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City search

Looking for geocaches amid the pavement and pocket parks of Bend

By Ben Salmon / The Bulletin

Published: November 12. 2009 4:00AM PST

As of Tuesday morning, here were my impressions of geocaching:

1) It's a hobby tailor-made for the kind of rugged men and women for whom traipsing across uneven ground is not exciting enough, so they mix in the thrill of the hunt and the blip of a small computer screen.

2) It occasionally goes horribly wrong. “Occasionally” might be overstating it, though, as this is based on one incident in Idaho where a geocache under a bridge was mistaken for a bomb, and chaos ensued.

I'm joking, obviously. But this is the truth: I didn't realize there were scores of geocaches hidden right under our noses, in nooks and crannies around the city of Bend.

For the unfamiliar, geocaching is essentially a high-tech treasure hunt, where the “treasures” are usually inexpensive gewgaws stashed in hidden containers, and the “hunters” are equipped with a GPS device. The folks hiding the stuff log their coordinates on their own GPS units, then post them to the official geocaching Web site (www.geocaching.com), where others can download them and set about finding their way there.

Geocaches are hidden anywhere and everywhere, in both desolate and heavily populated areas. On Tuesday, I set out from The Bulletin's office to do a little urban geocaching inside Bend's city limits, which is fertile ground; as of that morning, www.geocaching.com listed no fewer than 222 hidden treasures within five miles of the Tower Theatre.

I started off with an easy one located under one of the hundreds of rocks in the ravine directly below my office window. Geocachers like to give their plants clever names, and this one was called “All Points Bulletin.”

My first lesson of the day: The GPS may be pointing you in a certain direction, but that doesn't necessarily mean you can go that direction. From our building's back door, the machine told me the cache was about 400 feet to the north, but a tall berm, thick brush and enormous boulders stood in my way.

So I found a trail. And I followed it as it wound down into the ditch, watching the computer's compass arrow flutter about while the number of feet between me and the cache dropped quickly. Until it stopped dropping and starting rising.

Oops. Wrong way.

All told, I probably walked 1,000 or 1,500 feet to the spot that the GPS at first told me was 400 feet away. And for a while, I felt slightly frustrated at my inability to close in on the hiding place.

But then, all of a sudden, those numbers on the device began dropping faster and faster, two and three feet for every step I took. Eventually, the frustration melted away, replaced by the building excitement of knowing I was nearing my goal.

Or so I thought. Once the GPS said I was just feet away from the cache, I finally looked up from the screen and realized I was staring at a pile of boulders the size of a sedan. So I peered into the cracks and crevices. I gently moved some of the smaller rocks, looking for something — anything — that looked as if it didn't belong.

And there it was, perched in a dark spot and shielded by some very strategically placed rocks: a glint of blue plastic. Even in this litter-laden ravine, it appeared out of place.

Inside the box was a mishmash of trinkets and children's toys, plus a small book and pen so I could log my visit. The log is the common trait among all geocaches, because what fun is finding something if you can't let those who arrive after you know you were there first?

From there, my geocaching day was a mixed bag. But then, I'm kind of impatient. If you like a good challenge and you're more determined than I am, you're going to have a blast.

Anyway, I hopped in my car and drove toward the Old Mill District to look for a small cache in a juniper tree. I never found it. And I've always been more of a Tom Petty fan than a poking-myself-with-branches kind of guy, so I headed over to Old Bend to search for a cache called “Last Cache With Mary Jane.” (It's a play on a Petty song title.)

My GPS led me to an intersection lined with a few different piles of rocks, and I could feel the frustration bubbling up again as I left no stone unturned, but also never found a thing. However, when I saw a rock that looked a little funny, and then I picked up that rock and realized it wasn't a rock at all, but a container designed to look like a rock, I let out an involuntary laugh at the cleverness of it all.

Again, this fake rock contained nothing of real value. Unless, of course, you count the sense of accomplishment that came with its discovery.

You see, for me, geocaching is a bit like golf. On the golf course, that one good, solid stroke of the ball can offset an entire afternoon of lousy shots. And in geocaching, you can spend half your morning getting stabbed by a juniper tree for no apparent reason, only to feel the exhilarating payoff of picking up a fake rock and realizing that, at least for a moment, you've won the game.

Ben Salmon can be reached at 541-383-0377 or at bsalmon@bendbulletin.com.

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