GeoCaching!

I've got a new hobby. I hear you already, "Another hobby, Adam?! You already have a gazillion." You are correct in thinking that I have a gazillion hobbies, after all throughout the years I've golfed, played paintball, collected stamps, the 4 major sports cards, pogs, Louis L'Amour books, enjoy LotR, reading, basketball, fishing, hunting, board games, movies, even this blogging thing. Now we can add one more to the list: geocaching.

Randy, my father in law, has been doing it for several years and I've gone out with him about half a dozen times over that time to find these caches. He would go online to www.geocaching.com  and print off the different caches close by, would enter the coordinates into his GPS device, and then we'd go find them. Seemed like a lot of work for me to do all that, but now that I have an iPhone I'm set. I just be sitting on the picnic table and decide I want to find a geocache and look up the closest one and find it. Just like that, no printing, no entering coordinates, just finding the cache which is the best part. I then can take a note, log that I found it, put a picture up, all from my phone. So this hobby can be a hobby of mine that I can do anywhere and anytime that doesn't take a lot of pre-planning to carry out. I can have fun adventures with whoever I'm with.

What is a geocache you ask? It can be a lot of things, but most commonly it is a small container that contains a log book for you to sign your name and the date you found it. Also, if the container is big enough, you can "trade" items with the other geocachers that find it. These items can be just about anything, a book, a penny, a couple dice, old toys, even numbered coins and tags so you can follow the item one it's trip around the world!

So far, with the help of others, I've discovered 17 different caches here in central Indiana. I'm going to St. Louis in May and Kansas City in June, so I'm hoping to be able to find more out there as well. It's been fun getting to learn the jargon of the hobby and taking my family and friends out on the adventures to find the items. So far I've have 2 caches that are my favorite. One is in Fort Ben Harrison State Park and right next to Fall Creek in an old Army ammo container. It's a real quiet spot, with a nice view, and you have to cross the creek to get to it. The other was in some boulders in Shelby County, though I liked it more I think because I took Kaylee, Nathan, and Landon out to find that one and they had a blast. So, if you have a smart phone, I suggest you look at goecaching, create and account, and have some adventures!

Here are a couple pictures from the geocaching I did over Easter Weekend with the kids holding up the thigns they found: