Last summer our family took up Geocaching. Geocaching is basically global treasure hunting. We use our GPS to find “caches” hidden in parks, cities, forests and well, almost anywhere. Before we left Vermont we placed 5 Travel Bugs into one cache. Travel Bugs are items that are given a tracking number and travel from cache to cache via Geocachers (people). Our group is Optimus Prime, Darth Vader, WD-4D (The First Autodidactic Droid), Liberty (formerly known as Belle), and Jaques Le Sock. (Clicking on the links will take you to their bio page). We named our group, “The 5 Unlikely Friends”. Each Travel Bug has a beginning story attached and we are hoping that as they are each picked up and brought to a new cache, the traveler will add a little to their journal (log entry) on the Geocaching.com website. Eventually, we are hoping we can direct our Travel Bugs to a park that happens to be right next door to us. Those are future plans though. First, we’ll be tracking them all on a giant map we are planning to make and hang on our wall.
I figured we wouldn’t hear anything until *at least* April. After all, it IS February and we left the Travel Bugs in a cache in Vermont! When I woke up this morning I was definitely surprised to get this note:
“With the help of [name omitted] we are dropping off Optimus Prime (GC1Y9Q3), here in San Diego, to start his serious soul searching. Whether it be active, reflective or just plain laid back! What better place than the west coast for this autonomous robot. Set yourself free.”
Optimus Prime has traveled about as far as we have! We put some serious time and effort into this project, gathering the objects, ordering the tags, and writing their stories. I am SO excited that our project has finally begun! Woo-hoo! We’re going geocaching tomorrow now that we’ve all been inspired. I hope the weather is as nice as it has been all week.
Enjoy San Diego Optimus!!! (Yeah… we’re on a first name basis)
How cool! I think we will be purchasing a GPS with some of our tax return. I have friends that geo cache and it sounds like a lot of fun.
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I have had this on my To DO list for over a year, and I want to do it, but I always seem to let it slide….thanks for the inspiration! And WOW, that is really cool. I want to go to San Diego too.
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Heather Reply:
February 21st, 2010 at 10:52 am
TJ and I enjoy it a lot! It’s probably something we’ll do for a long time together. Milo enjoys it some, but not long walks. Skylar just isn’t into it at all. However, since a lot of caches are in cool places everyone gets to have fun. Yesterday we found 2 at the beach and one in the park next to our house we’ve been meaning to explore.
I can’t wait to hear how Optimus enjoyed San Diego! I’m wondering if his friends stuck in West Rutland miss him? They must be cold. He’s the only one with a built in heater!
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