where i've been -- part iii

Following our departure from Pittsburgh on Friday, Mom and I drove through Ohio to a little town called Davisburg* between Detroit and Flint in Michigan. The 4-H fairgrounds here were host to the 2006 Midwestern Geobash. And we were there.

Geobashing is what geocachers do when they're not geocaching, I suppose. And what is geocaching? It's one form of a "treasure hunt" in which a person employs a global positioning system (GPS - yeah, like the kind in luxury cars these days, although you can take this version out of your car into the woods) to go to latitude-longitude coordinates posted on the geocaching website by another person who has hidden a "cache" at that location. Then...you find it, write that you were there, maybe exchange some little prizes (playing cards...marbles...stickers...etc.), and "log" your visit on the geocaching website when you return home. It's pretty fun. I've always enjoyed a good hunt, and it's a good way to get out into nature, as many are located in natural areas - although some are in parking lots and the like, also. My mom is an avid geocacher, and so she and I went to the Geobash to camp and socialize with other cachers and search for a couple caches hidden around the fairgrounds. There were also various important-to-geocachers-items to trade, lectures about geocaching topics, and at least two super-secret traveling caches that people would find and then hide again somewhere else.

As it turned out, I spent a good portion of the event watching a horse show that was also occurring on the fairgrounds. ...I'm obviously not so gung-ho on the whole geocaching thing. I got a lot of knitting done, though! And I also did go with Mom hunting for two caches on Saturday and spent a long time Friday night with her doing a very involved night cache (I LOVE these - searching for stuff in the dark is way cooler than searching for it in the light. And also way harder. And kind of scary.). In addition, I got to meet some of the other geocachers Mom has gotten to know over the past couple years.

Finally, on Saturday afternoon we pulled up the stakes of the tent, packed up the Accord one more time, and continued on to...Kentwood!!! I'm spending the rest of the week in my hometown, relaxing (meaning knitting and reading) and visiting favorite places - and being far, far away from the lab!

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Just a random trivia thing here - PittsburgH is one of very few places in the U.S. that is a Burg with an H. I heard it was the only one in Pennsylvania, although I don't know enough cities to confirm that. Obviously, Davisburg is one of those non-H places.