GEOCACHING!! I LOVE IT!! I have been DYING to make this blog post for a long time now about geocaching and what we do in our spare time!
So first off, many ask this question, what is geocaching?? This short two minute youtube video explains it really well! " http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-4VFeYZTTYs " so just copy this link without the parenthesis and take a look at it. If not interested in the video heres a short wikipedia definition of it:
"Geocaching is an outdoor sporting activity in which the participants use a Global Positioning System (GPS) receiver or mobile device[2] and other navigational techniques to hide and seek containers, called "geocaches" or "caches", anywhere in the world.
A typical cache is a small waterproof container containing a logbook where the geocacher enters the date they found it and signs it with their established code name. Larger containers such as plastic storage containers (Tupperware or similar) or ammunition boxes can also contain items for trading, usually toys or trinkets of little value. Geocaching is often described as a "game of high-tech hide and seek"[by whom?], sharing many aspects with benchmarking, trigpointing,orienteering, treasure-hunting, letterboxing, and waymarking.
Geocaches are currently placed in over 100 countries around the world and on all seven continents, including Antarctica.[3] After almost 12 years of activity there are over 1,760,033 active geocaches published on various websites. There are over 5 million geocachers worldwide."
So how it all came about for Jackson and I is we both decided that we needed to go on more dates with each other but didn't want to spend money. So I googled free date ideas and "Geocaching" was one of the ones mentioned on a list. When I came across it, I recognized it from doing it a few years back with a friend of mine. My friend's dad was way into it, so I went with them a few times to look for some Geocaches, but I really didn't think much of it but just went along with it back than. So when I saw it on the dating webpage I got all excited and told Jackson all about it! I was so anxious to take Jackson out to find some with him. So we went to the website www.geocaching.com and joined! Our geocache name is "Jack&Rach". The only thing we needed now was a gps where we could enter in the coordinates. So we looked into buying one and the cheapest was like 90 dollars, so I looked on my iphone for a "geocaching app" and sure enough found several different apps. So I downloaded some of the free versions and took Jackson out on a geocaching adventure! I'll be honest the first time we went wasn't a very great success, it didn't help that the first one we looked for was a micro size and that we couldn't find it. In fact the list of geocaches we went after were all micro sizes and we couldn't find any of them because they were all micros and we weren't too sure on what we were looking for to begin with. But I was determined to find a geocache with Jackson to show him how fun it really can be, so on the website you can choose what size of geocache to look for, so I chose the largest size possible, haha, and as we were driving home from finding none, I convinced Jackson to go look for just one more geocache and promised we'd find it because it was bigger. So we went and yet again had no luck, we were just about to give up until I decided to look in some type of water hole and found it! What fun it was to find! (At least for me it was, lol) So we only found one on our list of 4 that we were wanting to find, so Jackson figured it was our gps system on our phone and that we needed to get a better gps. I figured after all the ones we couldn't find that Jackson hated it and would never go Geocaching again. But come to find out, JACKSON DOES LIKE IT, because while I was at work the next day, Jackson looked online for some gps devices without me knowing and found a great iphone gps app made for actual geocaching from the main geocaching website. There was a small cost of 10 dollars for the app, but after the both of us looked more into it, we figured it was worth getting. So we got it and have found TONZ of geocaches ever since! We still to this day think it was a great deal and so worth it! Of course we started looking for easier ones that were considered to be bigger boxes. Jackson still to this day insist that we never go after another micro again but the more we do it the more better I think we are getting at it! So someday we will look for micros! :) Anyhow, after finding more geocaches, I told Jackson we needed to start taking pictures, of course not post them on the website but at least get them for our own memories! :) So down below are pictures of our geocaching adventures!
These three pictures above are some of the bigger ones we went after the second time we went out geocaching!
But than they started getting harder as you can see from the pictures below!
This geocache below is considered a micro size, pretty small huh!
And another crazy type of geocache! Not only was it a crazy size but in such a strange spot! We were about to give up on this bullet size geocache until I told Jackson that it just had to be here, so I looked like crazy for it and found it!
Yep! In a telephone pole! We definitely needed tweezers to get it out and I'm so glad that I started bringing some on our geocaching adventures!
So now to explain these next set of pictures, my friend at work says her husband is a big geocacher fan and has done it for the quite some time now. So as I was getting off work, she had her husband come by to talk to me about geocaching, and he said that there were geocaches in all different types of containers!! Sprinklers, screws etc!! And I am so glad that he told me that because the next one we looked for was just that! A water sprinkler type of cache!! Jackson and I were about to give up but than I looked down and remembered what he told me about sprinklers, so I told Jackson to grab it and he looked at me like I was crazy, so I grabbed it and you should of seen Jackson's face! Priceless!! He had the face of, "Are you kidding me!" lol So funny! But ya crazy stuff!! A sprinkler type of cache, we had no idea that it was even a sprinkler type of cache!
And it says right on the geocache "Waterworks" or something like that to look like a sprinkler!!
These are some of the things we took out of the larger geocaches to keep! And we always put something new in it to replace it because that's what your suppose to do. We mostly just put in balloons since we had a bag of balloons around the house. We have other stuff lying around the house that we'll start putting in there once we run out of balloons. The stuff in them aren't anything to exciting but it's the thrill and joy you get from searching and finding the cache! :) That mini toilet is kind of cool lol.
I took a picture of some of the screen shots on my phone from the geocache app. Salt Lake is just full of geocaches but I set my search for a 20 mile radius from our home and all those green and blue dots are current places of geocaches! So there are way more past that little blob of green dots.
This next few pictures are zoomed in pictures, don't know if you can tell but the blue dot with a ring of blue around it is our home! It's in the middle/left of the screen. And you'll see that blue dot on the next few pictures as well! All the smiley faces you see on these pictures are the geocaches we have found and posted a log saying we found it. So whenever we find it and post a log saying we found it, it changes the green dot to a smiley face! My "unrealistic" goal is to make all those green dots smiley faces, it probably won't ever happen but I'm sure we'll find most of them someday! :)
Another zoom in picture to try and show our blue dot of where we are at!!
Anyway, so thats what we've been doing lately in our spare time is geocaching!! We love it and can't wait to find some more! We did find a list of geocaches in Idaho near our home towns and so we look forward to the possibility of taking our family and friends out geocaching with us the next time we see them! :)
