I love geocaching. It is something I can do with my kids when we’d otherwise be doing nothing; many times, I end up visiting a neighborhood, or a park or a restaurant I’d never have discovered otherwise. Sometimes it’s just for numbers or to reach a goal, like the day we found our 100th geocache, or the time I found 10 geocaches in one day.
But the hides I like the most are ones that involve history, ones with a real story; or hides that have a “collateral” find, that is, something unexpected beyond just the cache itself.
This week, a new GC, “Not Just Another Hole in the Wall,” was posted on geocaching.com, and since it’s near my office, I took a lunchtime walk to check it out. It was rated 3.5-star difficulty / 1.5-star terrain, and it involved a puzzle, so I knew it would take longer than a lunch hour to grab it. A reconnaissance mission was needed.
First, I went to the Merchandise Mart, somewhere I’ve been at least 100 times. But in order to solve the puzzle to determine the GPS coordinates of the GC, I had to check out the “born” and “died” dates on the Merchandise Mart Hall of Fame busts which, frankly, I’d never paid attention to before. So, I’m already smarter than I was before this cache. ;-)
The Merchandise Mart Hall of Fame
After figuring out the GPS coordinates, the next step was to look for a rare earth magnet hidden inside a magnetic keybox attached to a metal railing down by the river. The magnet would be needed to dislodge the cache from its hiding place, and the GC description told me where I’d find that box with the magnet.
The magnetized keybox was attached to this railing.
The cache title implies that the tiny hide is somewhere in a hole in the wall. And the coordinates show that the wall in question is located at the Chicago Riverwalk that runs along Wacker Drive. But there are hundreds of holes in that section of the wall. And there are hundreds of people (muggles) walking around here at lunchtime.
The wall at the Chicago Riverwalk ... a lot of holes in this wall!
So, for nearly 45 minutes I casually strolled along in front of the wall, having a fake telephone conversation, acting like a tourist enjoying the view, all the while surreptitiously jamming my fingers into every hole in the wall I encountered. When I was about to call it a day, I spied the prize.
Holes in the wall: There's a geocache here somewhere!
And there is it. You don't see it? Really? It's that thing in the hole that looks like part of the hole.
The magnetic keybox with the magnet inside. I used the magnet to dislodge the cache from the hole in the wall.
The geocache, in front of a ballpoint pen I used to sign the tiny log sheet that is rolled up and sticking out of the top.
Armed with the knowledge of the location of the cache and the magnet needed to retrieve the cache, I walked back to work looking forward to Day #2 (today) when I’d make the grab, sign the log, return the cache and magnet to their proper places and continue to love the fact that there are hundreds of tiny containers all over the city that only I and a handful of others know anything about.
