We Start Geocaching

Yesterday, Matthew and I started a new activity: geocaching. The Boy Scouts have recently added Geocaching as a merit badge and it sounded like fun. Our GPS unit arrived a couple of days ago and we've been learning how to use it and looking up geocache coordinates in our area. Being in a large metropolitan area there are lots of caches around us. We tried for four different caches and were successful on the last two. We will try again for the first two on another day. I think as our search pattern techniques get better we will have more luck.

Matthew is holding the container from the first cache we found, Ducks Gone Wild in Bass Park in Garland. Although it was only a few feet away from the walking trail, it took us a while to find it, mostly because of our inexperience in how to look around. Just as we were about to give up, we found it under a suspicious pile of rocks. Even though the container was not completely watertight there was a lot of good swag inside. Matthew took a small enamel pin and we left a toy penguin. We signed the log and made sure to replace it just as we found it.

After this success, we decide to head back to a cache that we were unable to find the day before called Shear Dropoff near our house. The cache was located near a small creek close to our house. We had no luck at all looking for it the day before, but this time we practically walked right to it. Matt had to squeeze into some dense undergrowth to get to it, but otherwise it was very easy to find. Having a thin youngster with you is definitely an advantage when geocaching.

The main reason we wanted to try this one again was because it contained a geocoin we wanted to retrieve. It was still there, so we took it and left a bandana behind. We will help the coin get a little further down the trail. Travel bugs and geocoins are always fun to find. We plan to release one of our own soon. The coin we found here is called Serial Kacher.

After signing the log and carefully replacing the cache we headed for home, a bit scratched and mosquito bitten but very happy after a successful afternoon of geocaching.