For The Love Of Music

Our 4th geocache hunt should lead us to a container with music CDs in it. The hunt has a couple of stages to it and a little bit of math is involved. The first coordinates bring us to a milk house that was built in 1880 on what used to be Nelson Farm. It's about two blocks from our house. We take information from this sign to assist in getting our next set of coordinates.


Also at the milk house we locate a door knob in which the color of it is part of the clue for the next coordinates.

The Nelson milk house.

The next set of coordinates bring us to a nature preserve area with a little pond. We are able to walk here from the milk house. The sign has information about creatures that live in the area. Nathan uses the sign to find out the maximum speed a dragonfly can go and counts legs displayed on the frog on the sign. We use those numbers to get our next set of coordinates.

The final area is a little spillway that we walk about half a mile to. The cache should have been located in a little concrete tube, but we are unable to find it. A few weeks prior a very heavy rain hit the area and it appears many items washed downstream in the little canal. We believe the cache washed away and someone likely found it out in the open. We had a lot of fun doing this multi-stage hunt even though we couldn't find the cache itself.

Geocache Intro

Click on any photo to see a larger image.

We've taken up a hobby called geocaching. It's an outdoor treasure-hunting activity that requires the use of a GPS receiver or other navigational techniques to hide and/or seek containers (called "geocaches" or "caches"). A typical cache is a small waterproof container that includes a logbook and "treasure", usually trinkets of small value. There are over 444,000 geocaches registered on various websites devoted to this sport. Geocaches are currently placed in 222 countries around the world on all seven continents. (Wikipedia)

Nathan is holding a Magellan GPS.

Peak-a-Boo

Holding up the GPS and instructions as we get ready to start out from the parking lot. We decided to do a series of geocache hunts at nearby parks. The terrain is easy and the hunts are not difficult -- a good way to get our feet wet before we move on to more difficult searches in the future.

Nathan holds the GPS and leads the way into a large field.


Checking the display arrows to see if we're heading in the right direction.

Getting close...

Found it!

First geocache find ever! This is a microcache container. Because of its size, it has only a logbook inside the container. We make a logbook entry and replace the container for the next person to find. This is a quick find, so we decide to do two more geocache hunts after this one.

Sara's Duck Pond

Our second geocache hunt in the park series. Nathan comes up to a fence surrounding the duck pond and checks the GPS readings to see where we need to go from here.


The GPS leads us to yet another evergreen. Nathan points to a camouflaged container hanging in the branches.

Holding the container. This one is larger than the previous one we found.


Sitting with the contents of the container. Time to make a trade.

Nathan picks out a string of Mardi Gras beads and in its place leaves a key chain light. Michael makes an entry in the container's logbook.

Practice Your Backswing

This is our third and final geocache hunt for the day in the park series. We're losing light.


The GPS leads us to some tennis courts and benches. Nathan wonders where it could be.


It's another microcache. A very small shoe polish container with a magnet attached to it so it can stick to the metal leg under the bench. Do to its size, it contained only enough room for log entries.


Nathan proudly shows his find. Three geocaches in one day! We plan to do some more challenging ones in the weeks ahead, so stay tuned!