Some of the members of the geocaching outfit Team Jackass decided they wanted to go beyond just searching for geocaches and get into the cache-hiding business. Jodie, Team Jackass’s resident genealogy buff, had been on a so-far-futile search for the burial plot of our great-great-grandfather on our Dad’s side, John Rogers, and suggested we stash the cache at the Old Amity Cemetery. If we could find it.
We found the cemetery. Well off the road in the countryside near Nashville, Ark. The cemetery is suffering from a bad case of the brambles due to a lack of regular upkeep. Jodie says the last burial there was probably in the 1920s. We found John Rogers’ grave toward the back. It’s one of the few stones remaining upright. Jodie and Katie found a place near the cemetery entrance to hide the cache.
For those unfamiliar with the geocaching thing, geocaches are small packets of trinkets and log books hidden around the countryside. The geographic coordinates of each cache are listed on a website. Participants go to the site and find caches in their area and then go looking for them. The easiest way is to use a GPS receiver to guide you to the coordinates, but you could do it with the proper paper maps if you feel the need to drive yourself crazy. Upon finding a cache you sign the log and check out the junk left in the package, usually a plastic box or film canister. If you take a trinket geocaching etiquette demands you leave something in its place. Jodie came up the genius idea to leave tiny plastic Jackasses in each find made by Team Jackass. I’m sure that finding a Team Jackass plastic jackass will soon become a badge of honor in the caching community.
After making a couple of finds in Nashville proper, we moved on to Old Washington State Park, where we finished out the day with a cache at the old courthouse and one at the Pioneer Cemetery.
Team Jackass is the star of a classic YouTube movie.