Category Archive for ‘geocaching’ at gotshoo?

Email written by GTG to our parents.

We survived the 14 hour car ride (I actually helped with the driving quite a bit…I didn’t sit and read the entire time)…along with going to the wrong hotel and not knowing where our reservations were. (For the record, I told Chris I thought they were at a Travel Lodge, but he insisted on Budget Inn.) It was a minor setback…just delayed our dinner. We ate at a nice little place downtown called Ed’s Cantina. We sat out on the patio surrounded by huge mountains and overlooking the Big Thompson River which runs through town. The meal was excellent, as was the fried ice cream we had for dessert.

We woke up early this morning and are getting ready to head to the KOA to drop off our bikes to try to get rid of the extra weight so that we don’t get stuck trying to go up some mountain road. I’d forgotten how much I missed the mornings out here. Beautiful doesn’t even begin to describe them. Chris keeps crooning John Denver to me. It was funny the first time.

Still, we haven’t killed each other, or worse, called off the wedding. We’re hiking today…going out to one of the waterfalls out here, then we’re going geocaching. (For mom and dad, that’s the yellow thing I got Chris for Christmas. We’re going to certain coordinates where there will be little treasures that people have left.) Then we’re heading into the park.

So far we haven’t seen any bighorn sheep, Mom, but we’ll be looking. We did see an elk and her calf cross the street. She was considerate enough to use the crosswalk, but didn’t wait for the signal. I’m sure we’ll see more today.

Anyway, off to hike…

GTG got me a GPS for Christmas and her first question was “What can you do with it?”

Last fall one of the guys I mountain bike with told me to stop and park over at Rotary Park. He says, “You got to see this. It’s pretty cool.” We get out and walk by some pine trees off of Archer Elevator road. He’s looking into the trees until he finds what he was looking for. He pulls out a camouflaged film canister tied to a tree.

He explains that the canister is a ‘cache’ and is part of a GPS scavenger hunt called Geocaching. The object of Geocaching is using a GPS and set of coordinates you set out to find caches. A cache is nothing more than a film canister, ammo box, or even a Tupperware container. Inside there is a log of who has found it. There can also be trinkets inside like key chains, patches, pictures, cds. When you find the cache, you can take and leave a trinket.

The coordinates and an up to date log are stored on geocaching.com. From the website you can view a log of who has found it, a map of the general area of where it can be located. What is cool is that even in Springfield there are about 300 caches around the area. Below is a screen shot of what can be found near Lake Springfield.

For my first Geocaching expedition GTG, Buddy, and I set out to Washington Park. In the middle of the woods there is a cache not too far from the duck pond. As we were criss-crossing through the foliage I am telling GTG how far we are from the cache, “80 feet, 60 feet, 30 feet”, as I read from the GPS. Then she stops me, “There it is.” In a hollowed out log there was a Tupperware container. I was kind of amazed that we found it so quick.

There is a lot more to just finding a cache. There are caches that require finding other caches and completing a puzzle before finding the big cache. There are trinkets called travel bugs. A travel bug is an object that a geocacher requests to be moved from point A to point B. Check out the site for more info.

So add Geocaching to my hobby list. If anyone would like to come out some time, just let me know.