On a fantastically warm and sunny late November Saturday, I took my dog on a brief geocaching hunt.

I'd been having fun with my GPS eTrex legend for a long time, but had never bothered to look up the geocaches near the hiking trails I frequented.

It turns out, there are many caches on the Land Trust property, and I decided to try to find a few. I picked the ones that looked popular and easy and wrote down their coordinates. Hints? Nah, who needs hints? :-)

GPS reception was excellent, and Denali and I greatly enjoyed being outside on such a fine day.

The nice thing about geocaching is that that it forces you to get off the trail every now and then. This is a drainage off the Land Trust Bluff Line Trail. I'd walked by this area countless time, but never stopped to explore it. This cool tree bridge was a small reward. Unfortunately, I didn't have my camera ready when Denali ran across it.

Here's the location of the first cache I intended to find. See all those leaves? After hunting around for about half an hour, I regretted not writing down those hints.

Denali didn't care about my fruitless search. She entertained herself.

After a while, I gave up on that cache and resumed hiking toward the natural amphitheater.

Time out for dog photos. Never can have enough dog photos. :-)

I'll always remember the first time I stumbled upon this formation, having no idea it was there. What a cool place to have so close to home.

I never found the geocache near the amphitheater either. Too many leaves covering too many rocks.

I ended up 0 for 3 in my cache hunt for the day. Better luck next time I hope.