My name is Rosemary and I am not your typical person. During my free time I like to stumble in the woods or try to appear sneaky in town. The reason I do it is? Usually I am looking for Tupperware containers. Sometimes it could be a tiny little container the size of my pinky nail. I find them, sign the log and if the container is big enough I leave a small little trinket. I’ve been doing this for a few years now and I’ve found close to 1,000 such container. Sometimes I even have to solve a puzzle to find them. Most of my friends that do this don’t even know what I look like. Also they do not know my real name. They just know me as TrailSteamer. What is this craziness I speak of? Simple, it’s called geocaching.
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I started geocaching as a way to lose weight. I have lost a little and I know I am more toned then I use to be. But I am still what people would call overweight. I prefer to be called curvy, womanly, or better yet just down right sexy. There is just more to me to love. I would probably lose more weight if I if I did not make such kick ass food. I currently work at a cupcake shop in the small town I live in. I work there to pay the bills while I’m working on psychology degree. I want to work with women who were in abusive relationships. For some reason I have never told my friends about my hobby or as I like to call it my other life. However, things in my world of geocaching is about to get interesting. Rosie couldn’t believe she had to come into work on her day off to learn how to use a fire extinguisher. It’s not like she meant to set the fire alarm off when she made a run glaze. Worst of all she forgot when she got dressed to go to her Zumba class when, Lisa, her co-worker texted her to remind her. So she had to go to work in a very unusual outfit. She was wearing fitted black sweat pants with a baggy hot pink shirt. The bottom of the shirt was cut into fringe. Her outfit was finished off with hot pink running shoes and a hot pink ribbon bulling her long black hair back. Since Rosie was reminded last minute she was in a hurry and of course she could not find a parking space close to the shop. Now she was running even later. She had to park two blocks away so she had to jog into work. Not her favorite thing. She thanked her lucky stars she was wearing extra deodorant when ran into a solid wall of man outside of work. “Oh my goodness,” she exclaimed, “I am so so sorry!” Tall, dark, and yummy gave her deep chuckle that made her woman parts tingle. “It’s ok. You are so bright I do not know how I missed you.” Rosie wanted to melt at his smile but she was too busy blushing. She opened the door to the store when he let out another chuckle. “Looks like you are going my way.” She could help what she hoped was a shy smile spread across her face. Even though she was sure it looked more like a goofy grin. “Rosemary, it is about time you showed up. You are in luck the fire department is late.” Valerie the shop owner said. Then she noticed Mister Yummy come in after Rosie. “Welcome to The Wild Flour. How can I help you?” A third deep chuckle slipped through his lips. Rosie was sure she could listen to that chuckle all day. “My name is James, and I am with the fire department. I am looking for Valerie.” “Hello there, I am Valerie. Follow me to the back. Rosie, could you please flip the closed sign for me.” Valerie was almost purring at James. Rosie did as she was told and could not help but think. ‘I saw him first’. This was one of the times Rosie really wished she was dressed up and wearing makeup. However she had a feeling that no matter how dressed up she was a guy like him would never go for a girl like her. Rosie joined Valerie, Lisa, and her other co-worker, Jane, in the kitchen. She had to admit she just half assed listened to the lesson James gave them. She knew how to work a fire extinguisher and James was just way too sexy to really pay attention. Even though he was drop dead drool worthy in her mind she couldn’t help but feel her self-esteem take a drop. Normally, she had no problem with her weight. Yes she was not the skinniest of women. She had curves and padding but she had gone out with plenty of guys. Most of them would even be called good looking. But none of them made her inside do the happy dance with just one look. Before she knew the class was over. James said his goodbyes to everyone then came up to Rosie. Lisa gave her thumbs up behind his back. Rosie could not help but roll her eyes. James caught it and crinkled his eyebrows. “Rosie, right?” She nodded her head, “I have to ask, what is with the fringe.” Rosie felt her cheeks flame up again. She swore she heard a slight southern twang in his voice. “I forgot about today and was getting ready for my Zumba class.” She explains. “What is that?” He gave her a puzzled look. “It a dance aerobics thing, mostly Latin style dance like Salsa. The fringe swirls around when I shake my hips.” She tried to give him her most charming smile praying it did not look goofy. He nodded his head in understanding. “Hips don’t lie kind of thing, huh?” Again that dreamy grin crossed his lips. “You got it.” She answered with a wink.
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“Well, sorry you missed your class but it was nice meeting you.” He threw her wink back at her. Then turned and left.

Rosemary Vargas slowly walked back to her car on a cloud of bliss. She had to think that James was new to the area. Sequim was a small town and she was sure she would have remembered seeing him before. She drove the short distance home trying to get him off her mind. When she got home she kicked of her shoes, made her way to the kitchen, and grabbed a bottle of water. She grabbed her laptop and her gps. Since it was still early in her weekend she decided to go treasure hunting. Rosie had been geocaching for a couple of years now. Geocaching is a treasure hunting game where you use a GPS to hide and seek containers with other participants. It was Rosie’s favorite pastime. She picked out a few caches on one of the nearby hiking trails and downloaded them on to her gps. She changed into her normal caching cloths; jeans, long sleeve t-shirt, and her hiking books. She left the hot pink hair tie in. She fixed a quick lunch and checked the geocaching forums while she ate. There was nothing new in the main forum so she went to her regional one. However, she noticed there was a new comment on one of the caches she owned. It was out on the local beach hidden in a log. She challenged the finders to write a round robin story. Every person who found it had to leave at least a sentence to the story. Once a month she went out and gathered the new parts and posted them on to her blog site. The reply said: TFTH (thanks for the hide) I read what was left and thought it was awesome. Sadly I do not feel creative enough to leave a part to the story. I must admit I was sidetracked by the view. I promise I will come back one day and leave something. It was signed Wildflames. She had seen the signature on logs in the area. She could not forget it. Whoever Wildflames was drew a little flame next to the signature. Because of that she was guessing Wildflames was female. Once she finished eating she cleaned up her mess and grabbed her gps and geocaching bag. In it she kept most of what she needed when out; flash light, extra batteries, first aid kit, her signature swag (small item to leave in caches), and other things. The locked up her small house and set off for adventure. In the car in the way she charged her cell phone and rocked out to her radio. She knew she looked silly but she knew what felt like most of the people in town. They all knew her as outgoing and fun loving. It really took her a lot to be embarrassed. That was until this morning. She could not believe she blushed around Mister McDreamy Fire Fighter. She pulled into the parking lot at the trailhead. As she was grabbing her gear out of the trunk she stopped to talk to a couple that were regulars in The Wild Flour. “Off on your weekly hike, Rosemary?” the older gentleman asked. “You know it,” She answered with a smile. “I think I’m addicted to the fresh air out here.” The couple laughed and waved goodbye to her. They were regular hikers as well. Rosie loved the fact that thousands of people hike these trails and didn’t know about the caches hiding here. She had found so many that were in plain sight that people walked right by. There were two types of caches, the ones in the wilderness, like what she was after now, and urban caches. Urban caches were usually small. They could look like a bolt or even chewed gun under a picnic table. Today she was looking for her favorites large caches that were big enough to leave swag.

Rosie hiked down the trail for about a quarter of a mile when she saw a small little used off-shoot of the trail. She had a feeling that was a trail to the cache. There were other hikers nearby so instead of her gps she pulled out her phone. She accessed the information about the cache through the app. It brought up her phone’s gps, this way if anyone saw her she looked like she was texting someone. She was right, the trail lead her to the cache she was looking for. After a quick glance around to make sure no one was watching Rosie went off the main trail. She continued to use her cell phone until she could no longer see the main trail, which was not far due to all of the trees. She then put it back into her pocket and pulled out her gps. As usual she watched her gps a little bit too hard and tripped over a few rocks and roots. Finally she was within two feet of the cache. She looked for the tell-tail signs of a geocache, unusual piles of rocks or tree limbs. Not seeing any she checked her gps and adjusted where she was looking. She knew by the description that it had something to do with the large tree in front of her. She looked all over the base of the tree. There was nothing down there and three didn’t have any holes in it large enough for the cache to hide in. She looked up the description that is when she noticed the size of this particular cache. She had been to other caches b this owner and she knew he or she likes to use old ammunition boxes but this one was labeled smaller. She walked around the tree while staring at her gps. When it indicated she was less than a foot away she looked again. Again she found nothing. She stood there with her hands on her hips and let out a frustrated growl. Then it hit her. She did not look up. On the branch about a foot above her she saw a small lock-n-lock container attached with Velcro. She was lucky enough that there was a large enough rock for her to stand on to undo it. She took it down then sat down on the rock. She opened the container and pulled the log book out of the protective baggie it was in. She then took her pen out of her bag and signed her geocaching name, TrailStreamer. After she put the log back in to the baggie she took her swag out of her bag to add to the small collection of items already in the cache. If a cache is large enough people will leave various items to it. Swag can be a simple trinket, such as an item you would find at a dollar store or a craft people make by hand. The simple trinkets are meant to be taken by their finder. They can represent the location, the person who put them there or just be fun mementos of a day at play. They can be collected or traded with other players. Rosie always made her own swag. Every item she made was steampunk themed; usually it was gears with her geocaching name on it. Rarely did she take anything from a cache other than a photo. She had a photo of ever cache she found. Once she had everything back in the container she stood back up on the rock to place the cache back where she found it. With her usual Rosie grace, when she stepped off of the rock she stepped on some slick moss and fell right on to her behind. She got off, dusted herself off, and headed back to the main trail. When she got back to it she made sure she didn’t see anyone before getting back on it. She has originally planned to try and find a few more but she knew her bottom had mud on it so she headed back to her car.