I have become an avid geocacher.  Almost every weekend the weather is decent, my husband and I grab our GPS unit and head outside looking for “treasure.”  It’s not really treasure as in things that are monetarily valuable but treasure just the same.

We have come across blueberry farms, llama ranches, historic trails leading to historic buildings.  We travel back roads that we would never have found otherwise by following the arrow on our GPS to the hidden cache. We see houses tucked back into the woods that are from the eighteenth century and also beautiful modern wonders. Spotting these houses gives me just as big a thrill as finding the cache.

Sometimes we will pass a gorgeous Victorian house with a “For Sale” sign on it while driving to the geocaches coordinates.  “That’s it!  That’s the one I want one day,” I’ll tell my husband.  After finding the geocache we will often backtrack out of our way to take a second look.  I love looking.  I love imagining living in (what I consider) a “mansion” from the 1800s. We’ll look it up on the real estate listings when we get home.  It’s fun, it’s free to look.  Usually the houses are way too far to commute everyday for work so it would be out-of-the-question no matter what the price was.  But it is still fun to dream.

That happened last weekend while we were geocaching in the Titusville, Oil Creek region.  There was an 1800 farmhouse on a single lane road out in the boonies on 88 gorgeous wooded acres.  Perfect!  When we got home I looked it up on the internet and enlarged the photos.  Hmm.  Will need a new roof and it needs a lot of attention around the windows.  The acreage was beautiful, though, and so near our favorite fishing area.

Then there was the one on Main St. in Titusville that is an 1865 beauty.  One real estate site had it listed for $139,000.

http://www.oilregionhomes.com/402_West_Main_Street.htm

Another for $98,000,000.  That’s right, 98 million dollars. http://www.realtor.com/realestateandhomes-detail/402-Main-St_Titusville_PA_16354_1089245539

Yep, too many zeros I’d suspect. Won’t get a lot of inquiries with that figure. Somehow the figure didn’t look all that big at first glance. We have been getting used to seeing trillions in print that millions seems small. (Since posting this link, the figure has been corrected by the real-estate people.)