Teen had a paper to write today, but it was a beautiful day (plus I needed to do some “research” for my Boxcar book), so the rest of us (including the dog) went geocaching!

When we go geocaching, this is the view I usually get:

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I always lag behind. I’m probably the one most excited about geocaching, yet I’m always the one who lags behind. That’s because I almost always have a camera along and I’m trying to get pictures of the scenery or the wildlife; everyone else just wants to get to the cache!

I tried to get some pictures of the deer we saw along the way, but I never managed to get my camera to my face and focused before they ran off. I did, however, get a picture of this nuthatch:

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The first cache we tried to find today was the “Owl’s Well that Ends Well” cache. Unfortunately, we had to go past the raptor center to get to it, so we had to leave our dog here:

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There were a lot of muggles (the official geocachers term for “non-geocachers”….a big part of geocaching is to be STEALTHY! You don’t want muggles to see you uncovering a cache) around…and I didn’t like leaving Molly at the dog hitching post, so we gave up the search after just a little while. We decided to go see if we could find “Icepak’s Point of View” instead (which led us down a quieter trail where we didn’t see any muggles).

This ISN’T “Icepak’s Point of View.” In fact, we were a good 1/3 mile away yet at this point:

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But it’s the kind of location that’s likely to hold a cache. And Preteen couldn’t resist heading over to see if there was another cache in there. There wasn’t.

Here’s Preteen uncovering “Icepak’s Point of View” for real:

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Do you want to see what was inside?

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We T/N/L/N (took nothing and left nothing), but we signed the log. Then we decided to come at “Owl’s Well that Ends Well” from a different angle (without going past the raptor center), so we wouldn’t have to leave our dog. This way was a little more of a workout:

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We knew it was in this general area, so we found a small, broken tree to tie the dog to so we could check all the trees and brush in this area:

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We climbed up and down that hill not knowing that the cache was about five feet from where we left the dog. See that log in the upper right hand corner of the above picture? That’s where it was…but we didn’t know that until we’d made it most of the way down the hill and then decided to go back and get Molly (we didn’t have a very good signal on the GPS, so we thought we were probably in the wrong place). But when I headed back up the hill and saw the other side of that log up above, this is what I saw:

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And here’s the inside view:

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Preteen checked it out, but again we T/N/L/N:

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We had a short hike back to the van…we stopped and picked up pizza on the way home, then watched a movie. All in all, it was a nice day!

Geocaching pics

12 thoughts on “Geocaching pics

  • April 16, 2007 at 4:15 am
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    Great find!

    Son and I have been geocaching, thanks to you! Only, I don’t know how to use my gps to geo, so we just follow the clues.

    Reply
    • April 16, 2007 at 5:56 pm
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      You’re still having trouble with your GPS? What’s the problem? I don’t know if I can help you or not…I know you have a different kind than we have (we have a Garmin). Is the problem getting the waypoints downloaded or is the problem in using the GPS?

      Reply
      • April 16, 2007 at 11:47 pm
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        We have a Garmin, too. I don’t know how to download the waypoints. I’m sure the GPS is fine and that I am the problem. Sigh.

        Reply
        • April 17, 2007 at 11:36 am
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          Oh, I thought you had a Magellen. I must’ve been thinking of someone else.

          Do you have GPS software on your computer? We use Easy GPS (which is free). I don’t know how other programs work, but if you have Easy GPS (and something to connect your GPS to your computer), all you have to do is find the waypoint you want to download on Geocaching.com, then right below the coordinates it says, “click icon to download: LOC waypoint file.” CLick on that “LOC waypoint file” line. Then, from your Easy GPS program, all you have to do is click “send to GPS.” Let me know if that works/doesn’t work for you…

          Reply
          • April 18, 2007 at 3:48 pm
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            Hi Dori,

            I’m on the road for a while on a book tour. But I’ll be sure to try following your directions when I get back!!!

  • April 16, 2007 at 5:18 pm
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    I wonder if they have any geocaching going on around here? How do you find out? Because that looks like fun.

    The little bird is a nuthatch, btw. Isn’t that the coolest name? I like when they hop around on the bottom of a branch, upside down.

    Reply
    • April 16, 2007 at 5:52 pm
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      The bird is a nuthatch??? Really??? It was pecking like a woodpecker. I knew it wasn’t a downy woodpecker…I thought it was just another kind of woodpecker. Thanks for the correction. I can’t find my Iowa bird book.

      As for geocaching, I’m always excited to get other people into that! Go to http://www.geocaching.com! Enter in your zip code and you’ll find out how many caches are hidden near you. There are 30 just within two miles of my house…and about 400 within 30 miles. That’ll keep us busy for quite some time…though it’s more fun to geocache away from home.

      Reply

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