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Welcome to the hobby. You’ll see some of our caches in the area, along with frmr, lone gunman, lander & lancelot, and many more…
On the Left Side of the Road...I carry a SwissCard in my wallet.
Because my wallet is the one thing that I will always have on me, this comes in great handy–a tweezer, knife, pen, screwdriver, scissors. I use it regularly and not just for geocaching. It’s the perfect in-a-pinch tool.
On the Left Side of the Road...I have done geocaching several times with groups of scouts ages 11 and under. Here is my general program which the kids really enjoy. (Meaning, they ask when they can go again.)
The tough part is that there’s a lot that is abstract–invisible coordinates, satellites in the air, all that stuff. Also, only one person can use the GPSr at any one time. So keep it simple, relate it to things they already know, and ideally get extra GPSrs if you can.
Small groups work best–3 scouts–but I have done groups of about a dozen.
Prep:
– Set up temporary caches, ideally the same number as the number of participants you will have in each group that goes out. I do not use the permanent caches because I don’t want to disturb them and because I usually don’t make the temp ones that hard to find. I always chock them full of stuff but it depends on your budget or what you have on hand in the geo-box. You might also put in a log sheet. I’ve done check boxes too if I knew who was going to be there ahead of time.
-Mark waypoints for big landmarks in the park on your GPSr–pavillion, grill, ball court, etc. This is for training, so make them close to your gathering area.
-If you can and if the group is a little older, make printouts of your GPSr screen showing navigating to a waypoint. This makes it easy to pass one to everyone beforehand to explain. Often I just give them to the parents if the boys are younger.Day of:
-I explain how every spot on the planet is marked by an invisible “X.” Depending on the age of the kids they will understand lat/long. The last group I had, I even had a boy take over and start explaining. You never know. The GPSr helps us find those Xs.
-People hide boxes with goodies to trade all over the planet on one of those invisible Xs. Find the X, find the box, get the stuff. Here’s a sample of different size boxes, etc. Look at this nano cache, isn’t that crazy? How could you even find that, yada yada.
-The GPSr only tells you that you are there and not where the box is hidden. So we will need EVERYONE to help when we get there to help look where a box might be.
-I then usually have them use the GPSr to naviagate to the various waypoints in the park I set, taking turns. They can see where they are headed, and compare it to how things look on the screen. See how we are following the line from the arrow (us) to the X?
-Each boy takes a turn with the GPSr. This is your chance to talk about staying on trails, leave no trace, etc. Also you can build in compass skills here by combining it with paper trail maps. i.e., we’ve come to a fork in the trail. What direction do we need to take? That kind of stuff.Oh yeah, if they are Cubs, it’s really great if you give everybody a geocaching patch at the end for their red vests! The cheapest I’ve found are 69 cents online at patchsales.com.
http://www.patchsales.com/patch/20870/buy-custom-and-stock-geocaching-embroidered-patches.html
On the Left Side of the Road...Thanks everyone. We have about 100 fewer owned caches than we used to. The SCC series was a pretty remarkable historic experience. I uploaded some pictures to the log, which are pretty remarkable if you compare the kids 2006 to 2011. Five years is a lot of time…the days go slow, the years go fast.
On the Left Side of the Road...Hey I was hoping to see a bunch of different vids and stuff posted here. There’s gotta be more…
On the Left Side of the Road...Delete.
On the Left Side of the Road...The tour is a drive-by tour, I believe.
On the Left Side of the Road...The problem of missing TBs is the larger issue–unsolvable issue, it’s the nature of putting sparkly stuff in the wild.
I have just really soured on TB hotels. I pretty much write off any TB that wanders into one. Yeah it can happen anywhere but when you put a large box in an easy-to-access area, the chances seem to be much greater of things disappearing.
On the Left Side of the Road...Yah, I really didn’t look into the specifics of this one, I just find that if I’m marking bugs missing, more often than not they are supposedly in the inventory of an empty TB hotel somewhere.
On the Left Side of the Road...‘fraid not…but on the topic of music, I think this album cover could have been taken along the tour route yesterday, dontcha think? 😈
On the Left Side of the Road...When we got our Oregon 550 the included garmin batteries would last close to 8 hours in heavy use. Now they are more like 4. We have had very good luck with energizer nickel metal hydride 2450 mAh batteries, but they too have lost a lot of oomph over the past year. Probably 6 hours on a charge.
On the Left Side of the Road...Fine by me Webguy, you da boss!
On the Left Side of the Road...@huffinpuffin2 wrote:
Sorry, but I beg to differ = Nope.
IMO, the sport really can’t be exclusionary.
As TBC notes, there is a small percentage of problem cachers….for whatever reason.Expect them, prepare for them, and then deal with the problems caused by the few.
My intent is not to exclude anyone, only to express agreement/dismay over lack of consideration. That extends to hunting caches, writing logs, parking in handicapped spaces, watching little league games without yelling at kids and volunteer umpires…whatever…
On the Left Side of the Road...@Team Black-Cat wrote:
Unfortunately, anyone can play.
Yep.
On the Left Side of the Road...I do enjoy reading legacy logbooks…but I can’t write with a pen or pencil. Literally, it’s some fine motor issue that has cropped up that makes it difficult to manipulate a pencil and that has turned regular poor penmanship into illegible scrawl. Just ask Mrs. gotta run, she’ll vouch for me.
Which is why you will get from me, if I’m caching alone, almost without fail, “gr,” and perhaps a date, no matter how big the log book is.
So far I’ve avoided using stickers, which I personally don’t like but really have no problem with as long as you choose a size that doesn’t cover half of the micro log.
So, just like people who have commented that not everyone can write a meaningful online log, not everyone can write a physical log either. But I do appreciate the thoughtful ones that are written. (Resisting…urge…to…make…another…letterboxing…comment…)
On the Left Side of the Road... -
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