On a Sunday afternoon, Des Moines’s Beaverdale Park is empty. It’s a cool 50 degrees, and snow still blankets the brittle grass in a few places. Trees stand bare against the blue sky. A dog breaks the silence with distant barks as geocacher Scott Mills parks his red sedan and steps out of the car with a GPS in hand. The cache he’s chosen to find is called “Anchors Away,” part of a series of caches in Mills’ latest scavenger hunt. Bouncing around on blue and white sneakers, he clashes with the dull environment, almost as if he’s there to wake it up.
High-tech treasure hunting is Mills’ obsession. Although he prefers to go alone — that’s “just how I’m wired,” he says — he’ll take advantage of any geocaching opportunity: on business trips, on family vacations, and on dates with his wife. A Forklifts of Des Moines employee and father of three, Mills makes time for geocaching three times a week by pairing it with his other hobbies, like running or biking.
Geocacher Scott Mills uses his GPS to search for a cache while geocaching.
But non-geocachers (or “muggles,” as geocachers call them) always have the same question for him: What does he get out of spending hours outdoors looking for something, only to put it right back? “Nothing,” Mills says. It’s not about actually getting his hands on the hidden item, but about combining the frustration of the hunt with the exhilaration of the find and the much awaited “aha” moment. In the 10 years he’s been geocaching, Mills has found over 8,100 caches, mostly in Iowa and some in states like Kentucky and Illinois, and has hidden 1,300 caches in Iowa. “The best part about geocaching,” he says, “is that it is whatever you want it to be. You can make it recreational, competitive, complicated, puzzle-finding. You can do it on a bike, in a kayak, in a canoe — it’s only limited by what you can think.”
First to Find
Brad Olk, president of the Iowa Geocachers Organization, estimates that there are around 1,200 cachers in Iowa. Mills, Olk says, “is probably one of the best finders I know [and] one of the earlier cachers in central Iowa.”
Mills started geocaching in 2005, at the suggestion of a friend. After he found his first cache — an empty ammo can — he filled three full pages of the ammo can’s logbook (where geocachers record their name and the date of the find in a notebook accompanying each cache) with his story. He was instantly hooked. He began geocaching seven days a week, with a goal to become the “First to Find (FTF)” newly hidden caches. In the geocaching community, being FTF means getting your hands on something no one has found yet and being the first name in the logbook. “My phone would go off and tell me there’s a new cache within 50 miles of the house, and I would drop everything and go,” Mills says. “That gets a little obsessive.”
Des Moines’s Beaverdale Park, where the Anchors Away cache was found.
An Endless Cache Supply
His dedication to hiding the caches is what makes Mills different from others. He spends hours making, maintaining, and strategically hiding caches of all shapes and sizes. His favorite? “One in a Minion,” a 6-foot barrel painted to look like a minion from Despicable Me. “It’s got the goggles, the whole nine yards,” Mills says. “I really like giving somebody a smile on their face when they find it.” He’s even created a tribute trail on the Raccoon River Bike Trail leading up to Panora, Iowa, where he’s hidden dozens of caches named after each geocacher he’s ever met. “It’s just paying back to the people who are part of your group,” he says.
Mills discovers a hollow place in a tree trunk, where the Anchors Away cache is hidden.
Mills estimates that there are 500 caches in Des Moines he hasn’t found — plenty to feed his frenzy for years. But for now, finding “Anchors Away” in Beaverdale Park is his focus.
Walking fast, he heads for the ravine where he hopes to find it. He stops to turn off his GPS. “The key to geocaching,” he says, “is that when you’re within 50 feet of your target, you want to turn off this machine” — he motions to the GPS — “and turn on this machine” — he points to his head. Leaves crunch underfoot as he approaches a tree that seems to fit the GPS coordinates. He circles it once, scanning for oddities. His trained eyes quickly spot an out-of-place piece of concrete at the foot of the tree. He picks it up to uncover a hollow space in the trunk and reaches in. He pulls out a small anchor with numbers written in black Sharpie on its side: the coordinates for the next cache on his scavenger hunt.
