Camel's Prairie Cache: A Special Day

Geocaching is fairly basic.  

Go to the geocaching.com website, type in a zip code for wherever you happen to be, scan through and choose from the caches other geocachers have planted in the area where you wish to go, write down coordinates for your GPS, head off, find way points, pull out GPS, find cache, sign log, exchange an new addition for an item inside the container.  Later, record your find on the website.

That's pretty much what geocachers do every time they go looking for caches.  

There's so much more, and yesterday when we hiked 1.25 miles up a steep and rocky trail to Camel's Prairie overlooking Priest Lake, there was SO much more than noted above. 

There was Jon Stanley, planter of the cache and fellow lackey with our daughter Annie at Groundspeak, Inc., which owns the geocaching website and sells products related to the sport. 

There was the fact that the main cache found yesterday was the first cache ever planted in Idaho and the 40th in the world----June, 2000.  More than three million active geocaches now exist around the world, and the number grows every day.

There was the fact that Bill and I visited Jon's cache with our little pup named Kiwi 13 years ago.  At the time, the cache had been slightly damaged from weather, but Jon has continually maintained it since those days. 

There was the fact that Bill has held the legendary "Mount10Bike" aka Jon Stanley in total awe ever since our family began participating in the sport back in the early 2000s. Jon spends considerable time at his Priest Lake cabin which has been in the family since 1938.

There was the fact that our daughter Annie (Love is her geocaching handle) and Jon Stanley have worked together as lackeys for a number of years and have traveled the world together----even ridden camels---on work trips and their own geocaching outings. 

There was the fact that Emma from Germany came along with us yesterday on her first family hike with the Love family.  

Add to that the fact that Emma happens to be a ballerina, and though the trail up to the cache was steep and rugged and breath-taking (literally . . . we were all huffing and puffing).  

Huffing and puffing aside, Emma can be quite entertaining on family hikes, occasionally departing from trudging up the trail into some graceful dance moves.  She doesn't mind a bit, nor did we. 

We met other folks along the trail, a geocacher and his pup named Bailey (for the whiskey) from Minnesota.  We met Corin and Greg from Seattle, who happily offered to take our family photo as we carefully made our way to the top of a rock outcrop. 

There was Foster of the Lovestead,  who originally came from one of Jon and Annie's lackey colleagues at Groundspeak, and who used to go to work with Raine at the Seattle office and make the rounds.

Finally, there was the beauty of early fall foliage, and soft, grassy hillsides, glistening and pristine Priest Lake where the smoke cleared a bit by the time we reached the cache.

Yes, there is much more to geocaching than technology and finding a cache.  

As Debbie, our daughter-in-law said yesterday as we slowly made our way up that trail, there's the journey and, like our experience yesterday, the journey was magnificent, awe-inspiring and filled with precious memories.  

  

Jon Stanley aka Moun10Bike

This gentleman was on a geocaching trip from Minnesota to Mounte Christo, north of Seattle. 

Thanks, Greg and Corin, for your friendship and offer to take our family photo. 

Annie has learned over the years that lackeys (the staff members at Seattle's Groundspeak, Inc.) are rock stars in the geocaching world. 

So, to have legendary geocacher and lackey Jon aka Moun10Bike and our Annie (Love lackey) standing on "sacred ground" at Idaho's first geocache ever was pretty significant yesterday. 

Germany ranks second next to the United States in numbers of geocachers, so, of course, Emma from Berlin was summoned to pose with the Camel's Prairie cache.