(bolding mine)
oh, man. what planet are YOU playing on?
Looking in storm drains, around shrubbery, light fixtures, telephone poles, libraries, cemeteries, etc etc- sounds like urban exploration to me. It's just not the breaking and entering kind where people explore old escape tunnels or empty factories thusly getting into trouble. So yes, I stick with the previous *nods*.
And on the trail/park/forest side of it all, it is like hide and seek but you're seeking a treasure unkown to you rather than Billy or Donna from down the street. And really if you get truly lost when you are holding a GPS, sad pandas.
-m
oh, you can get plenty arrested, and even with a GPS you can get plenty lost.
if you do not know these two things, i submit that either you are too naive to be let out of the house alone, or that you have not seen much of the geocaching experience that is available to you.
in today's climate a paranoid officer need only think you look like a terrorist because you took a picture on a bridge, or a landowner or utility company get really fussy about explicit permissions and you've got some 'splainin' to do. sometimes you are required to do your 'splainin' while in custody.
more than one cacher has been detained and cited.
likewise, it is of little use to know exactly where you are if you don't know how to get to where you want to be. when you're seeking that little treasure it is quite possible to end up on a road that doesn't go through and isn't on your map, or for you to take the wrong trail and end up several miles to the wrong side of the river.
if you've ever had to change your trail plans radically because of a bear or bull moose in rut and that swamp from the beaver dam isn't on your map and you think you'll save four hours on the return trip by making a bushwhack for a mile or so, you know what i'm talking about.
i don't know; maybe you don't ever get out of the suburbs and are never more than five minutes from a convenience store where you can buy fresh batteries.
out in the big wide world things can and do go wrong. it is folly to assume you are safe from these things.
even with proper preparation and equipment, it's a crapshoot. sometimes you roll craps. if you think you're safe from trouble, you won't be prepared when that happens.
Peace fellow forum member, there's no need to take it to a grumpy or defensive place. My intent was not to rile seasoned veterans, yet it was simply to make a light hearted post. Yes, people get arrested (There are tons of other things you're more likely to get arrested doing. It seems bleak to me to have that forethought of getting arrested as you geocache. If I went out with that mindset its as if if I am asking for that to happen to me.) and lost (Although marking your original location you would wind your way back, regardless of it being the shortest easiest or safest way back. I'd hope a person on that type of adventure brought the old standbys of a compass and a map.)
In the end, geocaching, like life is what you make it into being. That's all I've got.
