Monday, April 21, 2008

Geocaching

I recently found a former co-worker on FaceBook which led me to her blog which I've been reading and really enjoying. THAT'S what made me think I should blog more. I think in my last post I thought I should blog more, but didn't know why. Yeah, so that's why.

A few years ago, I remember my co-worker Dan talking about geocaching and how he had his GPS and would go looking for things out in the boonies. I thought it sounded strange and didn't really give it much thought. Two summers ago when Aaron and I went to CA and visited my Dad, we somehow traded my radar detector for his new Mustang for a Garmix etrex navigator. At the time, I thought I could use it for directions but Aaron and I plugged in into the car on the way home, thought it was cool and then I never used it again.

Well, last month Aaron was grounded and looking for something to do and had heard about geocaching on the internet and decided he wanted to do it. I agreed and said I would drive him around but he needed to do all the research and find out where they were and give me directions. So we've been out a few times around Boise and it's a lot of fun. We found interesting items in the little cans and containers and left some things we had and even met a lady who was out on Easter that lived in Oregon. I think Aaron keeps in touch with her online at the geocache site.

What you do is go to the website and find cache's to hunt for that are near you. We print off the GPS coordinates, the description on the cache (including any hints!) and then driving directions that get us close. We put all the ones that we want to find in order and head out. We park the car, then grab the Garmin and walk around until we get close. The GPS that we have gets us within 10-30 feet of the item and then it's just figuring out the clever hiding place that the person used. We even went out once on our bikes and down to the greenbelt. Bike caching! LOL
Anyway, it's a lot of fun and I hope to do it when I travel and hope that Aaron's interest in it stays around!

1 comment:

BosieLadie said...

That's really a cool thing to do with Aaron. He'll remember your treasure hunts, and the quality time with him, forever. D's nephew used to tell us about doing the same thing in the Twin Falls area. I remember how excited he was about the hunts.