“It’s just a box full of plastic bags,” Violet said when Henry opened the metal box.
“No money?” Benny asked. He stood on his tiptoes so he could see inside the box.
“No money,” Henry said. “But it looks like there are things inside the bags.”
“What kind of things?” Jessie asked.
There were so many small bags stuffed inside the box that it was hard to see what was inside any of them. But Henry managed to pull a couple out.
“There’s a notebook and pencil in one,” Henry said, holding it up. “And a stuffed armadillo in this other one.”
“Oh, he’s cute!” Violet said, taking the armadillo from Henry.
“I see a toothbrush in the bottom of the box,” Jessie said, peering inside.
“A toothbrush?” Violet laughed.
“Oh, and look!” Jessie reached in and grabbed another bag. This one had two copper-colored coins in it. “There is money in here. But it’s not American money.”
Benny opened the bag and pulled out one of the coins. “It says ‘one peso,’ ” he read.
“That’s Mexican money,” Henry said.
“It’s kind of hard to look at all this stuff out here in the woods,” Jessie said, giving Watch a pat on the head. “Maybe we should bring the box home so we can get a better look at it.”
“Good idea, Jessie,” Violet said.
The children stuffed the bags back inside the box and closed it up. Henry picked up the box and the children started to leave.
But as they were walking away, they heard a voice call out, “Hey, you kids. What do you think you’re doing? Where are you going with that box?”
They turned and saw a man in a red jacket walking over from the nature center. He was tall with short dark hair that circled a bald spot. A dark-haired boy around Henry’s age hurried along beside him.
“I didn’t mean to scare you,” the man said in a friendlier voice as he and the boy came closer. They both smiled at the Aldens. “I just wanted to make sure you’re not taking that box with you.”
The Aldens glanced at each other.
“Well, actually,” Henry began. “We were planning to take it with us.”
“We found it in that pile of brush over there,” Benny said, pointing behind him.
“Is it yours?” Violet asked.
“Not ours, exactly,” the dark-haired boy said. “You might say it belongs to everybody.”
“Everybody?” Jessie asked. “What do you mean?”
“Let me explain,” the man said. “I’m Ned Robertson, by the way. And this is my son, Andy.”
The Aldens introduced themselves and Watch, then Mr. Robertson asked, “Have you ever heard of geocaching?”
“You mean like it says on the box?” Violet asked.
“Yes,” Mr. Robertson replied.
“No. What is geocaching?” Henry asked.
“It’s a kind of treasure hunt,” Mr. Robertson explained. “Do you know what this is?” He held out the small yellow gadget in his hand. It had black buttons on the sides and a screen in the middle.
The children shook their heads.
“It’s a global positioning system—GPS for short,” Mr. Robertson said. “It shows you where you are on the planet. If you’re out in the woods, you can use it to help you find your way so you don’t get lost.”
“I’ve read about those,” Henry said. “They use radio signals from satellites to pinpoint where you are, don’t they?”
“That’s exactly right,” Mr. Robertson said.
“Cool!” Benny said.
“And,” Andy continued. “If you’re into geocaching like my dad and me, you can use a GPS to help you find a hidden treasure box.”
“How?” Jessie asked.
“Well, there’s a website that lists all the caches in the world,” Mr. Robertson said. “It’s at www.geocaching.com. You can go to that website and enter in a zip code. That’ll show you all the caches that are in or near that zip code.”
“There are more than seventy-five of them hidden within about ten miles of here,” Andy said.
“Really?” Benny’s eyes grew wide.
“Yes.” Mr. Robertson smiled at Benny. “They’re all listed on the website. And they all have names. For instance, this one that you stumbled upon is called ‘Walk in the Woods.’ If you want to try and find a certain cache, all you have to do is hook your GPS up to your computer, then enter the waypoint that’s listed there on the site—”
“A waypoint?” Violet asked.
“It’s a way of marking a particular spot on the earth. In this case, it marks where a cache is hidden. Once you enter the waypoint into your GPS, the GPS will help you find it,” Mr. Robertson said.
“You still have to look around for the cache, though,” Andy said. “A GPS doesn’t tell you exactly where it is. It tells you which direction to go and how far away you are from it. See?”
He held the GPS so the Aldens could see the screen. An arrow in the middle of the screen pointed behind them. And the distance above the arrow read 102 feet.
“Why does it say we’re 102 feet from the box?” Jessie asked. “It’s right here!” She tapped the box in Henry’s hands. The Robertsons’ GPS couldn’t have been more than 7 feet from Henry.
“The GPS doesn’t know the cache is here, in Henry’s hands,” Andy said. “It’ll take you to the spot where the box was originally hidden. If it’s been moved, you’re out of luck. You won’t find it. That’s why it’s so important to put the cache back exactly where you found it. So other people can find it after you.”
“We’ll put it back right now,” Henry said, turning around. The others followed him back to the pile of brush.
“Before you put it back, you might want to sign the log book,” Mr. Robertson said.
“Log book?” Violet said.
“Yes. Every cache has one,” said Mr. Robertson. “You choose a nickname for yourself and then you sign the log book. You can write about your adventure finding the cache on the website, too, especially if there’s something wrong with the cache or if something interesting happened to you while you were looking for it.”
“But we weren’t looking for it,” Benny said. “We just found it!”
“Then you can write that, too,” Mr. Robertson said, laughing.
“And you can always take something out of the box if you leave something else in its place,” Andy said.
“There’s never anything very valuable in the containers,” Mr. Robertson said. “People don’t do this to try to get rich. They do it because it’s fun to see whether they can find a hidden treasure with a GPS.”
Henry leaned against a fallen tree and opened up the box again. “I remember seeing a notebook in here,” he said, pulling out the plastic bag with the small blue notebook. He opened it to the first page. “Hey, it says here, ‘Geocache site. Please read. Congratulations! You’ve found it.’ And then it goes on to explain everything Mr. Robertson and Andy just told us.”
“If we had only looked in the log book, we’d have known all this and we wouldn’t have taken the box,” Jessie said.
“That’s okay,” Mr. Robertson said. “I’m sure you kids would’ve brought it back as soon as you realized what it was.”
Henry flipped through the pages in the notebook until he came to a blank sheet. “So, we’re supposed to write something in this book?” he asked.
“Yes,” Andy said. “You might want to say that this is your first find.”
“And you can make up an interesting nickname for yourselves,” Mr. Robertson added. “For instance, when Andy and I sign a log book, we call ourselves the Trailblazers.”
“What nickname should we use?” Henry asked.
“I’ve got an idea,” Benny cried. “How about the Boxcar Kids?”
“The Boxcar Kids?” Andy said. “What does that mean?”
The Aldens explained about their boxcar.
“I like it,” Violet said. “Let’s call ourselves the Boxcar Kids.”
“Yes, let’s!” Jessie put in.
Henry wrote, This was the first cache we ever found. We found it by accident. We’re looking forward to more geocaching!
“Do you want to take anything?” Mr. Robertson asked.
“I don’t know.” Jessie scratched her head. “We don’t have anything to put in there, do we?”
The Aldens checked their pockets. Nobody had anything to leave in the box.
“We always carry a few trinkets for geocaching,” Andy said. He pulled a little wind-up frog out of his inside jacket pocket. “If you want to take something, you could leave this in its place.”
“That’s nice of you,” Violet said.
“Go on,” Mr. Robertson urged. “Pick something. You have to take something to remember your first find.”
“Hmm. What should we take?” Henry asked the others.
“Take the coins! Take the coins!” Benny cried, jumping up and down.
Henry pulled out the bag with the coins and handed it to Benny. Then he wrote: took coins, left frog.
“You should sign the log, too,” Henry said, handing the notebook to Mr. Robertson. “You would’ve found the box if we hadn’t. Plus you gave us the frog.”
“Okay,” Mr. Robertson said. “I’ll say that the Trailblazers were here with the Boxcar Kids.” He smiled as he jotted a few lines in the notebook. When he finished writing, he sealed the notebook back up in the plastic bag, put it in the box, and closed it. Then the Aldens and the Robertsons buried the box back in the brush between the two trees just the way they’d found it.
“There’s supposed to be another cache not too far from here,” Andy said. “It’s called ‘Edge of the Forest.’ Do you want to come with us and see if we can find it?”
“Sure,” the Aldens replied eagerly.
“Let me tell the GPS we’re looking for a different cache now,” Mr. Robertson said, pressing the button on the side of the gadget a few times. “Okay, now we’re set up to find the ‘Edge of the Forest’ cache.”
Mr. Robertson handed the GPS to Benny, then said, “Which way do we want to go?”
Benny peered at the arrow on the screen. “That way,” he said, pointing deeper into the woods.
“I wonder if it’s over by the nature center?” Violet said. “If we stay on this trail, we’ll come out over there.”
“Could be,” Mr. Robertson said. “I think we’re probably about half a mile from the nature center.”
The group walked single file in a line behind Benny. Jessie held Watch’s leash. Watch sniffed the ground as they walked.
After a little while, Benny said, “It’s 52 feet over this way!” He pointed to the right. The path curved to the left.
They were almost through the woods at this point. They could see the nature center building just ahead.
“We must be close then,” Andy said. “Start looking, everyone. Check tree stumps, holes in trees, piles of brush, anything that looks like it could hold a medium-sized container.”
“The GPS is going crazy!” Benny cried. “The arrow is turning round and round. And the number keeps changing from 13 to 20 to 15 to 17—”
“That means it’s right around here,” Mr. Robertson said.
The Aldens and the Robertsons lifted small logs and peered in hollows of trees.
Finally, Jessie said, “I think I found it!” She pulled a plastic storage container out from between two logs. This one was smaller than the first cache. It contained a yo-yo, a plastic watch, two keychains, and another notebook and pencil.
“Hooray!” Benny jumped up and down. “This is fun!”
“You know, there’s a geocaching club here in Greenfield,” Mr. Robertson said. “We meet at the nature center. Maybe you’d like to check out one of our meetings? You might even be able to borrow a GPS from the club if you want to do some more geocaching on your own.”
“Can we?” Benny asked his brother and sisters.
“Sure,” Henry said. “Do you know when the next meeting is?”
“I think we’re meeting this Friday at noon,” Mr. Robertson replied. “But check the website to be sure.”
“We will,” Jessie said. “Thanks for teaching us about geocaching!”
“It was our pleasure,” Mr. Robertson said.
“See you on Friday!” Henry said.
“I wonder what we’ll find the next time we go geocaching,” Violet said.
“Maybe we’ll find a mystery!” Benny said.
“Oh, Benny,” Jessie laughed. “We don’t find mysteries everywhere we go.”
“No, but a lot of times they find us,” Benny said. |