Geocaching: As told by Leif

See that white arrow? The box was hidden under those sticks!

Today the family went to Red Top Mountain to try Geocaching for the first time. I thought I'd let our kids tell the experience from their perspective. 

Leif's account:

We went geocaching at Red Top mountain. First, we got a GPS unit from the park ranger and then we hiked a really long ways. We followed the red and green path. Then we found it hidden under a pile of sticks by a big boulder.

First I saw a stick pile and then I saw a metal thing in it, and then I was like “esh!” I didn’t tell my mom until she almost gave up. Then we had to move the sticks. It was like a big metal box, about three bricks big. I don’t know who opened it, but someone did. Oh yeah, I opened it. It was silver. We saw toys inside. We traded cars (Mater and Sally and another) for six sided dice, and a lizard and a yellow bear. 

Then we followed my Dad and we found a very big piece of quartz, near a hollow tree. The part that I didn’t like so much was that we had to look all around the big boulder for a long time. If you see a blue ribbon, you just go up from that and you’ll find a hollow tree and that’s where you’ll find the cache. In exchange for the quartz we left a car in the hollow of the tree, it was from the movie Cars2: Francesco. I bet you’re going to bring babies to the Geo Cache when I say this, because babies like Cars.

Log book

On the way back my brother fell and it was red, like straight red. My parents carried him back to the car and we had to clean the cut, then we drove home.

Owen's account: 

I went running down the hill, and then I hurt myself. I falled when I run and I was running. I was just dripping. It hurt. Mommy carried me first, then Dadoo.  My favorite part was getting the Geo Treasure!

Advice from Leif: 

One thing I would do differently, would be to make the path shorter next time, because it took like three miles there and three miles back so it was six miles. I recommend you bring more water than just one cup, and don’t drink it all while you’re going there. 

One of the things we had to find on our way was a "small residential structure"...aka birdhouse!

 

We found this quartz next to a tree with a hole in it near the coordinates for a cache. We wondered if this was actually the cache, because it didn't seem very "official", but we took the quartz and left another more obvious treasure.