For Cliff Slaughterbeck, every cache found and every cache hidden is an adventure. There are 28,670 caches in Snohomish County, give or take, and he has found almost half of those.
“There are 85 in Edmonds and I have found all of them, except for the one I own,” Slaughterbeck said. Around the world there are more than three million geocaches to be found — some of which Slaughterbeck has found himself in Africa and Egypt. He wants to visit all the world’s continents for the treasure hunt.
“It’s unique to find a really older cache,” he said. “There are only a couple thousand from 2001. One of those is in Yost Park in Edmonds. There are only two in the world that were placed in 2000.”
Download the free app, read the clues and you might find it. It’s a free activity that gets people outdoors and builds community.
As Slaughterbeck describes it, you get to use the world’s most expensive satellite system to find Tupperware under bushes. Your cache might be as small as a thimble, or as big as a shoebox. It will be hiding in plain sight, tucked into a crevice of a sculpture holding on by a magnet, or tucked under a bush.
Some geocachers get pretty creative and work with the property owner to alter a structure. One in Edmonds is cleverly hidden within a parking lot barrier pole. (We shared the pics with the cache owner's permission.)
Others can be even more advanced. A “gadget cache” will require electronics or puzzle solving to access the log. And you’ll want that log — that’s where you see the long list of users going back the many years the cache has been located there. Log it in your app and move on to the next one.
Most caches have a trinket of some kind inside. You’re free to take it and leave something in its place. But the real reward is in finding it and signing the log, joining the ranks of other treasure hunters.
There are 19 different types of caches. Slaughterbeck created an Adventure Cache in Edmonds. It leads you to various historical sites.
Best of all, the whole thing is free. What cache are you going to discover?
