This Is Why It Is a Bad Idea to Go Geocaching at Night

by William Jackson on 2011-04-16

Emily and I went out for more geocaches this morning.

Side note: my spell checker tried to correct “geocaches” to “stagecoaches”. Iwill let you decide whether that story would be more interesting to read.

So, Emily and I went out for more geocaches this morning. I had two targets inmind. The first one was in a cemetery. My only real clue was a comment leftby someone who had found it previously: “The container was a bit startlingconsidering the location but I resisted calling an anthropologist.”

First, Emily and I looked around at the headstones. As advertised, most of themwere from the 1800s. Very neat! Also, I wanted it to look like we were actuallyvisiting the cemetery for cemeterial reasons in case anyone was watching. Emilykept asking me whether we were going to see Grandmaʼs house. I have noidea what that was about.

After a few minutes, we walked over to the other end of the (rather small)cemetery where there were trees but no graves. We looked around for about fiveminutes. Emily wanted to touch every single tree. Then I saw this at the base ofa cluster of trees:

Let me tell you right now I was a little freaked out because it looked intenselyreal. Emily was just as curious as ever. She has no idea what a skull is. So, Icarefully nudged it with my shoe and decided that it really was resin (orwhatever fake skulls are made of), and picked it up.

There was a purple metal canister embedded in the base of the skull. I unscrewedthe cap and found the log. I signed it, put it back, sprinkled some dead leavesaround to kind of conceal it, and we got right out of there.

We did find the other geocache I wanted to find but it wasnʼt nearlyas interesting.