Addicting More People to Geocaching

I received an e-mail request this week from a friend whose son is in school with my daughter. She and her family have been wondering about geocaching and asked if I would take them out for a beginner's lesson. So yesterday morning we piled our three kids into her vehicle with the two of us and set out for Baker Park on the Bow River in Calgary. I had my iPhone with the geocaching app and my Garmin Oregon 200 to show them both options when they start out.

We began with the Dollhouse cache (GC1RT7C) to get the kids excited because I knew it had recently been found and was supposed to have good swag in it. This one took a bit of looking and then was found where we didn't expect it. The kids found it easy to follow the compass on the Garmin so I let them carry that one and worked off the iPhone with my girlfriend. The three kids took turns holding the GPS and telling the others which way to go. We followed along making sure they didn't get too far off course but they did very well. And we had our first smiley for the day.

The next cache we aimed for was Baker's Bark (GC1EV27) which was a different kind of 'micro in a tree'. No trades here, just signed the log and off we went to search for I Do (GCXJTA). This is a very beautiful area right down by the river with bright beds of flowers surrounding a stone wall. We watched a few young men leaping into the chilly waters across the river and a Zodiak float by with two life-jacketed paddlers aboard.

 The search was briefly interrupted by the appearance of two snakes who may have been guarding the cache and who caused all the children to leap upon the stone wall and scream! Luckily my friend and I were not deterred and continued to peer under rocks and into nooks and crannies. Unfortunately, no cache was unearthed and we had to leave this one for another day.

We moved on to look for one of the Calgary Parks caches called, of course, Baker Park (GC299K3). This was when I saw the change in my friend from 'interested observer' to 'addicted cacher' as she made her first unassisted find. Her face lit up and she got excited and declared herself hooked! I always love that moment!

Our last cache of the day, Baker's Hedge (GC1EV1Z) was also exciting for her young daughter when she made her own first find. We told ourselves it was because she was closest to the ground but really we all had our backs turned when she said ' Oh I found one." And honestly I didn't really think she had found one, but there it was! So much for me showing her how its done!!

After such a good day of caching I am sure we will be going out as a group again before too long. And we have another girlfriend with kids who we'll have to take out and addict!

Spring into geocaching

We have been having some nicer weather in Calgary this week and I have managed to get out twice to grab a few caches. Adding some smiley faces to our 'found' list felt great after a slow winter with not much geocaching going on.

On Friday I just had time for one hunt and combined it with a walk for our chocolate lab. I had tried to find this multi-cache before and had found the first stage but did not know how to attempt the second stage. After reading a little tutorial on projecting a waypoint with your Garmin GPS I managed to complete the second stage of the cache hunt and found the final container. And Scooby got a great walk when I went a kilometer in the wrong direction before realizing what I'd done!
There are many of these rocks walls (pictured behind Scooby) in Calgary and frequently the cache you are looking for will be hidden in one of the spaces between rocks. The only problem is being brave enough to stick your hand in and retrieve the cache or move the smaller rocks to see if the cache is behind them. I am quite certain one day something will bite me when I reach in so I am very careful!
The final cache for this multi-cache was in a recess between some rocks (not shown above) but I had a view of the cache container before reaching in. I had to be quite stealthy because there were several muggles (non-geocachers) nearby but I managed to sign and replace the cache quickly.

Today while my daughter was at a birthday party, I talked the old goat into doing a few caches in a nearby neighbourhood. We found two small caches and a micro cache before heading back to pick up our daughter. The micro cache was down in a ravine near a footbridge and we were surprised to see that there was still lots of ice and snow in the creek there. Luckily the cache was not under the bridge and we did not have to test the ice or get wet. We did have to disturb a spider from the cache and I was grateful the littlest cacher was not with us as she would have screamed and ran!

I am looking forward to doing more caching as the weather continues to improve. Even if I have to sneak them in one search at a time!