The Husband Clan Geocaching

The Husband Clan’s Geocaching

June 8, 2011

We have taken up a new hobby, Geocaching! For those who don’t know what it is, this is how it is described on the box of my new Magellan eXplorist GC GPS:

“Geocaching is a high-tech version of the game “hide and seek”, where adventure seekers use GPS technology to hide and find physical objects, solve location-based puzzles, and share experiences online. Geocaching is enjoyed by people of all ages and promotes a strong sense of community and support for the environment”

One video I watched on Geocaching a lady said “ It is a way to get nerds out into the wilderness.” I thought that fit me pretty good, even though my kids are undecided if I am a nerd or a geek.

Basically (in the simplest form) what you do is get at least a basic free membership to www.geocaching.com and put in your address to look up the nearest cache and either send it to your GPS or get the iPhone app (the app logs the caches for you.) Then drive in your car and just follow the directions until you get close, hop out and look for a cache. Sign the log book, trade trinkets if able, and log it onto the Geocaching web site and poof you found your first cache.

 

I was officially labeled the “The Nag-a-gator”, now to explain this: I have control of the iPhone or GPS and tell them where to try to look. Of course, I am suppose to be “the navigator” but a bad pronunciation and a little humor from my husband, I am now “The Nag-a-gator.”

He graciously told me I could simply call him, “Captain my Captain” since he drives us around. As of yet we have not labeled the kids but I am sure we will before long.

Another job of mine is to sign the log books (sorry for the sloppy handwriting fellow “cachers”, it is hard to write neat on an iPhone screen).

 

I want to thank my friend Charles Capps for giving us our Geocaching “nickname”, “The Husband Clan” in his delightful story on Facebook. When I posted we were looking into Geocaching, he wrote: 

“Yeah, I can see it now. The Husband Clan racing on their four wheelers, reading their GPS units as they go (mine is mounted to my handlebar...lol) searching for the cache. Austin finds it, opens it up and it already has 12 notes from others in it. Not to be deterred, Husband Clan is off again, determined to be the first people there. The trail stops, they climb this mountain, only to have to repel down a cliff side to find the cache and someone is camping there. Yep, they are off again....”

Now I doubt we will get that into it, I don’t see any cliff repelling in my near future but I loved the story so decided to go with the name!

Stewart was skeptical about Geocaching at first, he didn’t see a purpose in it. Needless to say GOD apparently wanted to prove to him it was a fun family thing to do because Stewart found our family’s first find and found 3 of the 8 we found the first day. Now he is hooked!

 

Anna was excited to find this little one all by herself.

 

Austin found two the first day, this one took some climbing.

I wanted to make sure each kiddo found one for themselves. So we kept going till each one had their “first find” Adam was the last to find one but he is the youngest so that is to be expected.

 

 

Some of the caches are really small and not hid where you would first think. They are hid off in the woods and takes a long time to find and that make little kids grumpy and whiney, (can you see it hanging from the tree limb a little black metal cylinder by Stewart’s shoe.)

 

Others are just right off the road and a fairly nice size, big enough for trade items called “swag” and travel bugs (the gorilla with the dog tags is a travel bug). The kids were very excited about these because they actually have stuff in them besides just a log sheet. It is neat to see what others left behind.

 

The first day my kids (mainly Adam) was wanting to trade, he had little toy animals that had scripture on their backs. He never did do a trade, mainly because he kept waiting for the next one to see if he liked the items in it better.

 

We decided to go by “Card and Party Factory” and picked up some little wooden cross necklaces and fabric “Jesus Loves Me” bracelets for the kids to have some “swag” for trade.

The kids ended up the next day just wanting to add stuff without taking anything, so I let them. Even in the littlest caches, they could roll up the bracelet and put it in with the log. I thought it was great of them to want to give without expecting something in return.

 

A happy little girl! She is very proud of herself, she snagged the first find of our second day and our first ammo box cache.

 

Austin was good at looking in the trees and brushes for “micros”. I think Anna and Austin found the most caches the second day. Adam and I coming in last but we still had fun. 

I can’t wait till cooler weather when we take back up hiking the trails again because some trails have caches to find along the way.

I would like to say please if you find an odd box or container that has a paper with a bunch of names on it and maybe some trinkets in it, please just put it back the way you found it because it is a very good chance it is a Geocache. It was very disappointing to get to an area and look and look and there is no cache because someone took it not knowing it was a part of a world wide game.

These people are referred to as “Muggles” by most geocachers, apparently it is a term from a movie I have never watched. Frankly we call them “Mugglers” and sometimes we go as far as to call them “thuggy smuggley mugglers” although after reading about the term “Muggles”  and which movie it came from, I think I will just start calling them “Cache Bandits.” The kids like to act all dramatic, so any time we see a car coming we all are suppose to “act natural” so they don’t see the cache and rob or destroy it. When a car approaches they scurry about trying to find something to look natural doing on the side of the road. I am sure it is totally natural for a 10 years old girl to be “checking the tires!” 

At this time there are 1,413,284 (and counting) active geocaches around the world. They are on every continent and most countries. The little squares represent caches.

This is just the Texas caches.

 

“The first documented placement of a GPS-located cache took place on May 3, 2000, by Dave Ulmer of Beavercreek, Oregon.”  (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Geocaching) <—take a look at the history of it!

In the last 11 years it has exploded into what it is today. Amazing isn’t it!