Every family has at least one crazy relative. You know, the one who you dread making small talk with over the holidays – but love talking about when they aren’t around. My uncle Lloyd falls into this group as he always was up to some kind of strange adventure.

Here are a few highlights:

• Every St. Patrick’s Day, Uncle Lloyd would dye his beard green
• Uncle Lloyd would stock up on the cans of tree flocking and during the summer would cover the front of his truck with the fake snow (we lived in California). For added effect, he would run the wipers so it appeared as though he just drove through a blizzard.
• If you weren’t home and made the mistake of leaving a window open or unlocked – Uncle Lloyd would crawl inside the window and rearrange the furniture in your house so it was piled against the door (and you couldn’t get in unless you entered through the window too).
• When he felt my mom should lose a few pounds, Lloyd left an exercise bike on the front step (blocking the front door of course).
• At garage sales, Uncle Lloyd would display a cigar box, covered in seashells, for $1000. Depending on the day, the little sign next to the box would say rare, antique or one of a kind. He always got a kick out of watching people stare at the ugly box and wonder why it was being sold for such a high price.

As you can imagine, a character like this stood out from the crowd. So when Lloyd would go for his morning runs and collect soda cans out of people’s trash cans, most of the neighborhood took notice. The thing is, most people noticed because they thought he was homeless and wanted to help. Uncle Lloyd often would wander home with cans of food and other random handouts from the old ladies of the neighborhood. He thought it was hilarious. The rest of us just thought it was weird.

So when I decided to try this Geocaching thing over the weekend, I had this sudden moment of fear that I was becoming that strange man wandering the neighborhood in search of treasure. Geocaching is a neat, high tech treasure hunt where you use your GPS to find hidden clues based on the puzzles you download online. Or in Uncle Lloyd terms, you wander around the neighborhood like an idiot looking for a piece of Tupperware hidden in a bush.

I spent the better part of the day wandering around a graveyard, digging through a community garden, strolling through the city’s museum, opening a bird house and scavenging under various bushes. Never once did anyone think it was odd or ask what I was doing – even when I was laying down looking under an old ore cart for the tiny magnetic clue box hidden beneath.

I have to admit, the whole adventure was a lot of fun and a good excuse to explore the town. Most cell phones have a GPS these days, so you don’t even need to buy a high priced GPS unit to have a little family scavenger hunt on the weekend. Just head over to http://www.geocaching.com/ and look up your neighborhood. You might be surprised at just how many of these little adventures are already available in your backyard.

A tiny clue hidden within a sprinkler head