Cemetery geocaching

I have found Forrest Gump’s grave. You remember Forrest. He was a football-playing, running-across-the-country, Medal of Honor winner played by Tom Hanks in the movies. I found his grave while geocaching. I also found a monument commemorating racing officials who died in a 1978 plane crash near Arlington, Indiana. These are just some of the things I have discovered while geocaching.

You see, one of my favorite places to geocache are cemeteries. They’re not caches stuck on a sign post along a back country road. With cemetery caches, I can linger and look around the cemetery. See who’s buried there. Forrest Gump, for instance. The Forrest I found obviously isn’t the Forrest Tom Hanks played. Hanks’ Forrest lived in Alabama. The Forrest I found is buried in Allen County, Indiana. Now if you read Winston Groom’s book, you’ll discover a Forrest Gump who was also a professional wrestler whose wrestling career ended in Fort Wayne, the county seat of Allen County. Who knows, maybe Groom came to Allen County and discovered that grave and decided to create his Forrest Gump based on that Forrest Gump. I digress.

Cemetery caches allow my mind to wander down all kinds of rabbit holes. When I see a grave for a person who lived from the late 19th century into the late 20th century or even into the 21st century, I think about all the marvels that came about during that person’s lifetime. The Wright Brothers, for instance, first took to flight in 1903. Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin walked on the moon less than 70 years later. To me, that’s amazing. And it’s one of the ways I let my imagination wander when I visit cemeteries to geocache.

What about you? How do you feel about geocaching in cemeteries?