Some geocachers like big, spacious caches that come loaded with an ample selection of travelbugs and toys.  Others fall into the opposite extreme, preferring thimble sized micros hidden in plain sight.  Still others salivate at the thought of hiking way off the beaten path to find an obscure and rarely visited Geocache that may only be found once a year.

Ten gallon buckets, micros, and rural caches are all fun, but our favorite genre of geocache accomplishes the same thing that we try to do every day in our store:  blend learning and education with outdoor adventure.

When Lora Barrett over at Trippingwithkids.com told me that she was planning a group blogging event where authors could submit stories about their geocaching adventures, I knew exactly which cache the Trailmix.Net crew would post.  It involves a little bit of driving, a hammer, screwdriver, and a keen interest in smashing rocks.

Fossil Find (GC6B91) is a mystery geocache that requires you to find and photograph a real fossil.  It is located near the city of Patterson, about 80 miles south of Sacramento.

The cache site is just a bend in the road where, years ago, a road grading crew dug through one of the thousands of rolling hills in the area.  Exposed is a layer of sedimentary rock that contains the remains of organic matter such as twigs and leaves.

To find a fossil, select some rock samples from the embankment side of the road.   To break them, you must tap the rocks lightly with a hammer and begin examining the layers that break off.  Fair warning:  finding a fossil isn’t easy.  However, with a little patience and diligence you will find a prehistoric treasure.

Here are a couple of tips to help make your geocaching expedition safe and successful.

1)      Set clear expectations:  at this location, if you work hard and  are lucky, you might find a leaf or twig fossil.  You will not find a mastodon tusk or tyrannosaurus rex skull here.

2)      Before you leave, be sure to spend some time reading the cache description and logs.  Reading the logs and examining photos of what other searchers have found will help orient you to what you are looking for.

3)      Keep children off of the road.  Unfortunately, this location is on the side of a country road and traffic moves very fast.  Set up an examination area in a safe place and set rules and boundaries to ensure that kids are not exposed to traffic while searching for rocks.

So you have been playing Foursquare, Whereigo, and doing some Geocaching… Have you ever wondered how that little GPS Sattelite Receiver works?

In the video in the multimedia box to the right Col. David Buckman, Air Force Space Command, talks about GPS, how it works, and modernization.

Photo Credit Wessex Archaeology via Flickr

Was at the Geocaching with Kids Workshop yesterday and was reminded of the Ohio State Buckeye Ball.  Followers of the original Trailmix.Net Blog might remember the story, but for those that don’t it goes like this…..

Back in May of 2007 our family was new to geocaching and we stumbled upon our first travelbug.  The Ohio State Buckeye Ball was visiting Sacramento and ended up in the hands of our 4 year old, even then a geocaching zealot.  The Buckeye Ball was traveling from cache to cache on a mission to visit golf courses in North America and as fate would have it, we had a trip to Monterey planned later that month.

Monterey, for those that aren’t Californians or golfers, is adjacent to some fairly decent courses.  Since we haven’t golfed since college and try to avoid burning hundreds of dollars on sports that don’t involve mountains or snow, the 17 mile golf course loop is a part of California that we hadn’t really been inclined to explore… but for Geocaching, we were willing to make an exception.

The trip turned out to become one of our fondest Geocaching memories.  We visited Pebble Beach, Cypress Point, Spyglass, Poppy Hills and more.  Most importantly, we learned that helping a travelbug along could open doors to family adventures by taking us off the beaten path – or in our case onto a path that we never would have taken.

The photos below are from that trip.  To track the complete travels of the Ohio State Buckeye Ball Travelbug, cache hopping since 2006, click here.

Related:
Geocaching with Kids:  Three Tips to Help You Start Out Right
Download our Calendar of Upcoming Events and In-Store Workshops
Join Our Facebook Fan Page
Check out the Geocaching With Kids Page in the Store

The Photos:

Explore parks and public places, solve riddles, find treasure. Geocaching is an excellent sport for children.

This workshop will teach you everything that you need to start Geocaching, including special tips for families with little ones. Visit our Old Sacramento Store to cut down on the Geocaching learning curve and even build your own Geocache in this special two hour session.

Saturday November 7th – 1:00-3:00 PM

Related:

Find us with Google Maps
This events facebook page
The Trailmix.Net Old Sacramento Store Travelbug
Download our Old Sacramento Scavenger Hunt

If there is a single idea that Trailmix.Net stands for, it’s this:  Children (and their parents) need adventure.

That’s why we created Educational Expeditions, our free e-book.  First published on the Trailmix.Net blog in 2006, the Educational Expedition has been tested, revised, and simplified.  It’s a three step process for planning outdoor adventures with kids by helping parents tap into the educational potential of backyards, state parks, national parks, and other public lands.

Download your free copy today, and feel free to share it with friends.  When you use it, please consider sending us an note.  Whether you have text, photos, or just scratched a map on the back of a napkin at Denny’s, we don’t mind.  It’s the adventure and results, not the format , that matter and we would love to hear about it.

We get a lot of questions about [Tag]geocaching with kids[/Tag].  Most often, people want to know if there is anything special to consider when you are [Tag]caching with kids[/Tag] in tow.  The short answer is yes.  If you are planning your first geocaching outing with the [Tag]family[/Tag] there are three steps that you can take to make sure that the trip is successful.

Geocaching with Kids Tip #1:  Keep it Simple
There are two ways to keep [Tag]geocaching[/Tag] simple for young beginners:  save the technical explanation for later and make the first cache easy.

The first step when you [Tag]Geocache with kids[/Tag] is to look at the activity through their eyes.  Keep it simple.  Obviously, kids under five aren’t going to grasp the fact that you are going to download a complex set of grid coordinates to your [Tag]GPS[/Tag] receiver from the internet and then use billions of dollars worth of satellite technology orbiting the earth to find a place where another person hid a logbook in some Tupperware.

Instead, save the technical explanation and describe the plan in terms that a five year old will grasp: you are going to venture out into an unknown place seeking a hidden treasure trove that, with a little luck, you will be able to plunder in order to grow your collection of marbles, matchbook cars, or rubber bouncy balls.

Now, imagine the disappointment if the first Geocache turns out to be a DNF (Did Not Find).  You can prevent this problem by making the first [Tag]cache[/Tag] an easy one.  If you are taking children geocaching for the first time, this is the single most important step you can take to ensure a successful outing.  It’s an important concept that applies not just to geocaching, but most [Tag]outdoor activities with kids[/Tag].

If you start with a cache that is too difficult and set the bar too high you will risk creating frustration.  Save the hard caches for later.  For the first timer, select a cache with a low difficulty (1.5 or less) and easily accessible terrain (less than 2).  The low difficulty and terrain will provide an obtainable entry level goal.  As an added bonus, go for the largest cache you can find.  Large caches tend to accumulate larger toys.

Geocaching with Kids Tip #2:  Have a Discussion about Trading Fair when Geocaching
Before you get to that first cache, it is a good idea to have a discussion about trading items of equal value.  Be sure to do this before you find the cache.  In our experience, [Tag]kids[/Tag] are tycoons by nature and trading a three cent trinket for a five dollar pack of AA batteries is an irresistible bargain.  Set the expectations before you start.  By establishing the like-for-like rules before you find the first cache you can avoid having to “introduce” a new potentially disappointing rule in the moment of victory.

Geocaching with Kids Tip #3:  Define Travelbug and Geocoin
[Tag]Travelbugs[/Tag] and [Tag]Geocoins[/Tag] are items that are uniquely numbered and tracked by the [Tag]Geocaching.com[/Tag] website as they move from cache to cache.  They also happen to be the nicest, shiniest, and most desirable objects that you will find in a geocache. When you take a [Tag]travel-bug[/Tag], [Tag]Geo-coin[/Tag], or other [Tag]trackable item[/Tag] from a Geocache, you become the temporary custodian of the object, not the owner.

With kids, you need to explain the concept that trackable items need to be given back, ideally within a couple of weeks.  As with the discussion about fair trade, this conversation is best had before you actually find a trackable item.

The [Tag]Geocoin/Travelbug[/Tag] opens up a whole new dimension of geocaching for kids.  Our children have temporarily adopted them, traveled with them, photographed them like the Travelocity travel gnome, cast them in leading roles in puppet shows, and followed their adventures online long after they are gone.

So that’s the formula.  It’s pretty simple, really.  Keep it easy at the beginning and set clear expectations about trading fair and giving back the trackables.  If you follow these three tips, you’ll be fine.  [Tag]Cache on[/Tag].

Over Valentine’s Day an alert reader and fellow geocacher sent us an e-mail that pointed out a geocache series in Southern California near Palm Springs that is shaped like a giant heart.   Since a geocache can not be placed any closer than a tenth of a mile from it’s neighboring cache, I’m estimating the “circumference” of this heart to be about 2.2 miles (not including the arrow)!

A Geocache Series with Heart