I have been writing about geocaching quite a bit the last couple of weeks, plus Gary put together a great beginner video on geocaching while I was gone as well.

My first geocaching excursion was fun, with the exception of the run in I had with a cement wall where the cement wall was the definite winner and my inattention to my surroundings and not noticing a hornets nest a couple feet above my head when our group parked our bicycles resulted in an angry hornet stinging my son on his hand.

I thought my second excursion was going to go a lot smoother especially since we met up with family members who had already found the first two caches we were looking for but wanted to have my husband, who was on his first geocaching experience, and myself find them too. We were with my nieces and nephew who were so excited about showing us how to geocache that I didn’t have the heart to tell them I had already been on my first excursion the week before.

Although the kids were under strict instructions not to tell us exactly where the first cache was they made it pretty obvious by pointedly sitting on a bench and not looking at us. So my husband and I both got down on our hands and knees to look under the bench. He found the cache. I got about an inch from a yellow jacket nest (don’t know if I mentioned that I’m allergic, but I am).

My sister-in-law said “Only you would find the yellow jackets and not the cache” Yeah, I felt special.

So when we were hiking to the second “already found” cache my sister in law whispered that when we got to the area that I should look on the right side. That seemed easy enough. Then we got to the area which was by a bridge so it seemed obvious the cache was on the bridge somewhere.

Since I’m a good listener (some of the time) I immediately started searching on the right side of the bridge and found a nest of bumblebees (yep, I’m allergic to them too). I started to back away but from the obvious body language of my sister-in-law and from my niece pointedly looking over the bridge I knew that cache was close to those bees. So I kept one eye on the bees and the other searched for the cache. I found it but not before a major hint from my sister-in-law who said that the hint given on geocaching.com about the cache being camouflaged meant that it blended in with its surroundings and that it was not the camouflage of greens or tans I was thinking of.

The cache blended in very well. It was painted the same color silver as the bridge. I kind of think whoever painted the bridge did it when the cache was on it and painted right over the top of it because the paint looked pretty fresh.

I didn’t get bit either time because I was careful and because I had a good coating of insect repellent on.

We were just getting going so we biked a couple miles up the road to look for some more caches.

The next one was in the woods and before we got 30 feet in I was getting bit like crazy (so much for the insect repellent being effective - even a second coating of it didn’t help much). We found the cache but I headed back out of the woods while my nieces and nephews went on to find the next one which they got really excited about because it was a fairly big plastic container with a large variety of trinkets inside so they all took one out and put one in from the backpack they carry with a supply of them tucked inside.

While you are reading this I will be at Governor Dodge State Park geocaching. I’m hoping I will be able to report the excursions there as being injury and insect bite free. Cross your fingers for me!

Wrapping things up this week, I figured this would be a great time to post this how to video we recently did on geocaching. I love it because it combines geeky technology (gps) with treasure hunting.

Dorrie’s been posting about geocaching a bunch recently so you can get caught up on just what the heck geocaching is on her “what is geocaching” post and “my first geocache” post.

In the video I cover how to get coordinates for geocaches near you, how to get them into your GPS unit, and then how to follow your GPS to get you close to the cache.

One thing to keep in mind is that a GPS unit is really only accurate to about 30 or 40 feet so once you get really close to where the cache is supposed to be hidden, it’s time to start thinking about where you’d hide the hidden “treasure” if you were doing it.

Hope you enjoyed cool non essential technology week. Dorrie’s back next week and who knows what rockin’ cool stuff she’s got in store for you.

Let me know what you think of the video. If you like it, we just might do more. (hint, use the comments button below)

Even though I have already written a couple of posts about geocaching, I had not gone myself until last week. Instead I guess I was just an armchair geocacher although the fact that I do not yet have my own GPS unit is a factor.

But last week my middle son and I were visiting my oldest son, who just happens to have a handheld GPS unit, so we went to geocaching.com, looked up the caches near his house, picked one that said it was easy, put the coordinates in his GPS unit, and got on our bikes to head to the park where it was hidden.

I almost made it unscathed, but not quite (I may not have mentioned it yet, but I do seem to be accident prone and somewhat of a klutz). We were on the bike trail leading into the park, which goes around a corner, downhill, and then through an underpass so bicyclists can avoid having to cross a busy road.

I was okay until I got into the underpass where recent rain had apparently washed some of the dirt down onto the paved path. It was about 3 inches deep and had started to harden in some places making it rutted and bumpy. My bike (has road tires) got caught in one of the rutted areas another bike tire had made and tossed me into the the cement wall (yes, the wall won). Luckily I didn’t go down completely and the bruises have since gone away, but I’m pretty sure I’m going to have a scar on my arm where it scraped along the wall.

After that our geocaching adventure got much slower because I was hurt and kind of whiny.

Then when the GPS unit said we were close and we went to lock up our bikes and walk the rest of the way, we realized there was a hornet’s nest on the light pole where we all had just put our bikes (I may not have mentioned this yet either but I’m allergic to bug bites). My oldest son retrieved our bikes, and got a bite on his hand from mad hornet in the process.

Now we had two “walking wounded” in our group of three and we hadn’t even gotten serious about finding the cache yet.

We kept going though.

Once the GPS unit said we were in the area, we started looking under picnic tables, by trees and bushes, and by a grill.

Even though the cache was supposed to be easy to find, 10 minutes later the three of us were still looking. I kept going back to the grill because it seemed to be the most likely spot for the cache to be hidden. My middle son finally got down on the ground, laid on his back under the grill, and found it. It blended right in because it was the same color and looked more like a piece of metal on the grill than a cache.

We got really excited! It was a small cache so we had brought our own pen to write on the log. We had also taken a dollar coin to put in the cache but it wouldn’t fit which really disappointed my middle son. He wanted to put something in so bad so he put in the only thing he had, which was his ticket stub from seeing The Dark Knight the day before (awesome movie!) that he had planned on saving.

Then we took our tired and injured, but happy and successful cache finding bodies back to my oldest son’s house where I washed the debris out of my wounds and my son rubbed a skeeter stick on his bite.

What did we learn?

- Geocaching is lots of fun but a person should be a little more prepared than we were
- Take a first aid kit in a backpack, just in case
- Take a variety of different sized trinkets so unless the cache box is really small, something will fit
- Take a camera to record the happy moment when the cache is found

Truthfully, until I went geocaching myself, I really didn’t understand why people were so excited about hunting for hidden items. I couldn’t believe how excited and giddy we were after we found the cache. People watching us would have thought we found a hundred dollar bill from the way we were acting.

I now have the geocaching bug. Next up is geocaching on a camping trip next week. I still haven’t decided on what GPS unit I want to buy, but luckily the family we are camping with has just gotten a GPS unit so I’ll be able to use theirs and see if I want to buy one like it.