As I've said before, there are completely unique appeals to geocaching. I've heard it directly from some who ask "I just don't understand it, you mean you don't win anything?" I've more often heard it secondhand. A family member may say to me, "old so and so was asking me about your geocaching thingy the other day." They said "I just don't understand it, sounds kind of silly to me." This is pretty common. Most people are perfectly content to see nothing more than their living room, their office and a trip once each year to Myrtle Beach. I would return their retort, "I just don't understand it".

So that brings me back to the "appeals" that I mentioned earlier. Why do we do it? The answer from each geocacher that you talk to will be as different as we are as individuals. A common answer might be "because it takes me to places I would never have discovered without geocaching". But this answer needs more unpacking. The places might not necessarily be fantastic Utopian places of grandeur. Perhaps these places are simply just outside. Anywhere outside. We live in an ADHD culture that involves work then chores around home and a fine evening of mind numbing entertainment delivered by NBC, CBS, ABC and FOX. Many geocachers would never get out and discover the woods, the roads of their home region or perhaps even a few of those Utopian places of grandeur themselves without the aid and motivation of signing their name on a little piece of paper called a logsheet contained inside of a geocache. In essence, this is likely the biggest appeal to geocaching. In one word, DISCOVERY.

Then there are the things that motivate each of us individually as geocachers. The hides that really motivate us. There are family friendly hides designed to make it easy for young children to find. Many families go geocaching together and only target those large containers in easy to get to places where kids can enjoy the discovery and trade inexpensive toys. Some folks enjoy solving difficult puzzles. Some enjoy long hikes in the woods. There are handicap accessible hides to give some outdoor recreation to those limited in where they can go. One of the smallest, but most extreme sects of geocachers are those that enjoy uber difficult and dangerous hides. Those hides that require some risk to be taken to get to.

Part of the fun in hiding caches is to try to hide something that will appeal to all the different motivations. I like to hide caches that I would like to find. It is my hope that someone will find one of my caches, be inspired to "one up" me and hide something even better. The majority of geocaches are pretty benign. A lot of film cans stuck in a random roadside guardrail for reason other than they had a film can, a scrap of paper and a GPS reciever and desperately wanted to hide it. While these are less than thrilling hides it makes a really high quality cache even more exciting when you find them. So with all this in mind there were a few geocache styles that were pretty hard to find in this area of the state that I have tried to create here. One being nightcaches (only found at night) and another being the extreme terrain caches.

This week three new caches were published titled the Psycho Rural Cache Series. Inspired by the Psycho Urban Cache Series in Maryland these hides require special equipment or at least some unique terrain. One is located underwater at Charles Fork Lake. One is located 30' up in a tree with no limbs and the last of the initial PRC series is on top of an abandoned bridge pier 25' high in the air. I hope that this series adds to the variety in the county and brings more appeal to those motivated by challenging terrain.

• GC2DGVR - Psycho Rural Cache #1 - Descent into the Maelström
• GC2DGYH - Psycho Rural Cache #2 - The Balloon Hoax
• GC2DH2Q - Psycho Rural Cache #3 - The Raven
  

(Note: I'm sure someone will ask. The names were derived from Edgar Allan Poe stories. I thought he would appreciate these hides and would have been a geocacher if GPS technology had been around in his day.)