ONTARIO – Dozens of people gathered in Ontario’s Marshall Park Sunday afternoon to participate in the Recreation Department’s second-ever geocache scavenger hunt.
During the three-hour event, participants searched the park for clues that would spell out a secret message and lead to prizes at the event’s conclusion.
“What they do is they get coordinates to one cache,” said recreation department director Heather Hendrix. ”They find that cache, and when they open the box, there’s coordinates to another cache, and they get letters to spell out a secret message.”
Typically in geocaching, people come only to find a single cache, but by turning it into a scavenger hunt, Hendrix hoped the fun would continue awhile longer. And at the end, people could gather at the pavilion for snacks and prizes.
Hendrix had organized the department’s first geocache scavenger hunt last fall, bringing in about 20 people, and she was excited to see even more on Sunday afternoon. Even though it was rescheduled due to poor weather earlier in April, the event attracted approximately 40 people with a variety of skill levels.
Though they were unfamiliar with geocaching, Justin and Ginger Butcher of Ontario brought their three daughters 8-year-old Ella, 6-year-old Harper and 3-year-old Whitley.
“We’ve been wanting to try this, but we hadn’t yet,” Ginger Butcher said.
The girls have participated in scavenger hunts before, but they hadn’t experienced geocaching yet.
“Ella’s made me a little clue thing before in our backyard,” Harper said.
Ella explained how she hid leaves and sticks for her younger sister to find.
“We’ve done scavenger hunts before, but nothing like this,” Ella said.
Also in attendance were geocache pros, Sue Brooks of Mansfield and Terry Wolf of Bellville. Both have about six years of experience and have found thousands of caches.
When geocaching, Brooks goes by “Skagway 071” and Wolf is called “Skagway 330.”
“The reason I picked Skagway is Skagway, Alaska was the launching site for Klondike Gold Rush in the early 1900s, and this is a little miniature gold rush,” Wolf said.
He found the recreation department’s event on a geocaching event website and invited Brooks to come along for the occasion. They didn’t attend the department’s first geocache scavenger hunt last fall, but they’ve done other geocaching around the area.
“I’ve lived in Mansfield 40 years, but we found places we knew nothing about until this geocaching took us there,” Brooks said.
The date for the next geocaching event hasn’t been announced yet, but Hendrix hopes to hold more.
“If everyone seems to enjoy it… we’ll see if we can do it again, two or three times a year,” she said.
