Geocaching!

One of our Christmas gifts from my parents was a hand held GPS for hiking/geocaching. I have been wanting to try geocaching for a couple years at least now and now we can! It took almost 2 months but we finally went out yesterday. Had a list of about 10 caches we were going to look for since I really had no idea what to expect. I know they can be easy to find, others not so much.

Our first attempt took us into a neighborhood and we could not see an easy way to get to the area we needed to be without going through a yard so we gave up and filed that one to try again later. I think there was another street that we could have taken to get closer. We will learn more as we do more. It was only 5 miles from our house so easy to get back too.

The next one was just over a mile from our house. This time we made it to the spot but could not find the cache. I am guessing a micro or nano cache (think tiny) is not the best to start with. We also filed it for later since it is so close to home.

Our third attempt was just down the street from the second. They are both themed benches. You would think that the third time is a charm but we again gave up. Partly because we had no clue what we were looking for, partly because they are so close to home we can go back.

I was getting a little disappointed by this time. We headed west to our next stop and finally had luck!


There it is!





Uncovering it and seeing our first found geocache!




Emma was pretty excited to see the treasures inside!




She ended up taking a sticker and leaving a plastic spider!

So we were pretty excited to move on. I plugged in for the next geocache and it took us to an area we wanted to explore anyways. The goal was to stick with geocaches that did not need too much walking but that did not happen with this one. We were able to get within just shy of 1/2 mile of the cache... 1/2 as the bird flies lol. This area was created for trail bikers so the path to where the cache was had a lot of switchbacks. There was not that much elevation change once we got to the top and the top was where the switch backs started to give more trail length to the bikers. So we kept going and finally made it!


On the way there.




Is it here?




Here it is!




Emma is again thrilled with the what she finds! She took an egg of silly putty and left a baggie with the makings for a macaroni necklace!





Looking through the log book.



The view from near the cache. Looking down on the Colorado River.




We did not get back to the car until 5 pm but decided to go try one more that was supposed to be a quick one. It was at a park only a mile or so from where we were at the time. It was another nano cache so I had no idea what to expect.

Can you see it? Dave found this one, it looked like one of the screws. Very small magnetic case just big enough for 1/4 inch piece of paper rolled up.