GeoCaching

Want a fun family friendly 'sport' that can be done rain or shine...that can take half a day or 15 minutes depending on your time available? Try Geo Caching! What is Geo Caching you are asking yourself? It is basically a technical 'treasure hunt'. People hid 'caches' in various spots, then enter the co-ordinates on a website. You then download the co-ordinates to your GPS (you NEED a GPS for this sport!) and head out to find them! Some caches are simply small containers (film canisters etc) with a 'log' for you to sign when you find it. Other caches are WONDERFUL for the kids in that they are buckets or ammo cans filled with toys and goodies. You are allowed to take something out and keep it as long as you put something back in. We now have a ziplock bag full of loot to be used to replace the things we take (we have magnets, bottle openers, McDonalds toys etc in ours). Another thing that can be found in caches is called a 'travel bug'. When you find one of these you take it (and don't have to replace it with something) and then put it in another cache that you go to. Each travel bug has a number on it that you log onto the geo caching website with and you can track where your bug has come from and where it has been.

Mark and I have been wanting to try this sport for awhile now, but haven't gotten around to it. One of the instructors that Mark had for one of his classes a few weeks ago is a Geo Caching enthusiast, and introduced Mark to it last week. They managed to get in quite a few finds and so Mark marked them all on his GPS and today we took the kids on six hunts. These were all fairly easy as Mark had been to each of them before, but typically you only do one or two hunts each trip out. The kids had a ball and we now have a new family sport! We found a few 'log only' caches and signed them with the date. We also found some 'treasure caches' and the kids had a ball not only picking out what they would take but also what they would put back ( a nice little life lesson there!). We found TWO travel bugs in two separate caches and are now on the look out for other caches that we can leave them in! You can see the two kids and I with one of our travel bugs, it was a wooden disk with the travel bug nailed onto it. The other travel bug we found was put on a keychain and people had added other keychains to it. In keeping with the spirit of this bug we thought we'd put a WA state keychain on it!

Our first cache was a 'log only' type cache that was in a small canister screwed onto the bottom of a rock! When flipped right side up, it looked just like an innocent little rock! The clue was 'no need to call for help' and was at Wild Cat lake state park just a few minutes from our house. We went straight to the phone booth there and it took us awhile before we realized that innocent rock was our 'cache'. (Picture of kids with cache by phone booth).

Our second cache had the clue 'fire in the hole'. Mark took us right to the site, and it was in a small gully (hole!). Once at the bottom we looked around for a hole (we were thinking TOO obvious!). Then I saw a burned piece of wood and the clue clicked in my brain. Yup, when Ben flipped over the burned piece of wood (fire) at the bottom of the gully (hole) there was another log only cache! (Picture of Ben with wood).

Our third cache was a treasure cache started by Peter Rabbit :) The kids were thrilled to find a tupperare type container filled with small toys and treasures. Also in the cache was a small stuffed Peter Rabbit and a Peter Rabbit notebook that was used as the log. (Picture of Mark and kids with stuffed animal)

Moving on to our fourth cache in the woods. The clue was that it was well camouflaged and boy were they right! It took us awhile to find it, even though we knew it was a five gallon bucket! The smarty pants who started this cache had taken large pieces of bark and zip tied it all around the bucket so it looked very much like a stump when sitting in the bushes! Again, it was a treasure cache that the kids had fun with. This was also where we found our first Travel Bug! (Pictures of hidden bucket and Me and kids showing off our bug!).

Our next cache took us to Scenic Beach State Park (yes, the same park I blogged about last summer where Paige sliced open her toe on an oyster shell!). This turned out to be another 'log only' cache, but still fun to find! (Picture of Paige finding cache in tree).

Our last cache was another treasure cache and also where we found our second travel bug. It was along the road so it made it a bit of an adventure walking along with traffic zipping by! Also, the people who started the cache (it was in a bucket hidden at the end of their driveway) had two snarling dogs that took great joy in barking through their fence (complete with Beware Of Dog sign!) the whole time we were there!

This is truly a FUN sport and there are caches all over the world. If you are interesting in getting started send me an email OR go to geocaching.com and log in! We highly recommend this for families as there is no age or physical limitation to this. Fun, Fun, Fun!

Hugs to all,
Jaye