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What was to be a full day of geocaching and looking for deceased family members, turned out to be a series of unfortunate experiences. And… when I say “looking for deceased family members”, I mean we’ve begun our search on ancestory.com for our dearly departed who have gone before us. Since many of the geocaches we find are in cemeteries, it’s a great opportunity to do some research while we’re out getting smileys. Since many of the cemeteries are far from home, it’s a way to complete two projects at once.

I’m not too old to learn a few things … I hope to never to get that old. Saturday’s issues taught me a few lessons that I hope I can remember.

Lesson One: Get your rest!
I stayed up until 2:00am Friday night researching family and looking up caches to go after. Our plan was to get up early Saturday and get things accomplished. I am not a morning person. That mission failed terribly. We left the house around 11:30am.

Lesson Two: Don’t lose the notes!
I had notes written with cemetery information and corresponding GC codes and coordinates. We stopped for a cache that appeared on the GPS but was not on our list. After finding the cache and jumping back in the car, we are many miles away and realize that the list had disappeared. One positive aspect of this impulse geocache … we find a six-point buck who had bedded down in the cemetery to rest (see photo below).

Lesson Three: Get organized!
Never again will I rely on notes written on paper that can vanish. From now, all notes will be composed on my Droid. At worst, if I lose my Droid, I have an app that will provide me with the coordinates of its current location.

Lesson Four: Have a back-up plan!
With no list to refer to for cemetery or cache, we were relying on memory to guide us to either location. Thank god my wife has a good memory. Me… not so much. And, c’mon guys – don’t all women have a good memory? They can tell you in a heartbeat when and where you screwed up last, and what you were wearing when it happened. It’s a gift.

Overall, we were still able to visit every cemetery we needed to, but were only able to find 5 geocaches for the day. The sun sets pretty soon, even with daylight savings time. So, we’ll have to try it again sometime this week. Next weekend, I’ve managed to persuade my brother to join me in caching. We’re heading about 70 miles from home for these finds. You can bet I’ll be better prepared.

It certainly wasn’t a wasted day – we have many great memories despite our setbacks. And afterall, that’s what this is all about. It’s not about the number of caches we find – it’s far more about the time we spend together and sharing. When you share events like this with your best friend, it makes all the difference.