As a family, we love to geocache. There's not a lot of spare time around here, but we go when we can. With fall break being this week and the weather being beautiful, we spent several hours around town this morning finding new caches that have been placed in the last several months.
Geocaching is like a scavenger hunt, of sorts. There are "caches" hidden world wide. According to the website today, there are 926,044 geocaches hidden throughout the world. Most of them are small containers (ranging from 35 mm film canisters to match stick containers). But there are some that are larger (eg. ammo boxes). To find these caches (or hidden treasures as my kids call them...but it's not a "treasure", its about the hunt of finding it), it is best if you have a GPS. All of the caches that are hidden are listed at the geocaching website,
www.geocaching.com
In our area, most of the caches are not public, so we got a membership. This allows us to see all caches, worldwide. (I think the membership was $30/year). My cousin, Aaron, and his wife, Tracy, who live in Murfreesboro are able to see LOTS of caches without a subscription, because the ones in their area are public.
Speaking of Aaron and Tracy, they are the ones who introduced us to the world of geocaching. Their enthusiasm about it encouraged us to check it out. Once we did, we were hooked. It wasn't long until we had commandeered my dad's GPS and started caching ourselves. We have since put out one cache of our own and have plans on more.
Without going overboard on the background info, there are things that can be placed in caches called travel bugs and geocoins. They are placed in a cache, then usually given a destination or purpose. (All of the info regarding the destination or purpose is on geocaching.com) We placed a Happy Birthday geocoin in a cache here in Franklin County, last December. Its destination was Denver Colorado to Maggie and Garrett, our then newborn twin niece and nephew. It was logged a couple of weeks ago that it is on the outskirts of Denver! It traveled about 2,500 miles from cache to cache until now it is where we sent it. We were very excited about it!
So, back to today! Here are pics of our adventure. I took pics of the different caches we found, but tried not to let it be known which one it is. I don't want to spoil it for any local cachers...or for Aaron and Tracy the next time they come to town to cache with us!
This was our first find of the day. Tommy found it (no surprise!). It is a matchstick container, with a magnet on the back. Without giving it all away, the location in which it was found is behind Tommy. The magnet allowed to to stick. I'll leave it at that!
This was a guard rail cache. These are easy "park and grab" cache's. Caroline found this one. She has the eagle eyes of my bunch.
This is the actual cache from the guard rail. It is a very small zip top bag, wrapped in duct tape so it is water proofed. All that fits inside these is the log. (See next picture)
This is the normal log that is found inside a cache. Our group name is Checkm Five, so that is how we sign the log, along with the date. If the cache is big enough to hold small items, we always leave something. We have stickers, balloons, McDonald's toys, etc that we leave if the cache is big enough. It's always fun to find somewhere big enough to leave goodies for others!
This is how the cache looks as it is hidden. These are made to be inconspicuous, but findable by cachers. When caching, you have to use stealth and be careful of muggles (people who may see you).This is to keep unknowing people from removing the cache and taking the fun away!!
GPS said there is a cache on this pier. As you can tell, all of the rain we have had kept us from signing this one! We will save it for another day.
Tommy practicing "Cache in, Trash Out". We always make a point to leave the area cleaner than when we found it. Good littering lesson for the kids, also!
This was the hardest find of the day...and Tommy found it. It is near one of our local parks, so the girls saw the playground and caching was over for them! Tommy was going to find it or bust! Find it he did! Don't want to give too much away, but look to the left of Tommy's face. See something shiny? That's how we spotted it. The GPS gets us pretty close, but we still have to do some searching. When you have one like this, then find it, there is lots of excitement!
Just big enough for a log. We signed it, rehid the cache and off we went to our next destination. One more smiley for our account!
I let Heath do the grunt work on this one (that and he says the camera is too complicated for him...I think it's an easy excuse, but nevertheless...). The cache was in the hole of the tree. It was a 35 mm film case. We did leave a small eraser in it with the log, as a happy for the next cacher to come along.
These tiny unsuspecting ones are also fun to find. I spotted this one, but I let Caroline take the credit. I think this was the 5th one of the day. When Aaron first told me about geocaching, I was shocked that there were things hidden in plain sight. Things we see daily and never think a thing about. This is proof of one of those things. Many cars and walkers pass this daily and never suspect it is hidden on purpose and people search for it!
This was our last find of the day. I hope the picture shows how well it is "camo"ed. It is a juice bottle, spray painted, then bark was hot glued around the outside, so it looks completely natural. So clever! We signed log and left several "happies" for the next cachers.
Tommy removing the log, so we could sign it.
This was our first find of the day. Tommy found it (no surprise!). It is a matchstick container, with a magnet on the back. Without giving it all away, the location in which it was found is behind Tommy. The magnet allowed to to stick. I'll leave it at that!
This is the normal log that is found inside a cache. Our group name is Checkm Five, so that is how we sign the log, along with the date. If the cache is big enough to hold small items, we always leave something. We have stickers, balloons, McDonald's toys, etc that we leave if the cache is big enough. It's always fun to find somewhere big enough to leave goodies for others!
This is how the cache looks as it is hidden. These are made to be inconspicuous, but findable by cachers. When caching, you have to use stealth and be careful of muggles (people who may see you).This is to keep unknowing people from removing the cache and taking the fun away!! 
This was our last find of the day. I hope the picture shows how well it is "camo"ed. It is a juice bottle, spray painted, then bark was hot glued around the outside, so it looks completely natural. So clever! We signed log and left several "happies" for the next cachers.
I start by peeling them with a potato peeler. Then I cut it open and scrape out all of the seeds. (The inside looks like the inside of a pumpkin.) Then I dice it up and put it on a baking sheet. Drizzle olive oil and kosher salt and into the oven it goes for about 30 minutes, depending on the size of the pieces.They come out crunchy on the outside and soft on the inside. 
Tonight I cooked asparagus and steak on the grill to go with the butternut squash. I had no complaints from anyone! (Then for dessert, we roasted marshmallows in the fireplace...I'll post that later.)
My kids love pancakes, which is not so unusual. But when I asked Tommy what he wanted for breakfast this morning, he said "frog pancakes". I chuckled to myself, because if anyone else heard him say that, they would have serious questions!
Today I had the privilege of taking pictures of the first graders at Sewanee Elementary while they decorated their cake pops. They really took pride in decorating! They came up with some great ideas...
Gotta love the excitement in Mary B's face!
Camden's just might be my favorite! It had two 
