Geocaching
well i have certainly been enjoying the spring thus far. my kids are 8 and 6 and we are turning into bike riding fools. we’ve also taken a liking to geocaching as i noted last summer here. the more we seek treasures and find them, the more i see educational uses for geocaching. when we started last summer, i was pretty much the guy in charge. i controlled the Garmin 60CSx GPS unit and did all of the precursor work finding which caches we’d hunt, etc. I now allow my kids to use the GPS unit to follow the compass and map built into the unit as well as help plan the route we’ll take on our bikes and once we get off of our bikes. they are learning how to read a map and how to use the map. When we get home, we can transfer the data from the GPS and load it into Google Earth to show others the exact path we covered from home back to home (the GPS drops virtual breadcrumbs ever 30 seconds — that’s the settings we use). yesterday we headed downtown along the river next to my office and found a few caches. here is an example from the Gerald Ford Presidential Museum grounds of how one might be hidden:
the rock that my son’s hand is on was actually covering the cylinder. once the cylinder is opened there is a peanut butter jar inside with the cache. we signed the log book and removed a golf ball and left a little something for the next geocacher to find it. we then carefully placed the rock back over the closed cache and headed off for the next find.
some of the caches can be hidden so cleverly that it can take a long time to find the cache even when you know the exact coordinates. this one above took us about 5 minutes once we arrived. you can’t see it here, but there are small trees and evergreens all around us so i spent much time looking up. there are many rocks larger than the one seen here and my kids scurried around looking to and fro.
i recommend signing up to use the website geocaching.com. it’s free; though, you can pay about $30/year for some special search features and an email alert for new caches, etc. i think it’s worth paying just to support the site as it’s quite well done. i like searching for caches using Google maps as shown here from my area:
and then you find one and you can narrow in on it and even have the website send the information directly to your GPS (at least with my Garmin this works):
you can see the difficulty is 3 stars out of 5. look at the photo far above and you can see how this might be difficult to find. sometimes the caches is very easy once you arrive. my kids are getting to the point where we like to look for 3 stars and above for difficulty, but we’ll make exceptions if the terrain is at least 2 stars or so. our favorite caches are the multiple-stage caches. these typically have many steps to find the final treasure. since the steps along the way don’t have a treasure, the hiding places can be much more difficult. for example, last year we did one where the first 4 stages were just giving us the coordinates to potentially find the next coordinates. the creator was able to put these coordinates in creative and hidden places. for example, here was a stage that had the coordinates hidden behind the number 5 on a signpost along a path. the 5 was hanging on by a nail and it was sheer luck that we figured it out (you can barely see the black writing under where the 5 rests):
and another showing the final prize hidden in an ammo box that is stuffed in a cement base from a thrown out pole in an area with a lot of trash and debris. this was hard to find as well because you just don’t think that there’d be a hollow area in the cement base until you roll it over:
anyway, this has quickly become a favorite hobby for my kids and me. i like getting them out on their bikes and getting exercise while also exercising our brains to solve problems, etc. highly recommended.