GEO-CACHING

Meet the GPS....Meet the hunters.... Meet the "fearless leader" and his hunters.... Now, if your asking yourself, "what in the heck is a geocache?" Here's a short answer. It's a scavenger hunt of sorts. A global scavenger hunt. You see, people hide these "caches" with stuff in them. Then, the register them, listing the GPS coordinates and some basic clues to help you find the cache. Then, you and your treasure hunters take your GPS and search for the cache. There are caches pretty much everywhere.

And while geocaching, we explored more of our city in one day than we have learned the entire 1 1/2 years we lived here. It was fun!

Some beautiful nature shots, and photos of the hunters
taken during the journey....

And a park bench he found w/ his name on it.....

After following the tricky clues and looking for a good 30 minutes in the humid day....we had to give up the search for this first geocache. Which was a total bummer, because this cache included a diabetes "travel bug" which is a medal that stands for diabetes awareness. Ike really wanted to get this one for me. But, alas, it was not to be today....

So, off to cache #2.
This one was at Mount Hope Cemetary in Topeka.

I have to be honest, I like cemetaries. (I know...you probably think I am weird. I just think they are so peaceful. And my love for them really comes from Bonaventure Cemetary in Savannah. From the moment I saw that place....I was in love with it. Now, this cemetary can't hold a candle to that, but it was still peaceful none-the-less.

This was a multi-cache, which means that there are several clues that lead you to other clues that lead you to the cache. Did you follow that?

So, the first clue led us to this tree. The clue had something to do w/ a fork or something like that....see, in the "fork" of the tree..... So, the fearless leader lifted Indiana "Griff" Jones up to retrieve the clue.

Off following the clue to find the Stage 2 of this cache....

Daddy lifted "The Princess" to retrieve this clue....
{I absolutely love this picture, don't you?!}

Reading the clue....

Off to search for the final phase and retrieve the cache.....
...and THERE IT IS!!!!!!!!!!!

Man, Oh Man....we were ExCiTeD!!!!!

A cache can be filled w/ almost anything.
Toys, pencils, coins, jewelry, pins, travel bugs or whatever.
So...we dumped it out and everyone picked something.

This is what we took:

A tiny Sketcher photo book for Marinne.
Coins for Griffin and Jensen.
A special rock for Logan. ( he wasn't there, but we didn't want to leave him out.....)
and A breast cancer awareness bracelet for Mommy.

We left: 3 hot wheels, a stuffed lamb and the tin man.

Those are part of the rules....you never take something without leaving something in it's place.

Returning the cache to its hiding spot....

On the way out, I spotted this little angel, looking over the memory of someone.
It kind of touched me....

A smaller cemetary, another cache...and a storm moving in...

And our last cache of the day, at a small corner park in our city. This park has a gazebo with some benches under it.
So, I caught this photo of little Missy sitting still, which doesn't happen often! Looking thru the top of the gazebo.
(this reminds me of a picture I might have taken in Savannah.) And a quick photo of the kids in the gazebo....

And the next cache is found.....

Griffin loves anything green, so we got him this green martian and
left a coin in it's place. He really thought this guy was funny!

And our final cache was at another tiny neighborhood park.
They had this gate w/ a "W" on it. I love wrought iron gates and
this one reminded me of Savannah, again. And right when I shot this photo, the sky opened and it began to rain.

Geocaching, expedition one.......over.

Go try Geocaching...it was super-fun!!!