June 21st -- we were taking a hike that was part of the Let's Move Outside movement going on this year -- our family ventured out to Fairview from our home in Erie. We were slowly walking the woods as we had little legs with us. Along the trail, there was a bridge and just after the bridge I noticed what looked like a lunch/leftover container lodged under a tree. I called the family over and my husband was like I'll go get it! Of course, I protested, thinking it was someone's lunch or just trash someone left behind and I didn't want anyone to touch it. When my husband opened it - he found a log book and a stamper. We opened it and read it -- the book was placed in 2008 and had been there ever since, with new groups coming along to sign it and write a little note! It was so cool to find this neat little box while we were out on our trail walk -- my husband said, now I was to go geo-caching. Being father's day, I figured if that was what he wanted to do - we would. So we drove back home, added the geo-caching app to his phone and went to the one that was close by. It was late, and the kids were tired but we still looked until we couldn't look any further. We did not find it, which was discouraging -- but when we read the comments from other members we realized we were not the only ones who couldn't find it so it was just well hid. We went home and decided we would try again another day.
June 22 -- the day following our very first geo-caching outing we decided to go again! This time we went to Zuck park. The first one we wanted to find was right out by the busy road, so we decided against that and went with one a bit down the road called "Rudolph" -- it was nicely hidden. My husband found it - the red nose thing really helped. The kids were so excited and wanted to do another one that actually had "treasure" in it -- but it was too late and we decided we would pack it in for the night.
June 23 - While daddy was at work we decided to take a look around the house for some caching' items and make a caching' box to keep all of our swap items in. I think there is an actual term for these items but I do not recall it. That evening it was beautiful, not too hot-not too cold and for once NOT raining -- We headed out after some dinner, followed by left over cake/ice cream from the girl's birthday party. We tried to go back to Zuck park but there was a church get together going on -- apparently from what I have read on the geocaching sites, you shouldn't cache' when "muggles" are present! So we quickly found another location, and headed over there. Opened the APP and headed in to the woods, down a trail. We had never been to this park before and didn't realize it was larger than it looked and that there was a very nice creek that ran behind it! While checking out the water, we saw a very large doe! She was crossing the creek and following her was a fawn!! It was awesome! While I was yelling for my husband and older daughter (who were looking for the cache') to come and see the deer, they were yelling that they found something. Once the deer were gone, my husband opened the container (just a regular ziplock round container with a blue lid and a black velvet bag inside)- certainly we had found the hidden cache'!! Woohoo! Until my husband opened the container and he was like hmm this looks weird and we smelled a smell we hadn't smelled since high school and realized this was NOT a cache' and we had found someone's secret lighter....! OOPS! We quickly replaced it (of course if there had been more in it, we would have called the police.) Back to the search, took about 15-20 minutes to find it -- but we finally did! Signed it, the kids wanted the cache' treasures so we replaced them with some we had! What fun! It was still early, so we decided to try another one, this one was far too close to the road to be enjoyable with children- so we skipped it. On our way home, there was another though, a christmas themed one! So we stopped and found that one as well! I highly recommend the satellite view on the APP. It makes things much more clear! So we are up to 3 finds! Tonight we hope to find an empty park and find the one at Zuck park that we couldn't find the other night because it was too dark!
