Our first (sort of) day Geocaching

Today was our first day looking for caches, though to be totally honest, these were not the first caches that we have found.  I had signed up for the Geocaching web site over 6 years ago, but as I have no GPS I never really intended to go looking for anything.  Back in April of 2011, I took a look online and saw that there was a cache within walking distance of our house, and when I popped the coordinates into Google Earth, it was pretty obvious where it was hidden.

Jack, Emily and I took a walk over to to the nearby park and found View of the Lake within a few minutes.  I didn't quite know what to expect when I opened it, and I had no trinkets or anything to trade, but I signed the log and that was that.

Near "View of the Lake".  Picture from 2008.

January 2013 Update - The area as it looks today.
 The boat house was damaged in Hurricane Sandy.

I'd say I was hooked, but I really wasn't.  I'm all into technology, but don't have a smart phone (work gives me a phone, but it's something that Alexander Graham Bell would be comfortable using) or a GPS, and part of the whole idea of Geocaching for me, at least at that point, was using the GPS to find the hide.  It was neat to find one so close to home, and Jack and I checked up on it at least twice a month, but I had no interest in looking for more.

That all changed today.

We have been trying to find cheap family activities to get us through the weekends over the summer, and since my dad got Jack the Travel Bug a few weeks back, I have been spending more time on the Geocaching web site and have found quite a few that are within a mile or so of the house.  Caching could kill a little time and let us do what amounts to a treasure hunt, so it would be well worth trying out.  I still don't have a GPS or smart phone, but the satellite images on Google Earth are good enough that I figured we could find a few.

The first one we went for was "Railroad History Part Deux".  I'm all about local history, and this cache is on the site of what used to be the Baldwin Locomotive Works.  As it is a Sunday, the parking lot was empty, and we parked nearby and scoured the area we printed from the Google satellite map until we found it.  Success!

The lesson learned here is that Jack really wants to be the one to find the cache.  Wow, was he pissed off when I found it.  Seeing as it was several feet off the ground, there was no way that he could find it, but that didn't matter.

From there we found two more - "Employees Only" and "Lets Play".  "Employees Only" was hidden in the square boxy part of a light pole, and we actually got to meet the person who set out the cache, as he lives nearby.  A young man shouted "You found my Geocache!" from about 75' away, after we had spent about 10 minutes stumbling around until I thought to look in the light pole box.  We spoke for a minute or two before he went off.

"Lets Play" was in another local park, and this one was a magnetic keyholder.  As before, I found it and Jack was pissed off, but hey, he'll learn how this works eventually.

The last one we went for was called "Sittin' and Watchin' the Traffic Go By".  We got to the right area and I looked around for a bit, but this must be someplace that kids go to drink beer and smash bottles.  There was a good amount of glass around and I didn't want Jack climbing all over it, and about 2 minutes after we got there a local stray cat wandered over and started eyeing Jack up like he was a snack, so we left.

We ended up spending a little over two hours out and about and had a lot of fun, so yes, I'm officially hooked!  I spent a little while this evening familiarizing myself with some of the concepts, like LPCs (light pole caches) and terms, like DNF (did not find), so future posts will hopefully sound a lot more like I know what the hell I'm talking about.

Caches in this post:

• View of the Lake
• Railroad History Part Deux
• Employees Only
• Lets Play
• Sittin' and Watchin' the Traffic Go By (DNF)