So for Thanksgiving this year, I have to tell you what we actually did do, because I got distracted yesterday about the whole Urban Pioneers missing the tower thing…
We packed up the three kids and the dog and all their stuff and ours in the Jeep Commander (which is far, far too small for that inventory, really). We locked up the fabulous house as best we could, which is not at all like locking up the condo and riding down in the elevator to leave everything safely in charge of the Concierge and Security Guards, but there I go–
We went to the in-laws in Dahlonega, Georgia, which is about an hour north of Atlanta, OTP (Outside The Perimeter), very non-urban, very nice for a weekend. They live on an unpaved road, which is fine, and only goes to show how spoiled and urban I’ve become after 15 years in the city, ITP. But, again, I digress.
We had a fabulous time in the country over Thanksgiving: Geocaching!
No, that wasn’t a sneeze, but thank you.
My wonderful Father-In-Law (a retired military man) discovered, researched and decided that this would be a terrific family activity over the holiday — most importantly, getting everybody together and OUTSIDE, away from TVs, computers and video games. Not that we were totally away from all electronics, because Geocaching (“geo-cashing”) is a high-tech scavenger hunt, using GPS coordinates and tracking with a hand-held GPS device or the iPhone (which, coincidentally enough, hubby and I just bought ourselves for early-Christmas and G’Ma & G’Pa already had one) — yet another amazing thing you can do with an iPhone!
It all starts on a website: www.geocaching.com
As the good people there explain:
“Geocaching is a high-tech treasure hunting game played throughout the world by adventure seekers equipped with GPS devices. The basic idea is to locate hidden containers, called geocaches, outdoors and then share your experiences online. Geocaching is enjoyed by people from all age groups, with a strong sense of community and support for the environment.”
– and – There are 692,733 active geocaches around the world.
This is serious stuff! And a lot of fun, really.
So you download the Geocaching app on your iPhone and register on the website as well. With your iPhone, you can locate all of the geocaches nearby, using any address or zip code or simply using your present location, which the iPhone can determine by satellite — isn’t that reassuring?! (And kind of creepy, yes.) And you go–
You have a little map, which shows your position relative to the geocache for which you are searching; and a digital compass (on the iPhone), which shows you which direction you are supposed to be going and how many miles/feet you are from the cache. It’s not an exact science, as we discovered, because somehow that little compass can go wild in your hand, even if you are standing still.
We went out in the country surrounding Dahlonega by a river to find our first geocache, which was hidden out in the woods in a metal ammo box. It is interesting to see the loyalties, strategies and alliances that develop on a geocaching mission. We had three iPhones and seven people, so we grouped, but intended to all stay together. That quickly fell apart, when my own dear hubby ditched me and the kids! He and his mom sent us off down one side of the river, hiking with G’Pa. By the time we figured out we were on the wrong side of the river and had to go all the way back to get to the other side, dear hubby — my very own Prince Charming — and G’Ma had jumped in the car, drove across the bridge and set off without us — they started running when we almost caught up to them and let us wander in Deliverance country while they cleverly located the geocache. So not pretty.
The “treasure” was a bunch of little toys and stuff, with instructions and a paper log. You sign in on the log to record your find and if you want to take something out of the geocache, you have to leave something in it’s place, following the directions in the geocache. We left band-aids, figuring they might be useful to future seekers, and we took a tagged geocache treasure — called a Travel Bug — to carry to another geocache location.
At the end of the day, you go back to the website and record your discoveries online. It’s very cool, with the Travel Bugs that are registered and have special metal dog tags with a unique identification number, you can read all about their journey — where they started and why somebody placed them in a geocache, and where they’ve been — you can even see their progress on a map online, as people have logged in and recorded where they picked them up and where they left them. One of the little guys we carried away (a little Jak-Jak doll from the Incredibles movie) had been traveling for almost three years and had traveled over 6,000 miles! The grandparents are going to take him with them to Texas this week and find a geocache there to get him off the East Coast and keep him in play.
On our first family Geocache adventure, we searched for three treasures:
1) The ammo box out by the river;
2) A teeny-tiny little metal canister thing placed near a Taco Bell; and
3) A treasure supposedly near the Dahlonega McDonalds, but we never found it and eventually got run off by the manager and a cruising sheriff…you know, there are certain risks to this! (Actually, the McD’s manager was very nice, just wanted to know what we all (4 adults/3 children) were doing wandering around the McD’s parking lot with our tricorders out. We did eventually give up because we couldn’t find the thing, so we all went in and had sodas.)
The men and male children went out later and found a couple more, and one the next morning, too, in the Dahlonega Visitor’s Center. They discovered one of those tagged Travel Bugs that we brought back to Atlanta and put into a geocache we found this morning (out again!) at the park near our house.
Geocaches are all over the place, and Geocaching is truly a fun, FREE outdoor family activity that everyone can enjoy together, providing you’re not ditching each other and running ahead to be FIRST…
And that’s Geocaching — what a hoot!
