Well all, I did finally go Geocaching this past weekend. It was alot of fun. I went out in search of four targets 2 were actual caches and 2 were benchmarks. A benchmark is (usually) a small disc placed buy government survey teams to enable land surveying, civil engineering and mapping to be done efficiently. They are usually small, contain a seal of the office of authority that placed it, and found embedded as (almost unnoticeable) permanently affixed objects in sidewalks, piers, posts, etc.

So on Saturday morning I I got up and found four targets on GeoCaching.com that were all in the vicinity of Navy Pier, walked a few blocks to Chicago Ave. (stopped in Walgreens and purchased a pen because I forgot one and was hopeful that I’d find a log book to sing) and hopped on the 66 bus to Navy pier.

It was an awesome day out and there were lots of people at Navy pier. The target I most wanted to find was a micro-cache hidden inside Navy Pier. But on my way to it my GPS device displayed that I was actually rather close to one of the benchmarks. So I started walking south constantly zooming in on the GPS.

I got to where I thought the markers should have been but I didn’t see it. I started searching nearby sidewalks and concrete moors once used to secure ships docked at the pier. I saw no sign of the benchmark. According to the GPS I was probably within 15m of the mark (and it has a sensitivity of about 3m).

Now sometimes these benchmarks get mistakenly covered over when someone re-does a sidewalk or what not so I was about to give up when I noticed a small sidewalk south of a private parking lot. I probably wasn’t supposed to be back there but the gate was open so I walked back to the sidewalk and had a look. There it was! No logbook or cache here since it was just a benchmark, but not a bad way to start the day. I took a photo of the mark with my cell phone and headed off to find the mini-cache.

The mini-cache was apparently hidden indoors at Navy Pier. The coordinates take you only so far as the door you should go in. Once you’re inside you have to follow specific instructions in order to find the cache.

I got to the coordinates, went in the door, and found the first landmark. Thirty feet from there I should have seen a notice sign and the cache would be near by … but I never found it.

I searched the area for as long as I could, but eventually got some weird looks from some people who work at Navy Pier and knew it was only a matter of time before I was swarmed with suspicious “can I help you find something?” offers. I had to abandon the search for the that cache.

Disappointed but with more to do I moved on to the third objective, another benchmark. It too was hard to find, but I eventually found (it was actually in plain sight … it could have jumped up and bitten me … if small metal discs could jump and bite that is). I waited for a chance to discretely snap a picture of it and started walking back up the pier.

There was one more target loaded in the GPS device ready to be found - an actual cache, but it was further away from the area than I had expected so I decided to save that one for another day when I could do several down in the loop (an area of downtown Chicago for you out of towners).

So I walked through Navy pier a bit, had lunch there, and then took the bus home.

Not exactly sky-dive excitement levels, but it was actually a pretty fun, relaxing excuse to go out and do things and see places that otherwise I wouldn’t have.