LAKE FOREST PARK — In a blink of an eye they’re gone.
Seven members of the Adventure Club at Lake Forest Montessori School are off and searching for treasure with Global Positioning System Geocaching devices, and they’re not satisfied until they’ve found what they’re looking for.
Rummaging through brush and trees, they diligently search, using signals from a satellite to determine the proximity of the treasure they are intent on finding.
“I think we’re close. I think it’s right here!” said 9-year-old Marco Willis.
The group surrounds an ivy tree in the middle of the woods in Edmonds City Park.
“The clue says ‘don’t set your sights too low,’” said 12-year-old Grant Slape.
Out of the ivy tree comes into view a well hidden dark green container.
They open the box to reveal a variety of items including a bracelet, foreign coins and a log. In the log a hint reads, “This cache has been visited by team Sage Fox.”
The group decides to exchange a compass for an African coin.
“That’s how the game works. We always take something and put something back,” said Scott Dow, teacher and Adventure Club leader at Lake Forest Montessori School.
The group is in a frenzy again, as there is talk about searching for the next cache.
The Adventure Club is one of many children’s groups that participate in Geocaching worldwide.
According to a website, all that is necessary for the children to find a new adventure is to own a geocaching tracking device and to visit their website, www.geocaching.com. The Web site offers an abundance of coordinates along with hints on where to look and what to look for.
The geocache adventures are ranked in difficulty from one to five stars. The ivy tree cache was two and a half stars.
Searchers enter a waypoint on their Geocache and then follow latitude and longitude coordinates in order to find their target.
As of today, there are 115,806 active caches in 210 countries, according to the Geocaching web site.
The Adventure Club has been at it all summer as a part of their day-camp activities. They plan two to three trips a week, said Dow.
Today, they’ve found their first treasure, but were unable to figure out where the second one was located.
“We’ve been doing this all summer and haven’t been stumped until this point,” Dow said.
The group has been attempting to figure out a puzzle that accompanies this cache. In order to get the exact coordinates, solving this puzzle is necessary. This is a four-star cache, however, and time is working against them.
“This one’s really tough!” said Trey Chin, 10.
After much resistance, the group reluctantly decides to hang up their geocaches and move on to the next one.
The final destination is a path surrounding a marshy swamp.
Instinctively, the Adventure Club wants to romp around in the marsh.
“There’s blackberries down there! I wonder if I can jump down?” said an ambitious Alexander Thompson, 7.
“No you can’t jump down,” Dow said. “Remember? We went through stuff like this and everyone got soaked …. We still found it though.”
The group punched in its new coordinates and were off and running before their teacher could catch them.
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