Daddy's Fish BowlA Clear View Of A Father's Family Experiences

Geocaching's Next Superstar

Are you wondering why my kid is in the middle of the woods with a large Tupperware container?  It’s because he had just concluded his first geocaching excursion & was proudly basking in victorious glory.  What is geocaching you may be asking?  Well I’ll tell ya, it’s basically a treasure hunt using a gps device and it’s totally freaking awesome! Well, now that I’ve actually found something, it’s awesome.  I’m kidding, that’s not true; it took me a while to pop my cherry, but even when we weren’t able to locate the “cache” (official word for treasure) we still had a good time just being in the great outdoors and spending family time together.  I have to send a thank you to my buddy over at The Life of a Father of Five, the post that I’ve linked you to is the very reason that our family has now become involved in geocaching.  I foresee our family participating in the sport for a long time to come, the kids love going treasure hunting and it’s also pretty good exercise.  If you’d like to learn more check out the official geocaching site here.

Our geocaching history began a little over two weeks ago and I had no idea what I was getting myself into.  We decided to exclude Ty from the first attempt; can you imagine being a 4 year old kid going on a treasure hunt and coming home with no treasure?  Yeah, well I sure didn’t want to see that level of disappointment sprawled across his face so my intentions were to find a few “caches” first and then coming back with Ty once we knew the locations.  Things didn’t exactly work out that way.  I previously asked for you to imagine a 4 year old coming home with no treasure, well a 26 year old coming home with no treasure surely wasn’t any prettier of a sight.  During our first trip, Fefe and I geared up and went out trekking through the woods following my iPhone GPS & compass.  I was so excited, repeatedly shouting “we’re getting closer” after every few feet in reduction between us and the “cache”.  Once we got to “ground zero”, I was at a total loss and completely unprepared for what to do next.

I was under the impression that we would follow our magical compass until the distance read 0ft, then we’d be able to simply look down and the cache would mystically appear to us.  Oh boy, was I wrong, totally wrong.  Before the iPhone ever got to 0ft, it started spazzing out.  We got down to 7ft away heading north and then the compass just flipped and told us that we were 23ft away in the SE direction.  I was totally confused and seeing as how we were standing in the middle of some woods and had no idea what we were looking for, I quickly began to feel that this trip was not going to end on a good note.  You know what, I was absolutely correct; because while we were searching around for this unknown treasure which was now hidden in a relatively unknown location, Fefe stepped on a red ant hill.  OMG, have you ever been attacked by red ants? Those suckers hurt and they swarmed her foot like fans of a team that had just won a championship game.  So that pretty much ended our search and we went home empty handed.  I spent the next few hours researching geocaching and found that maybe the iPhone isn’t the best GPS device to use in the sport, but some people said it was good enough.  So while Fefe was resting, I decided to go back out and try my luck again (and again, and again).  Three caches later and I was still empty handed, I was so disappointed and ready to give up.

First Cache Find - A Rat & A Penny

Then my Dad came down to visit and I got re-inspired.  We formed a super geocache hunting team and vowed to finish the day victorious.  It took us a while but thanks to a very very easy cache and a very very good hint, we were able to find our first cache ever! (pic above) Once we located it, I checked the iPhone and it told us that we were 62ft away.  Well that sucks, had we not been super sleuthers, and relied heavily on the GPS we would have been screwed.  After finding it, I felt invincible and wanted to try again, but I had to get Ty first, he must be included in all of this treasure hunting glory.  So I went home, grabbed Ty and told him we were going Treasure hunting.  He was uber excited about looking at the map and actually going to find something.  Not too long ago, we used to dress up and pretend we were pirates (pic below); we’d make fake treasure maps and go on hunts through the house.  But this time it was real, we had a real map and real treasure to find and he couldn’t of been happier.  I let him hold the iPhone and direct me to the treasure and once he located it, the look on his face was priceless.  His first cache find without help was filled with tennis balls, but he didn’t care he had set out to search for something and had found it.  That’s all that mattered.

Arrggg Matey! Look at our cool eye patches