“Using Multi-million dollar satellites to find
tupperware containers in the woods.”--nucci6

Our First Geocache

Mine, Mine, All Mine!

December 30, 2006

We decided to try our first Geocache today while visiting Faith's parents. "Mine, Mine, All Mine" is located in Economy Park nearby and seems a good first choice, but then, we haven't done this before, so what makes up a good first choice. Faith, Ethan, and I are joined by Uncle John, Grandma and her dog Buffy; needless to say, it was a circus.

John was able to get us to the right parking lot by accident and we found the Silver Mine Trail rather easily. After walking the trail for about 15 minutes (listening to Grandma and Buffy fighting because she hadn't learned how to walk on a leash yet) we seemed to be moving away from the cache.

So we started to bushwack up a steep hill, it was just grass covered so it was really much of a bushwack other than the climb. Ethan was so excited that he climbed up himself without any help. Near the top we found another trail marked by the white dots that were alluded to in the cache description.

Following the new trail, we walked down a steady grade for about 10 minutes. The others were taking their time so Uncle John and I took off ahead trying to figure out how to use the GPS for obtaining the precise location. Not knowing what a real cache looked like, I saw a plastic jar sitting in the middle of the woods, but it turned out to just be garbage.

We wondered the woods for quite a while without much luck, but I wasn't ready to give up, far from it in fact. I decided to try and use the "compass" feature on the GPS that's supposed to point you in the right direction. We're not only learning how to Geocache, but we're also learning how to use the GPS as well.

Following the arrow, we headed back to the same area I was before and Grandma pointed out what I thought was the same piece of garbage I picked up before. I decided to "double check" it and as I was making my way to it; Faith yelled out that she found the cache hidden inside a hollow log.

Ethan was thrilled and began looking throught the treasure inside. He finally decided upon a Wendy's wrist band watch and in put in some of my Star Wars coins I got at Disney. As we started to put the cache back where it belonged, Ethan started to cry; we neglected to tell him how it worked, that we take a treasure and put one in, he thought it was all for him. If I was three, I know I'd think the same thing. We headed back to our car, hooked on a new sport we all enjoy.

Our First Find

Read about our first find, the event that changed our lives as a family forever.

Read more

Make Your Own Custom Garmin Maps

Find out how easy it is to create your own maps for your Garmin GPSr using freely available data and tools.

Read more

Preparing for a Great Day Caching

Here's how we prepare for a great day of caching using TomTom, GSAK, and some macros.

Read more