Caching with a 7 year old.

I mentioned in my last post that I had an update on Lincoln Log - I'm thrilled to say that with help from Jack, we found it!  I had been right about the clues and my need for a second set of eyes.  When we approached GZ, I directed Jack to where I thought the cache was hidden and had him look on his own.  Wouldn't you know that he found it within 3 minutes?  This was a great hide and the hardest one I've found so far, at least in terms of official difficulty level.

Jack was also able to help me locate another previous DNF - The $1 School.  This time, it was more a matter of helping me think outside the box.  A fresh set of eyes and a suggestion from him was all it took, and the cache was in hand.

This has gotten me thinking a bit about the pros and cons of caching with a child.  I've seen enough logs from people who either mention their kids or post pictures of them finding caches, so I know it's pretty common, but there are definitely ups and downs to bringing a child along.

The kid in question.  He thinks the mustache makes him look more mature.

PROS

• You get a free pass where you would otherwise look suspicious investigating a hide, e.g. - light pole skirts.  I have gone for a few of these in crowded parking lots and have wasted a lot of time just waiting for people to go away, as I don't want them to think that I'm up to anything nefarious.  With Jack around, I simply pretend to make a fake phone call (sometimes I even pretend that the Garmin is a phone) and look like an inattentive parent.  He can check the light pole skirt without a second look (he's shorter than me anyway) and the worst I get are the occasional dirty look from someone who thinks I'm not paying attention to my kid.
  
  The best part of this method is that he's in on it with me.  He knows that we're messing with people and thinks that it's fun.


• Related to the above point, it opens up parks where I would otherwise look "creepy".  Let's be honest - I'm a very tall, balding, semi-intimidating looking dude.  I can see how it would look "off" if I was checking a playground swing set for a magnetic hide while kids are around.  When I have Jack with me I can wander wherever I want without a second glance, and he gets to play on playground equipment or help me cache, which is really a win/win situation.


• Not only is a kid a great set of young eyes, they also are closer to the ground and can find the lower hides.  This may not be an issue for those of you who are more normal sized, but in my 6'8" case this is a big deal.  There have been several hides that would have been very difficult to spot from my altitude that Jack found in seconds.


• Kids also bring a fresh perspective to things.  They can be brutally honest and see right to the heart of a situation.  This can be entertaining/terrifying around difficult family situations, but can also be incredibly helpful when you're caught in a loop over-thinking a well hidden cache.  I've had a hide or two where Jack has walked right up and guessed immediately where it was, after I had spent a long time trying to get into the head of the CO (cache owner) and develop some sort of mental profile.  Kids can see right through the BS sometimes.

CONS

• "It's too hot outside", "I'm hungry", "I'm bored", "I want to go home".  If Jack's not in the mood to cache, everyone within 30 feet knows about it.  This is a combination of short attention span and lack of patience, both of which improve with age.


• It can be difficult balancing his desire to find a cache with his ability to find a cache.  There is no way he would spot a hide 12 feet up a tree or under a heavy rock (I found one like this once).  Jack tends to get incredibly pissed off if someone else finds the cache when he's looking for it.
  
  Jack also always wants to use the Garmin, and while I totally support that and let him use it as much as possible, he can get frustrated if he pushes the wrong button and changes the display to something unintended. This can lead to complaining, like the point above this one.


• Trying to find a cache while also trying to keep him from exploring the big patch of poison ivy or sticking his hand in a hole with a snake (almost happened) can be exhausting. It's a balancing act between letting your kid explore the world for themselves (which is a life lesson kind of thing) and keeping them out of danger (which is a parenting instinct kind of thing).

My solution so far has been to involve Jack when he either actually wants to go caching and suggests it himself or when we're going to a location that also has a playground.  Caches in parks near playgrounds are great, as it wears him out (always a good idea) and lets me find a hide that I wouldn't get to check out without a kid in tow.

I'm actually planning a future blog post about good local caches for people with little kids.  There are a lot of hides in some really neat parks, and they turn into cheap/free little day trips, which is always a plus.

JANUARY 2013 UPDATE - The post about good local parks for caches is now live.

Caches in this post:

• Lincoln Log
• The $1 School

Great Local Cache - Italian Water Garden Ruins, on the Leiper-Smedley trail

I do have an update on the Lincoln Log cache that I posted about yesterday, but I'm saving that for a future post.  Today, Emily, Jack, and I found my favorite cache so far - Italian Water Garden Ruins.

We had been planning to do a short family caching trip today (short as in the length of the trip, not the height of the family. At 6'8" I throw that bell curve waaaaay off, ha ha!), and I was intentionally looking for caches that were more outdoorsy and scenic than the ones we found in the past.  This particular cache has quite a few favorite points, and I was familiar with the parking area for the trail, as I had scouted it out a few weeks ago.

The Leiper-Smedley trail parallels the Blue Route from Smedley Park near the Springfield Mall, to the Leiper House in Wallingford. It's a paved trail, and parking is available at several spots along the way.  We parked at the closest spot to the cache, right underneath the Blue Route.

The trail, near the parking area underneath the Blue Route.

Neat tidbit - I had scouted this location a few weeks or so ago using the TomTom and the parking coordinates, and it wanted to put me on the Blue Route itself.  If you want to find this cache and are unfamiliar with the area, look on your map or GPS for Avondale Road - that's where the parking area is located.

The three of us started up the trail, which leads right past the first cache on the way - Leiper Knoll.  This was a pretty quick find with a neat container, but very, very thorny.  I'm getting used to traipsing through thorns so it didn't really bother me all that much, but Jack got scratched to the point where he bled, and wow does he freak out at the sight of blood.  I keep a small first aid kit with my Geocaching supplies, so we band-aided him up and moved on to the Italian Water Garden Ruins.

The first thing you notice is that the trail is essentially right against the Blue Route.  I drive past this spot almost daily, and never knew it was here.

The sound barrier wall on the northbound side of the Blue Route.  The trail is just behind that wall.

We walked down the trail for less than five minutes (we would have been there faster, but Jack was dramatically limping from his thorn wound) and saw a stone wall off to the right, with a path leading down below.

Stone wall.

When we went down the path a bit, we turned around to see this:

Ruins of an old fountain, with a pool of water below.  Very overgrown.

This site is actually what remains of an estate that was demolished when they built the Blue Route in the '80s. There is an informative cache log that explained that this was the Hinkson's estate, also known as "Lytlecote".  These walls are part of a series of gardens by one of the entrance ways.

Jack and Emily walking down the trail.

Things were very overgrown, and there was a good amount of trash in the form of beer cans and bottles half buried in the undergrowth, but it was a very cool place to visit.  The cache itself took all of 3 minutes to find, and I actually startled a little rat snake that had been hiding nearby. Very neat to see, though I was unable to get a picture as it slithered off pretty quickly.

The cache itself (NOT in its hiding spot, obviously)

 We spent another 15 minutes or so exploring, and took a few more pictures:

Stairway leading down toward some woods.

Jack, posing as usual.  He forgot about his leg wound as soon as we got here.

All in all, this is my favorite cache that I've found so far.  It had most of what I look for in Geocaching:

• Great scenery
• Connection to history
• Ruins
• Hidden right off of the beaten path
• Local wildlife (snake)

If you're in the area, I highly recommend checking this cache out.  While it's practically right against the Blue Route, you're probably looking at a 5-10 minute drive to the parking area from either the MacDade Blvd. or Springfield exits.

Caches in this post:

• Leiper Knoll
• Italian Water Garden Ruins

Persistence pays off!

It's been over a month since my first real day out Geocaching, and I figured I'd give Sittin' and Watchin' the Traffic Go By another shot.  I had previously logged this as a DNF (did not find) on that first day, and since I had about an hour to kill today while Emily and Jack were out shopping, I drove over to the shopping center near where this was located and gave it another try.

This particular cache is located off of a covered pedestrian walkway right next to a main road, near the entrance ramp to the Blue Route.  GZ (ground zero) is definitely a CITO opportunity, and last time we were there a feral cat wanted to eat Jack.  With the two of them out of the picture, I was much more comfortable navigating the rocks and keeping an eye out for broken glass.

While I've only been caching for a month, I have learned a ton compared to what I knew when I started out. It took me all of 30 seconds to find the cache this time, and the feeling of succeeding at something that I had previously failed at was awesome.  Sure, this is really only a kinda/sorta nerdy GPS game, but it was great realizing that I had learned so much in the past month that something I had found impossible was now a piece of cake.

I have two more non-logged DNFs that I want to check out in the past few days:  Lincoln Log and The $1 School.

Lincoln Log is a 4.5 star difficulty hide that seems to cause trouble for a lot of people, but the cache description is dripping with clues.  I am 90% sure that I know what and where the cache is, but I spent about 10 minutes there last week looking for it and came up empty handed.  I think a second set of younger eyes will help, so this is one where Jack will not only be helpful; he'll be bouncing off the walls if he ends up being the one finding the cache.

The $1 School is one that I come pretty close to on the drive to work.   I found another one nearby and tried for this one the same day, but was unsuccessful.  I stopped by here again on lunch break a few days ago, but the area is full of potential hiding areas and I came up empty handed again.

In the meantime, I will continue to search for more caches.  I'm up to 56 finds in just over a month, and each hide teaches me something that could be helpful in finding the next.

Caches in this post:

• Sittin' and Watchin' the Traffic Go By
• Lincoln Log
• The $1 School

Great Cache Location - Sycamore Park in Lansdowne, PA

Instead of listing all of the caches I found in the past few days, I'm just going to focus on one particular cache - Sycamore, in Lansdowne PA.

One of my work sites is in Southwest Philadelphia, and while there are not too many caches in that immediate vicinity, this one is pretty close by.  I actually have driven within a block of it several hundred times while traveling between my work sites in Rosemont and Philly, and had no idea this was here.

This cache is located in Sycamore Park, which is a little park just over a block behind the Lansdowne Theater.  The biggest (literally) feature of the park is an immense sycamore tree, estimated to be about 380 years old, which dates it to William Penn's time.

This tree is huge.  It's either the second or third largest tree in the state, and considering how rural most of the state is, I was shocked to find it in such a developed area.  The trunk is 22 feet in circumference, and the tree is 129 feet tall.

I took a picture with my "cell phone" (I use the term loosely - work provides me with a phone, though I think if rotary cell phones were an option, that's what I would receive)

The cache itself was pretty straightforward, and took all of a minute to find.  This location is less about the cache and more about the incredible piece of nature about a block off the beaten path.  I highly recommend checking it out if you're in the area.

Cache in this post:

• Sycamore

Post vacation wrap up - NJ Shore

It's been a busy week!  I went after 30 caches in three states, and found 22 of them. First things first - the Garmin is great!  I have learned a ton about it in the past week, and will be posting some tutorials at some point.

I have the eTrex 20, which is the middle model in the current eTrex line.  The eTrex 10 has a black and white screen, the eTrex 20 has color, and the eTrex 30 has a magnetic compass built in and the ability to interact with the Garmin Chirp beacons.  All three support paperless Geocaching, and can also receive signals from GLONASS (Russian GPS satellite system).  From what I've noticed, GLONASS isn't affecting the GPS accuracy as much as it is improving the GPS time to acquire a signal.  My car's TomTom can take a minute or more to acquire a GPS signal, but my Garmin is usually up and connected by the time it's done starting up, which is about 20 seconds.  Freaking sweet!

Caching at the shore

All told, I went after 14 caches in Cape May Court House, Wildwood, and Cape May.  I logged 3 DNFs and one "Needs Maintenance", and I also found my first three trackables!  One Travel Bug, one Geocoin, and a copy of a Geocoin that was left in a cache with a note to just log it as "discovered".

Wildwood shot I took in 2010. Kite Aerial Photography is another hobby of mine.
That's me holding the kite line in the lower right of the picture. 

An interesting thing about caches in this area was that Cape May County, New Jersey has an official series of caches called CMCST, which is the Cape May County Sites Tour.  Each of these caches is placed in an area that's either a good spot for sightseeing, local tourist interest (the Cape May County Zoo had one), or of historical interest (a WWII bunker on the beach in Cape May).  Very cool.

Wildwood had two of my favorite caches, and one of my DNFs was at a great location.  The Captain Was Here... well, I'm not going to spoil it, but if you do the street view thing on Google Maps with the coordinates from the cache description, you'll see where it was.  Very, very neat.  I grew up in South Jersey and spent a lot of time at the shore growing up, and had driven by this spot quite a few times.  This was the first time I actually got out checked it out.

Wild Thing - Holy crap this was neat, but hard.  The cache itself is nothing fancy, but it's in a major landmark and is constantly surrounded by people taking pictures.  I'm 6'8" tall and don't exactly blend into the background, so it was nerve wracking (but fun, in its own way) to try to be stealthy enough to pick it up.  Luckily (?) the weather was starting to turn, so when the crowd thinned out I made the grab.

The Ships Will Find Their Way! II - This was one of my DNFs, but later logs show that the cache had gone missing and I wasn't just losing my mind trying to find it.  This was located at the Hereford Inlet Lighthouse, which I didn't even know existed. Beautiful gardens, and there is a museum tour that I now will definitely check out when we visit the area again in 2013.

Wikimedia Commons image shown.

Another one notable for it's location was The Stinton Family Lighthouse Cache. This was one of two caches placed near the Cape May Lighthouse.  This is also where I picked up the Geocoin.

Wikimedia Commons image shown.

All in all I saw a ton of different types of caches, and most of them were in very cool locations.  The cache locations all seem to fall into a few categories:

• Beautiful location
• Interesting / historical location
• Good hiding spot, but not much else going for it
• Totally random spot, placed on a whim, or possibly while intoxicated

Luckily, most of them fell within the first two categories, but I saw a few of the other ones as well.  Now that I've been doing this for a few weeks I'm getting a better idea about what I want to do when I create my own caches.  I'd like to strike a balance between location and interesting cache container.

I spent the rest of the week picking up caches back home in PA, and then swung down to Delaware to get my first two in that state, and the badge to go along with it.  I picked up quite a few in Rose Tree Park, which is pretty local, and another spot where I've done a little Kite Aerial Photography.

Kite photo I took in Rose Tree Park in 2011. That's me again.

This was honestly the first place where I've been that took me "into the woods" so to speak.  All of my caches to date were in very public areas, but most of the ones here were down trails in the woods.  I have to say, I found the experience terrific and can't wait to find more local caches that are off the beaten path.

Saw this hollow tree.  I could stand up in it comfortably (except for the spiders).

While I have been getting more interested in caching (obsessed?), I think I have reached the limit with Emily and Jack.  Emily doesn't mind caches if they are part of what we're doing, but gets frustrated if I want to "pick up a cache on the way", which I have to admit I've been doing quite often this week.  Jack likes caching, but gets totally pissed off if he isn't the one who finds it. It's no good pretending to play dumb and act like I don't know where it is - I have spent his whole life messing with his head, so he's on to me, ha ha. 

In truth, Emily is right - I have to be able to strike a balance between having fun on my own, trying to have fun as a family, and driving the two of them nuts.  Seeing as vacation is over and we're all back to the daily grind, I don't think this will be much of an issue, but I will keep it in the back of my mind as I cache.

One final note - I picked up a few souvenir badges for my profile this week - Delaware State and Second International Geocaching Day. 

Trackables mentioned in this post:

• POELOELOEP-TRACK03
• Casper the Cache Ghost
• Geo-Achievement Finds 500 Geocoin

Caches picked up on vacation:

• CMCST - Park/Zoo
• Snark in the Park (DNF)
• Who's got a boo-boo?
• CMCST - NW Meadow View
• Wild ramp
• Wild Thing
• CMCST - War and Memories (Needs Maintenance)
• Wild Flower
• CMCST - SL (DNF)
• Wild About Diamonds
• Wild West
• The Ships Will Find Their Way! II (DNF)
• The Captain Was Here
• The Stinton Family Lighthouse Cache
• where the platypus lie
• Bat in the Woods
• Mohawk Cache
• AMERICA ONE
• The King of Boxes (DNF)
• dnf 777 (DNF)
• Ithan Park Cache
• By-Way to the HighWay
• Emlen Tunnell Park
• Lone Ranger #7 Is it fair or foul?
• Austin Holly Cache
• Taking care of business
• Coming Soon
• You can do it; we can help....
• More Railroad History (DNF)
• BAAAH HUMBUG!!! (DNF)

First day with the Garmin

I am now officially the owner of a GPS receiver!  As a nerd, this makes me incredibly happy.  Vacation started yesterday, and we swung by my parents' house in NJ today to pick up the Garmin.  I spent the last few days going over the manual, so I was familiar with it when I first turned it on.  I didn't have any maps  set up to copy to it when I first turned it on, but I did have a GPX file on my thumb drive, so I loaded it up and my dad and I made a few cache stops when we picked up lunch.

Wow, this makes a world of difference!  My father had his iPhone with him, but my accuracy was much better, and I can only imagine how things will work when I actually get a map loaded into it tonight.  We picked up three caches in all of 15 minutes.  Two of them were ones that my father had previously found, but I got them without help in no time.  The third one was one he had not been able to find, and what we discovered was that my coordinates were about 10-12 feet away from where his iPhone put him... but the cache was probably 15 feet away from that.  The accuracy of each cache is limited by the device used to originally make the hide, and this really was a demonstration of that.

Cache number 3 was a really creative hide, though.  Great container - the same person who did the KriKat cache I mentioned previously did this one, and it's really inspiring me to put some effort like that into caches of my own.

Well, I'm getting some free topographical maps over at GPS File Depot.  I'm loading NJ, PA, and DE in he internal memory now, and once I get a Micro SD card I'll download the routable Open Street Maps for Garmin, so I will be able to get directions right from my handheld and forego the TomTom entirely.  I can't wait!

Caches in this post:

• Pink
• What holds paper together?
• KAT-ATTRACTION 

First Nano, First Multi, and more!

Happy early birthday GPS, Batman!  My parents let me know today that they are getting me a Garmin eTrex 20 for my birthday in October, and as an early present I'll actually be picking it up from them next week. This allows me to use it on our upcoming vacation to the Jersey Shore.  We'll be visiting Wildwood and Cape May, so I'm hoping to pick up quite a few caches, especially since I will have the GPS.  Woohoo!

I've been picking up caches both on the way to work and on lunch break.  As a rule, I don't actually eat at lunch, for no real reason other than force of habit.  This gives me enough time to get out and pick up a few caches near work, maybe not on a daily basis, but often enough to keep me busy.

I actually have two work sites in PA - Rosemont and Southwest Philadelphia.  I spend 90% of my time in Rosemont, and my range at lunch goes from Springfield to the south, Wayne to the west, a little past Ardmore (almost to Narberth) to the east, and possibly as far as Plymouth Meeting to the north.  There are several hundred caches in that range, so if I budget my time properly I should be able to get to a cache (or several), find it, and get back within an hour.

Recent notable finds - I found my first nano sized cache a few days ago, Old Marple School Playground.  Wow, I knew that these existed and were small, but I didn't expect them to be that small.  I also managed to find another one this morning.  I can see how there is a love/hate thing with nano caches, as they are super easy to hide, but also super easy to find.  It would be easy to flood an area with them and block out potentially more creative hides, but from what I see around here they are almost all in parking lots anyway, so options there are pretty limited.

I also found my first multi cache with help from Jack - Hangin' Here Watchin' Traffic.  I live in an area with loads of trains, and this one required driving to a few train stations and getting some numbers from mileage markers, doing a tiny bit of math, and then picking up the hide.  I was able to swing by both stations on the way to work to get the numbers, and then picked the final stage up after picking Jack up from summer camp.

I've been checking out some of the other local multis, and this falls on the easy side of the scale.  Some of them require quite a bit of driving, so I'll need to reserve them for weekend trips, or spread them out over several work days.

Did not find - I have had several DNFs recently, but I'm chalking this up to experience. I logged one of them where I legitimately thought I was searching the right spot, but not the others where I'm less sure. Compared to what I knew that first day out, all of 2.5 weeks ago, I have learned a ton, and there is nowhere to go but up from here.  I've been reading loads of logs on nearby caches, and we have some local cachers with thousands upon thousands of finds.  I can't wait to crack 100 - hopefully within the next month or so!

Recent caches found:

• Ice Ice Baby (DNF)
• A Well Guarded Cache
• Old Marple School Playground
• Yellow Tag
• Hangin' Here Watchin' Traffic
• Bull's Eye!
• Opposite of a Giant
• Please Don't Park Here.
• Bulls Eye - Again!

Second NJ trip - Mullica Hill

Today we had a family caching trip with my in-laws.  My father spent a great deal of time at Jack's birthday party in early July talking to my in-laws about caching, and since we were planning on visiting them this weekend, a whole group of us went out to find some of the local hides.  Most of them were in Ella Harris Park, and a few others were within a mile or two of there.

Today's lesson learned was stealth.  Our group consisted of me, Emily, Jack, my father-in-law, his wife, and my sister-in-law.  It was impossible to be stealthy in that group.  My father-in-law and Jack were just as focused as I was in trying to find the caches, but the ladies were basically just there for the nature walk and stimulating conversation.

Luckily, it was a very hot day and there were not many people in the park.  We did strike up a conversation with a couple who happened to be sitting near the end of a short nature trail through some woods.  They were curious about what we were doing, as six people traipsing through the undergrowth shouting "over here?" was far from stealthy.  After I explained things, they were very interested in what exactly Geocaching is, and what you need to do it.  I mean, for a hobby that seems to have a nerdy reputation, most people that I have had conversations with about it seem to think it's pretty neat.

Nothing too exciting to report on the hides.  I'm noticing that most of the ones we have found are too small to hold trinkets and are just bison tubes or film canisters with logs in them, but we did find one today that was a Tupperware container.  I traded something small for a little geotoken from a local group, which I gave to Jack.  He collects those smushed up souvenir pennies, and this falls into that category of item.  Anything I can do to keep him interested in it is fine with me.

Caches found:

• The World at Your Fingertips
• Fire Hobbit
• T Y O AT E H P
• Eschew Obfuscation #2
• Not Quite a Micro

Premium Membership!

Well, I spent the $30 on a premium Geocaching membership.  There are a few premium hides in my area that I want to check out, and I intend to get a GPS someday and would like to be able to use Pocket Queries.  Aside from that, I really have to say that this hobby has been the most entertaining one that I have tried in a long, long time, so anything I can do to support it is well worth it to me.

Cache update - I picked up my first guard rail cache today, about 5 minutes away from where I work. I know that these are common, but it was neat to be able to get one for myself.  This was a very quick find, and I just took a few minutes on lunch break to pick it up.  There are a few more caches in the park near this one, but I'll save them for when I actually have a GPS.

Caches in this post:

• This Is the End of Ithan Valley Park

Update on the Travel Bug

Almost forgot - Jack's Travel Bug was picked up within three days of us placing it in the cache, and the note said that it was going on its way to Seattle, which would have been perfect for getting to Japan.  Of course, that didn't actually happen, and it ended up back in its original location a few weeks later.  From what I have read, this kind of stuff is common, and I should expect the Travel Bug to go missing for long stretches.

Someone picked it up today, though, so we'll see where it ends up.  Even if it doesn't end up in Japan, I'm still happy to see it moving around a bit.

One other note - I'm on Reddit pretty much daily, and have now spent some time on the Geocaching subreddit. I've learned a lot, and the folks there seem to be pretty helpful.  I'm keeping the link on the sidebar of the blog, and I highly recommend checking it out if you get a chance.