Published: May 02, 2008 02:56 pm            

TINY TREASURES: Geocaching in the Niagara region

Pushing aside branches in the backwoods of Wheatfield, there was still a wet, swampy pathway to tramp through and a small hill to climb. A quick check of the hand-held global positioning system revealed the treasure box was within 30 feet.

The small band of hunters moved about beneath a thick canopy of a giant, barren tree, searching until the teenager shouted success. He found the treasure, hidden just out of sight beneath a crumbling log. Inside an old green ammunition case were trinkets and treasures that brought smiles to the faces of the small party of seekers.

Such is an afternoon spent geocaching, a new form of family adventure that’s a mixes the flavors of an Easter egg hunt with a little bit of TV’s “The Amazing Race.”

Unbeknownst to everyday citizens, whom geocachers call “muggles,” there are caches hidden everywhere, in every community and all over the world. In the Niagara region alone, from Hyde Park to Grand Island to Niagara County Community College, there are hundreds to be found.

“You go by them every day and you don’t even know it,” said Dawn Cody of Wheatfield, who has been hooked on hunting the caches about four years now. “There are people who have found thousands of them. It’s very addicting.”

Cody’s first find came after she read an article about the activity and went online to sign up at geocache.com.

Now, family vacations are all about geocaching, and she and Maria Zwack, who work together as rehab counselors for Goodwill Industries, go treasure-hunting in Buffalo on their lunch hours.

“I’m not as bad as I used to be,” Cody admitted just prior to a recent geocaching excursion with Zwack, of Wheatfield, Zwack’s granddaughter, Alyssa Smith, 9, and Dawn’s son, Jay Cody, 14.

Often the caches hold funny little trinkets. Many times, there are “travel bugs” which are moved from cache to cache. Dawn has a little gremlin travel bug that came all the way from Denmark.

“If you take something, you have to leave something,” Cody said.

At the Wheatfield cache, the crew picked out a gift card to a local water park, a little sheep and a camel, and left a few things including a little car, and the Denmark troll. Then Cody signed all their geocaching names: Indigo Dawn, Uncle Bob, Pink Lemonade and Jiminy Cricket.

“This is what is lost in modern life,” said Zwack after the crew had returned the cache to its hiding spot and began to head out of the woods. “There’s not enough adventure.”

The next cache to be found beckoned from Niagara Falls, right in the heart of the tourist district. It was just a little cache, tucked away for the simple joy of finding it.

Locating the cache in a quiet sculpture garden near the falls was just as sweet as the find in the woods.

It wasn’t so much locating the box that excited the group as finding the sculpture park that was previously unknown to them all.

“That’s why I like to do this,” said Cody. “You get to see places you might otherwise never get to see.”

Contact editor Michele DeLuca

at 693-1000, ext. 157.

        

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