What's in Your Swag Bag?

Whenever we head out for a day of geocaching we carry along a small bag that contains a few essentials. Besides our GPS receiver we carry

• extra batteries (in case our GPS is low or a cache requires batteries)
• a couple of small sharpened pencils (to sign logs or replace missing pencils in caches)
• a pen
• extra note paper (for full or missing log books or to solve puzzles or write down clues)
• a whistle (in case our daughter, who carries the bag, gets lost)
• swag to trade (more on that below)
• muggle cards (non-geocachers are called muggles, and these cards explain what we are doing)
• any travel bugs we need to move on (more on travel bugs in a later post)

The swag is usually a collection of things my daughter would like to find in a cache such as special pencils, erasers, bouncy balls, hacky sacks, key chains, Canadian souvenirs, cool fridge magnets, compact mirrors, and tattoos.

When we find a cache, my daughter (littlest goat) and husband (old goat) look through the trades in the cache while I sign our team name and date in the log book. If there is something the little goat would like to take from the cache, she then chooses something equally good or better to place in the cache. We have found some caches containing garbage, broken toys, spoiled stickers and unpolished rocks and these containers get cleaned out and a few pieces of our swag left inside. Food is never left in a cache as animals can smell it and will destroy a container trying to get at the food. All swag should be child-safe as much as possible as this is a family friendly game. After trading, we place the log book back in the cache and put the cache back exactly where we picked it up so the next person can find it. And make note of which cache we found so we can record it later.

As with any outdoor activity, dress for the weather, bring water and snacks, respect private property, and if you go alone, tell someone where you are going. And have fun!!

Quick cache find

Yesterday my daughter and I went out to find a geocache in our own neighbourhood. I had seen the listing on geocaching.com but, knowing it wasn't a difficult one, I wanted to wait for a day when we could do it together. Alana took the lead with the GPS receiver with a reminder to let it orient itself after she was out of the truck. Then she led us to the right tree and I spotted the container. It was a winter friendly hide (not buried under snow) and a good size container holding lots of swag for trading. We signed the log book, replaced the treasure with swag of our own and replaced the container where we found it. Then I remembered I had planned to photograph the container for my blog so we took it back out, moved to a spot that would not offer spoilers and took the photographs. You must remember when caching, that you don't want to give away the location of the cache to the next cacher or anyone checking the logs on-line, so don't put the actual hiding place in your photographs and be careful what you say when you enter your comments on-line. These unwanted hints are called 'spoilers' for a reason! If you want to make a comment that may give away hints there is a feature on the website that will encript your log so that only someone who wants hints can read it.