(003) Off the 18th Hole

This one was called "Exsiiron's Box" and is located just off the 18th hole of the golf course here Hedingham (N 35° 48.471 W 078° 32.765). Jude and I tackled this one on our own. Kerrigan was too tired and was taking a rare nap and the rest of the usual suspects were out and about.

This clear tupperware container was hidden under some fallen brush about 30 feet off the golf cart trail. The items inside were too big, so the top had come off and all the contents were wet because of the rain. Good thing the log book was in a plastic baggie. Jude and I signed the logbook and we'll probably come back to this one so Kerrigan can see it. Gideon also came along with us :)

It was a little further away, but Jude and I still had a great time and a great walk together. This was only our third one, but they're becoming great times for us.

(002) Down the Trail

This one was called "Beach Fever" and is located just over a quarter-mile from our house (N 35° 48.150 W 078° 32.370). We walked back on the trails we always go on and followed the GPS into the wooded where we found the cache in a metal box in a opening in the base of a big tree.

The kids brought their friends again. It was a plain green military ammunition box. It had another travel bug, which I took, and had several beach-themed items inside, complete with about an inch or so of sand in the bottom of the box. The kids were more prepared this time and brought more little items to leave behind and since we knew the name of the cache was Beach Fever, I figured I'd bring a beach-themed item to leave behind, so I left a dried starfish. Again, we all signed the log book and took a few pictures of the find.

The kids had an even bigger blast finding this one than the last.

(001) Right in the Back Yard

Alright, we received our eXplorist and went out to find our first cache. Since then, we have found a few, but I will get to those later.

The first one was called "Low Down on the Neuse Wetlands" and is located less than 250 feet from our house (N 35° 48.334 W 078° 32.372).

The kids brought their friends and we had a blast finding this one. It was a painted tupperware container that was hidden under the foot-bridge behind our house. It had a travel bug, which I took, and several little toys. The kids all put in little toys of their own and they all grabbed something small in return. We all signed the log book and put it back after we took pictures.

The kids were very eager to find more, but we waited a couple days to get the next one.

A New Hobby

Our family found a fun new hobby: Geocaching. A friend of ours, Raine Lightner, works for a geocaching company called Groundspeak out in Seattle, Washington and he was telling us about it. We had never heard of geocaching, but the more he told us the more fun it sounded.

Basically, it's a treasure hunt with the help of a hand-held GPS. You find coordinates on websites (like Groundspeak) of where the locations of the treasure (called a cache) is and enter those coordinates into your GPS.

I have yet to find one, but my GPS is in the mail and we are excited to going on some adventures with the kids to find some caches. I wanted to start this blog to keep track of the caches we find together as a family. On Groundspeak, there are 12 caches registered within just 1 mile of our house, 129 of them within 5 miles and over 550 within a 10 mile radius. We could stay within walking distance of our house and still never find them all.

Our Megellan Explorist 600 should be here in the next couple days and I look forward to posting pictures of us on our hikes and adventures.

Happy hunting.