Alex's 1st Sandhills Adventure: Geocaching the Sandhills

Can you spot the geocache?

Geocaching is something new and exciting that we recently started doing. Alex had first mentioned how he wanted to start geocaching when he got his first smartphone back in April 2013, but obviously we didn't really get into it.  Geocaching involves using an app on your phone to get the coordinates for a hidden item. The best analogy for it is following an electronic treasure map to hidden (never actually buried) treasure. The GPS coordinates will get you within about 16' of the object and you need to start searching for them when you get close. Some of the objects can be large, such as an ammo container, other times they can be quite small like a pill bottle covered with cammo duct tape. They can even be as small as a pencil eraser! The ammo can ones are also fairly easy due to the large size. Your app will tell you what size of cache you are looking for. Although the container won't be buried underground, it can be camouflaged by other things. This could be leaves, trees, branches, shrubbery, or anything else! One of the caches by Valentine was actually an ammo can hidden inside a tire hub on the side of the road.

Bryan Bridge, near Valentine, was awarded The Most Beautiful Steel Bridge

A few useful geocaching terms:

Muggle
A non geocacher. Based on "Muggle" from the Harry Potter series, which is a non-magical person.
Ground Zero (GZ)

The point where your GPS device shows that you have reached the geocache location. At ground zero, you are zero feet (or zero meters) away from your destination.

SWAG "Stuff We All Get." 

Trade items left in caches by geocachers.

For a glossary of terms click here!





Wait! There is more to this geocaching thing! Part of the game (and what determines the "difficulty" of the find) is often stealth. Geocaching can look awfully suspicious, so when you are looking for the cache you need to play it cool and not draw unwarranted suspicion from nearby "muggles". This really does become an interesting part of the challenge in finding the geocaches. 

These "moo-ggles" were onto us. We'll have to up our stealth game next time.

My (Mak) view from the geocache of Alex with the dogs
waiting on the Cowboy Trail to avoid cacti while I grabbed the
geocache from way up on the hill.
The dogs were not fans of me leaving them behind!

We have completed several of the caches we attempted, while some we were not able to find. We're still new to this, so maybe we'll hone our skills over time. In our defense one probably had a difficult level beyond what we should have been going for and was just of the side of the road and after looking for a good 20 minutes we were running the risk of someone thinking we were broke down. One of the more difficult caches to find was one that was in a pill bottle covered in cammo duct tape in a tree.  These kind of geocaches are fun just for the challenge of finding them in the first place. These smaller caches don't hold any "SWAG", but make you feel good for being able to add to the list of caches you have found. SWAG can be just about anything and is usually the kind of promotional stuff you pick up for free or random knik-knaks. Some SWAG we took from geocaches included: small toy snake, small carribeaner, box of wood screws, and a guitar pick. When there is SWAG to trade in a geocache you always leave something of equal or greater value.

My view of the rest of the cowboy trail from Ground Zero

My favorite part of geocaching is that it takes you to places that you normally wouldn't go. Often times Ground Zero can be absolutely gorgeous like the one in the picture above. The view was breathtaking although I had to brave a one mile hike, avoid cacti, scale a hill, and climb through a tree all in flip flops! Several of the ones we visited while going to Valentine were placed around historical markers. It was a good chance to view some of the historical sites in the area. Most of them had signs with text on them explaining what each area was and the significance of each. Going forward I decided to make it a point to read all of the signs. We have already learned a lot! Geocaching makes you look for these markers now instead of just flying past them on the road. Definitely one of the coolest markers ended up being much more than just a pull off on the side of road! We stopped to grab a geocache called "Hippity Hoppity Harrop", but it was much more than we expected!

Barely marked and on the side of a rather infrequently used highway was this little park. There was a camping area, bathroom, display windmill, WORKING hand water pump, mown walking trails, picnic area, and many educational signs. It was a really neat pit stop and a great way to stretch our legs for a bit.

It's a good thing Alex isn't afraid of heights!

One of my favorite ones was at the top of a windmill, so I had to climb up it in order to find it in a magnetic hide-a-key.  We knew the geocache was in a hide-a-key and we looked all over for it on the ground. Luckily the cache owners left a hint of "Is it up or down? You decide.". That was when we decided to go up! Geocaching will take you out of your comfort zone, but I'm still glad Alex was willing to climb up there instead of me!

I'm looking forward to collecting as many "Finds" as I can in geocaching. This probably goes back to my childhood dream to "Catch 'em All", but this seems a lot more doable. There are many geocaches ALL over (I guarantee you will be surprised how many are right by you!).

I highly recommend you start geocaching yourself. It's as simple as downloading an app.

To learn more about geocaching click here!

This is the third blog post in the "Alex's 1st Sandhills Adventure" series. Please stay tuned for the rest of the series:

• The Cowboy Trail
• Smith Falls State Park