The new rule for Cobb county schools is to have the entire week off for Thanksgiving. We hate it when we go back to school so early from summer break, but by the time winter starts rolling in, we're ready for a breather. The Homerhouse decided to relocate to the lake for the week. Rob was working from home and I took the week off to be with the family. Jared had a big project due so he was working on reading the book for that. Mom had given him a book about the Dam break in Toccoa Ga when we were at the lake this summer. He needed something to read for a Social Studies project and it fit the bill. :) During the week we decided on a field trip to Toccoa Falls to see what he had been reading about. As we piled into the car Mom made a comment, "I wonder if there are any Geocaches there?" When we went to Sky Valley in Spring I downloaded a geocache app to my phone, sure enough on the trip to Toccoa mom and I played on our phones and found some Geocaches.
Now for those of you unfamiliar to Geocaching, it is like a GPS scavenger hunt. You look up the area you are going to be in (national parks are a goldmine for Geocaching). Add the coordinates into a GPS and find your way to the treasure. In the early days a tupperware type box was placed in a hidden location. A note pad was also in the box. When you found the box you took the stamp from the cache and placed a mark in your personal journal. Then you as a hunter would have a personal stamp that you would place in the caches log book. Then you re-hide the cache and go on to the next one. Initial names for geocaching inclue letter boxing, puzzle hunting and questing. We stick with Geocaching. Now days there are still log books but instead of stamps there are trinkets or coins. Take something, leave something. Most of the time it's junk but sometimes you can get lucky and find a traceable coin....but that's a whole nother blog post. :)
Now for those of you unfamiliar to Geocaching, it is like a GPS scavenger hunt. You look up the area you are going to be in (national parks are a goldmine for Geocaching). Add the coordinates into a GPS and find your way to the treasure. In the early days a tupperware type box was placed in a hidden location. A note pad was also in the box. When you found the box you took the stamp from the cache and placed a mark in your personal journal. Then you as a hunter would have a personal stamp that you would place in the caches log book. Then you re-hide the cache and go on to the next one. Initial names for geocaching inclue letter boxing, puzzle hunting and questing. We stick with Geocaching. Now days there are still log books but instead of stamps there are trinkets or coins. Take something, leave something. Most of the time it's junk but sometimes you can get lucky and find a traceable coin....but that's a whole nother blog post. :)
Here's Jared at the site of the memorial for those who died in the Dam break. By the way he got a 98 on the project. :)
The rotten monkey urchins at the falls.
So we put the coordinates into our smartphones and realized we had to drive to our first Geocache. WE.WERE.HOOKED. It was so much fun trying to figure out where to go. Rob was driving, Rick was co piloting and the rest of us were dreaming about what might be in the Geocache.
After some hunting, reading the clue on the phone and some light digging through leaves we (a-hem, I) found our first cache. Not quite sure what we were expecting to find but this was it. A log only (no trinkets) cache but it was our first.
The H2K GeoKrew. Daddy was missing because he was on his way back into town for the holiday. No worries, he'll get a chance to go hunting!
After driving in circles for EVER we decided that we had to learn how to use the apps to find the caches. It was tricky figuring out the technique. We found our second location but we were very limited on time due to weather and daylight.
Our first trip was on Tuesday, caches found-1. We hit a few more on Wednesday on our way to shop til you drop. We found a geo-coin but I won't go into detail on that story. Thursday was Thanksgiving and we went by boat to about 5 different islands. I can't wait for summer! Friday saw Rob heading out of town while the rest of us took the ENTIRE day to Geocache. I think we made 17 stops?? Crazy I know, but it is SO much fun. It's a great family activity that we can all do together. Plus it's great exercise. I think we found a new hobby!
The rotten monkey urchins at the falls.
So we put the coordinates into our smartphones and realized we had to drive to our first Geocache. WE.WERE.HOOKED. It was so much fun trying to figure out where to go. Rob was driving, Rick was co piloting and the rest of us were dreaming about what might be in the Geocache.
After some hunting, reading the clue on the phone and some light digging through leaves we (a-hem, I) found our first cache. Not quite sure what we were expecting to find but this was it. A log only (no trinkets) cache but it was our first.
The H2K GeoKrew. Daddy was missing because he was on his way back into town for the holiday. No worries, he'll get a chance to go hunting!
After driving in circles for EVER we decided that we had to learn how to use the apps to find the caches. It was tricky figuring out the technique. We found our second location but we were very limited on time due to weather and daylight.
Our first trip was on Tuesday, caches found-1. We hit a few more on Wednesday on our way to shop til you drop. We found a geo-coin but I won't go into detail on that story. Thursday was Thanksgiving and we went by boat to about 5 different islands. I can't wait for summer! Friday saw Rob heading out of town while the rest of us took the ENTIRE day to Geocache. I think we made 17 stops?? Crazy I know, but it is SO much fun. It's a great family activity that we can all do together. Plus it's great exercise. I think we found a new hobby!
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