I love hiking, and my doctor says until my back heals, I have to stick to stuff like walking. Walking for the sake of walking strikes me as dull as a white bread, mayo, and processed cheese sandwich (Sorry Micki)!
But geocaching? I got my whole family out and about, fired up about finding treasure. I bought a GPS with a gift card I got to a big box electronics store, learned about it the night before, and went to geocaching.com, opting for the free account. Holy cow, I have been living on Treasure Island all along, and I didn't know it. There were 5 within 2 km of my house. We have found 2 so far. The first one contained patches, badges, bottlecaps, dice, and a booklet dating back 2+ years.
The website names the second cache we found as "watch your fingers" - Andrew (5 yr old son) said maybe it's an alligator! We scrambled around some ferns and boulders in some landscaping near my neighbourhood. We were looking for a typical rubbermaid container. Imagine my suprise when we found....an alligator! And in its jaws was a fake bloody finger! The kids howled with delight.
The next day we went looking for three more, but I think 1 was destroyed by recent logging activity. The second appears to be submerged IN a lake (don't think that is right, better re-check gps) and didn't find the third because it was too far for my daughter (7) and my son to make get there after a day of hiking.Who would have believed that my wife was going to be the most disappointed when we didn't find one!
But, we will be out again this weekend. And over spring break, we will be checking out Geocaches in other towns too. Who knew there was another world hidden all around us. I wonder how we go about hiding our own geocache? To be continued.
5 comments:
I love geocaching, but my boys just do not. I did drag my husband a steep hill in the hot hot sun last suer though to geocache. he was a good sport.
That sounds like fun, James! :)
Thanks for your comments, guys. I plan to take my gps with me to continue geocaching with my kids on vacation. You never know what you will find!
I have forgotten about geocaching! Thanks for sharing your day!
Have you tried letterboxing? That's our family activity of choice - gets us hiking and exploring new places, reading clues, solving puzzles, and finding cool art in the woods (in the form of hand-carved stamps). Unlike geocaching, you don't take the stamp you find - you use it to stamp into your logbook. I think of my logbook as a passport of all the places we've visited. Check it out!
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