funny to read the ghost stories about each location. Joey and I ate our lunch really quickly then headed over to Danny and Laura's to begin our adventure.

Laura handed out GPS units to the boys, we climbed into their trendy Jeep and we were off! Boys & GPS units in the front, girls and "just in case" maps in the back.

We got to the first location in no time at all since it was right close to where Danny and Laura live. Since none of us had done this before, we stood in the parking lot of Snuffers and looked aimlessly around, unsure of what to do.

"If it's actually in the restaurant, I'm not going to be the one going in to find it," Laura said. I seconded that motion.



Joey plugged the coordinates into his GPS unit and led us across the street.





We looked high and low but really weren't sure what we were even looking for in the first place.

"Maybe it's in that Dumpster area?" Laura indicated to a Dumpster enclosure just a few steps away from the utility boxes we'd been looking over trying to find the cache.

"Maybe..." I said, halfheartedly. I really didn't want to go look by the Dumpster. But the boys had gone back across the street and Laura was holding her amazing camera, so I seemed like the best person for the job.

It smelled horrible and I began to have flashbacks to that one time in college when I wrapped myself in trash bags and Kelsie and I hid in the Dumpster during Counselor Hunt at camp. (No one but some mice and a snake found us. We were awesome; the first girls to ever do that.)

After a meager poking around, I determined that there was no cache to be found by the Dumpster. "It's not here," I yelled over to Laura. Then...

"OH WAIT," I yelped, "I found it!" It was stuck inbetween the metal post and wooden structure of the Dumpster enclosure.




Joey and Danny came running over and we opened up the cache. There was a log book inside and, suddenly, we realized that we hadn't come up with a team name yet. (Apparently geocaching type people have those...everyone else in the log did!)


We decided that we'd be the "Woesters" if we found the cache, and the "Stillmans" if the Stillers found the cache. (For any of you who care, those two names are a combination of Woestman and Stiller. We thought we were pretty clever.)

Off to the next cache....

This one took us to White Rock Lake. It was blustery and getting gray outside, but it was still nice to be by the water. We got our coordinates and Joey and Danny fairly burst out of the car.




We tromped around in the long grass near where the GPS unit said we should find the cache.





I love this picture of Joey. (He hates it.) Anyway, he found the cache, so the score was...
Woesters: 2
Stillmans: 0




I wrote in the log book and we were on our way again!





Joey and Danny navigated us to a shopping center where, due to his competitive nature, Danny nearly fell out of the car trying to get to the cache first. We thought it was hidden somewhere in this large clump of bushes, so we searched and searched.




I got in the bushes.




Danny succeeded! He found the cache; this one containing a little bitsy wiffle ball and a log, which he signed "Stillman". The score:
Woesters: 2
Stillmans: 1

We were still winning...




I'm not really sure what this picture is about, I just like it. So here's a picture of Joey putting his right arm up and looking very pleased with himself for doing it.




We searched and searched for a cache at this restaurant that was abandoned. Finally we discovered that our coordinates were a little off. Once we readjusted, we found the cache in a few minutes, even thought it was hidden in a terribly difficult spot. Four sets of eyes are better than one!

Oh - I found the cache. So that put us at...
Woesters: 3
Stillmans: 1

They really needed to catch up!

After the abandoned restaurant we headed to Suicide High, a school in Mesquite with no windows or mirrors and is infamous for its students committing suicide. I got tired of looking for the cache and leaned up against the chain link fence that had a good view of the depressing school. I was standing there thinking about how depressing it must be to go to a school like that when...

"BOO!" Joey yelled and grabbed my waist.

I screamed.

"Gotcha!" He said, proudly. He then went on to find the cache, which put the score at...
Woesters: 4
Stillmans: 1

Sorry guys.

Our coordinates took us off to a nice wooded area. The cache was an ammo box that was, hopefully, not under water according to the instructions. It was impossible to find!

After about 15 minutes of looking, I started throwing stuff in the pond instead of searching.





Danny got tired of looking for the cache at some point and started taking silly pictures. Joey and I could not stop laughing last night when we saw this one. We can't really figure out what he's jumping off of, but it's pretty impressive whatever it is/was.




Stumped. And skunked. We never found this one...we chalked it up to the fact that it must have washed away.




Again, really not sure what Danny is doing here. There are almost no words...

From this cache, which we never found, we headed to a cemetery. It was getting dark. Very dark. We were supposed to find a series of red reflectors and follow them to the cache. When we reached our coordinates...there was no reflectors.

There was, however, a $20. We figured the ghosts gave it to us and decided to use it to go out to dinner afterwards.

We tromped around the cemetery in the growing darkness, unable to find the headstone we were looking for. The shape and color were in the picture Laura had printed off the internet, so we at least had something to go off of.

"Hey! Over here!" one of the guys yelled. We all walked over to the place where a headstone had been knocked off its stand and was laying facedown on the ground.

"Do you think this is it? It matches the description we're looking for..." Joey said. He tried to lift it; it was too heavy.

Danny tried. It was too heavy.

Both guys tried. Still to heavy.

So both guys and me tried. We heaved and shoved and pushed and...successfully flipped over the headstone! Only we had forgotten a flashlight and, by this time, it was entirely black outside.

"Does anyone have a cell phone?" Danny asked. Joey pulled out his and I dusted off the dirt from the face of the stone. We all held our breath, expecting to see the name we were searching for.

"Thomas?" We read, "Aw, that's disappointing." We weren't looking for the Thomas headstone.

"Now what do we do with it?" Joey asked. We were still holding the headstone up since it was, most definitely, too heavy for us to put back on the stand.

"Put it back?" I asked.

Danny examined the markings on the stone. "I think this guy was a military Vet. We better try to lean it against this tree stump." We tried; too heavy. So we wound up leaving it face-up and hopefully the caretaker will come and fix it.

So, tired and hungry, we piled back into the Stillers' Jeep and headed back to Dallas where we had burgers, thanks to the ghost money. Well, everyone except me. All that riding around in the car made me carsick.