Geocaching - Treasure Hunting

Today we decided to do something different. Well different for us. We went Geocaching!!!

It all started on my birthday really, late June, when Bubba (Julie's mom) gave me a GPS. Mainly she was worried I would get lost in the woods on a hike I was planning, with Zac and his cousins Ben and Greg. We didn't get lost. In fact, because of late snow this season we ended up hiking down the Olympic coastline and had basically no need for a GPS. But I am still really glad to have it. It was on the list of "toys" to have for a while.

Anyway, so today we decided to try geocaching. Geocaching is basically treasure hunting using a GPS to get you really close. There is a whole online community of people who hide objects in a small box (from magnet key holder to bread box size) somewhere, anywhere really, and log on the web the GPS coordinates. When you find the box, it normally contains a registry and sometimes some little trinkets. You can take a trinket and put another of your own back in for someone else. Then log on the website http://www.geocaching.com/ that you found it. Additionally, in some boxes there are trackable objects, so when you find this you can also see online the history of where it has been, and a lot of them have a goal location, more about that in a little bit.

Wow, enough explaining about Geocaching, let me tell you about our adventure. We set out with the locations of 4 Geo caches in my GPS. All 4 were in parks close to our house. We decided to start out easy since we didn't know what to expect and the kids were hopeful to help. All morning while we were waiting for Jack to wake up from his nap, Paige and Jonah kept talking about going treasure hunting. They were excited, they were digging holes and burying shiny rocks in the back yard, to find later, while they waited. It was cute.

So once we finally got going we went and started looking for our first cache in OUR neighborhood park. I couldn't believe there was one hidden there. All the times we are up there, you just don't think something could purposefully be hidden there. Anyway, I really thought this was going to be easy. I had my GPS; I had the coordinates; we would just walk right to it, bend over and pick it up. Wrong. The GPS is only accurate to about +/- 9 feet. Still very accurate, but when you think the person putting it there also was only this accurate, at best, you can be searching around in the woods for a while looking. This is especially true, given they don't want anyone to just see it sitting there, so it is hidden a little. Luckily for there are also clues on the website, so we knew it was at the base of a tree. So there we are in the woods off the edge of the park looking around the base of about 30 trees. First Julie tripped and fell while carrying Jack, really nice save!!!, then Jonah fell down and scratched his eye, then Paige (who was still wearing her church dress) got stuck in a sticker bush. Nothing bad happened to me, except I couldn't find the cache. Finally, we decided to give up (about 20 minutes later, which is a long time with 3 kids). Just as we were walking out of the woods, I saw the little box under a few sticks at the base of a tree. If you didn't look right at it, you never would have seen it. Jonah picked it up.

In it was a logbook, some dice, a rubber ball, a soft turtle key chain, and a hedge hog toy. Paige took the turtle and Jonah took the hedge hog. We left some $1 Aruba coins.

After this we took the kids for a special treat. They have been listening to Socks by Beverly Clearly in the car and Slurpee's are mentioned. They didn't know what Slurpee's were and so we decided we would let them find out... They loved them of course. But what isn't there to love about a Slurpee, it's frozen, it's full of sugar, and you suck it through a straw. Jack really liked it...

After finishing our Slurpee's (less than 5 minutes...) we headed to Coulon Park in Renton to look for 2 more caches. We found both of these very quickly, as they were right on the side of the walking trail, but nevertheless they were fun to find. Both only had a logbook in them as they were both magnetic key holders. Again crazy to think about how many times we have walked right by these and never thought "hey, maybe there's a treasure under that lamppost."

Since these were quick to find, we still had time to go and look for the last one I put in my GPS. It was at another park in the area. When we got there, Jonah and Jack saw the play structure and were done treasure hunting. Paige really wanted to find another though, so we headed off. This time I knew to really look around, so when we got close Paige and I heading into the bushes again, with me pulling the sticker bushes out of her way. She was determined to find this one!!! After about 10 minutes though she didn't want to be in the woods anymore and decided to pick blackberries (ant eat them of course) while I searched. Finally, I saw what I thought was the cache in a hole under a the base of a fallen tree, I called to Paige and she came running to look.



Coincidentally, this was only about 5 feet off the trail and you didn't need to go into bushes to find it... We found a Geo coin in the cache. As a mentioned briefly above, some items are trackable. A Geo coin is one of them. This one is a Mother's Day coin, and the owner wants it to travel all over the US and come back to Montana by Mother's Day 2010. We went online when we got home to log having this and saw instantly that it started in Montana, moved into Idaho, and then it has been all over Washington state. Now, we need to put it somewhere. Next weekend, Colin is competing in a half-Ironman in Black Diamond, so maybe we will have to go Geocaching there.

Finally, we went out for dinner to finish off our day.

The best part of the whole day for me was when Julie asked Paige what her favorite part of the day was. Typically, food is involved in the answer, especially when you get a treat and go out for dinner. But not today. Paige answered "Going treasure hunting."