A Little Cache on the Run

Recently I visited my sister and her family in Oklahoma City to celebrate her birthday.  My sister had asked her husband for a new GPS device so that her family could take up Geocaching.  She had been interested in geocaching for a while but had waited until my nephew got a little older and could also participate.  Well, Gavin is now six and the Alberts clan is taking up geocaching!

I spy...a Geocache!

I arrived for my visit on Friday evening and was given homework by my nephew to read his book by the boyscouts on the rules of geocaching.  They had found some caches in a nearby park and my sister told me that we would have to get an early start to beat the "Muggles" to the park.  On Saturday, we all got up and ready and headed out to a cache that had a travel bug in it.  My sister really wanted to have Gavin find the travel bug which was a Pinewood Derby car put together by a BoyScouts troop in Tulsa wanting to see how far it could travel.  I stayed in the car with my sleeping niece for the first cache but Gavin was super excited about the find and the bead necklace he chose out of the cache supplies. 

My sister with one of our cache finds!

We headed out to the park next and spent almost 30 minutes looking for the cache there.  Finally, I logged onto the http://www.geocaching.com/ website from my iPhone to read the recent logs for that cache.  Others were having trouble finding it so we decided it must have been moved.  On the way to the next cache I decided to search the app store and buy an app for my phone.  Yep, after only 3 cache locations I was on my way to being hooked into the competitive search for the caches.  With the addition of my phone app, I was able to read logs and hints which helped us find some of the caches and also helped us decide to move on when others marked the cache as no longer there.  We ended up spending the entire morning out hunting for the caches and I think we hit up 10-12 different locations.  We encountered lots of prickly bushes which made my nephew not so happy. 

Geocaching App by Groundspeak

I left Oklahoma City with strict instructions to hide the travel bug in a cache near my town.  I knew just the friend to help me geocache...Kyla! Kyla and I headed out on a Tuesday after work with her dog Pilgrim.  I had researched and found that one of our running trails had a few cache hidden along it and one of them would be big enough for the travel bug. 

Who brings a bear on a run? Not us, that is the cache hiding spot silly!

We used my iPhone app for the tracking and ran to a spot on the trail that seemed to be in the general area.  We then turned on the Geocaching app and used that to hone into the cache.  Our first stop was called the Hill of Doom and it was aptly named.  From there, we meandered on the trail system and then got back to the paved trail in order to visit a couple more sites including one with a unique cache.  We both had a great time and it was a perfect way to add some fun to our run.  We got to mix in some breaks while we hunted for each cache.  We didn't trade souvenirs with any of the caches except for leaving behind the travel bug.  We just signed the log books and headed onto the next one.  I think we would both consider doing a geocache run again...a friend has already told us that his daughter has hidden some caches so now we have motivation to go find those too. 

For more information on geocaching visit: Getting Started Guide. 

As for the Pinewood Derby Travel Bug, it's on it's way to the next stop on it's journey.