Geocaching with Wolves
D got a GPS for his birthday and has been working at loading up maps. It didn't want to save as big a map as he wanted, but we do have local maps at least.
Tuesday he went to a local park to try to find a geocache. No luck. So on Wednesday, he took M and they went looking again. This time they had better luck (and didn't have to dodge the chainsaws). So on Thursday, I called all the Wolf Scouts and invited them to come geocaching with us Sat. morning.
9am Sat
Bring water and LOTS of bug spray
All 5 told me that they would be there, but at almost 9:30, only 2 boys were there. I don't know what happened to the others, but I wish I had known so we didn't have to wait around.
Anyway, D gave a quick guide to the GPS and off we went. Through the woods, under the power line and back into the woods on the other side. We were heading for a cache at the far end of the park (that M and D had located on Wed), when the boy operating the GPS said "hey, there's one right near here!" Well, yes, fairly near. The boys wanted to go hunting, so off we went into the brush.
The "right near here" turned out to be 150 ft through underbrush, but that doesn't deter 7 yo boys! And then while we were tracking and hunting, they found bones. Of course, one asked "are these human bones?" Um, NO. Deer bones. First M and another boy found leg bones.
Then A found a skull. Cool!, they all declared.
Then finally we found the cache:
There were all sorts of interesting things in there. I had brought a bunch of little items so that each boy could retrieve an item from the cache and we would have something to put in there. They each found something fun - a little car, a DVD of cartoons (M), and some other stuff. We left refrigerator magnets, Mardi Gras beads and another little car. I took a cute little figure with a tracking tag, figuring it would be fun to see where it had been and to follow it later. That little figure was more interesting and appropriate than we could have guessed! *(see below)
Then we backtracked back to the trail and headed off to the next cache. Along the way we found some nice ripe blackberries, which we had to try. The other mom and I kept stopping to sample them. I wish I had thought to bring a milk jug to pick them into. A and I are going to go picking at our elementary school some morning soon.
Anyway, soon enough we found that the direction pointed us off the trail again, so we went off through the underbrush (much easier this time) and found the second cache.
M put in an extra item for the fact that he had taken a knife when the found it the first time (and neither D nor I had thougt about packing a trinket).
* We tracked our figure to here: http://www.geocaching.com/track/details.aspx?tracker=541919 It seems that this figure is Scout Olave, Lord Baden-Powell's wife, and is interesting in Scouts and Scouting. How fun to have a group of Cub Scouts pick her up. We've debated sending her to Webelos encampment with M next month, but we don't think there are any geocaches at the camp, so she may go to her next cache home on our vacation to Ohio.
Tuesday he went to a local park to try to find a geocache. No luck. So on Wednesday, he took M and they went looking again. This time they had better luck (and didn't have to dodge the chainsaws). So on Thursday, I called all the Wolf Scouts and invited them to come geocaching with us Sat. morning.
9am Sat
Bring water and LOTS of bug spray
All 5 told me that they would be there, but at almost 9:30, only 2 boys were there. I don't know what happened to the others, but I wish I had known so we didn't have to wait around.
Anyway, D gave a quick guide to the GPS and off we went. Through the woods, under the power line and back into the woods on the other side. We were heading for a cache at the far end of the park (that M and D had located on Wed), when the boy operating the GPS said "hey, there's one right near here!" Well, yes, fairly near. The boys wanted to go hunting, so off we went into the brush.
The "right near here" turned out to be 150 ft through underbrush, but that doesn't deter 7 yo boys! And then while we were tracking and hunting, they found bones. Of course, one asked "are these human bones?" Um, NO. Deer bones. First M and another boy found leg bones.
Then A found a skull. Cool!, they all declared.
Then finally we found the cache:
There were all sorts of interesting things in there. I had brought a bunch of little items so that each boy could retrieve an item from the cache and we would have something to put in there. They each found something fun - a little car, a DVD of cartoons (M), and some other stuff. We left refrigerator magnets, Mardi Gras beads and another little car. I took a cute little figure with a tracking tag, figuring it would be fun to see where it had been and to follow it later. That little figure was more interesting and appropriate than we could have guessed! *(see below)
Then we backtracked back to the trail and headed off to the next cache. Along the way we found some nice ripe blackberries, which we had to try. The other mom and I kept stopping to sample them. I wish I had thought to bring a milk jug to pick them into. A and I are going to go picking at our elementary school some morning soon.
Anyway, soon enough we found that the direction pointed us off the trail again, so we went off through the underbrush (much easier this time) and found the second cache.
M put in an extra item for the fact that he had taken a knife when the found it the first time (and neither D nor I had thougt about packing a trinket).
* We tracked our figure to here: http://www.geocaching.com/track/details.aspx?tracker=541919 It seems that this figure is Scout Olave, Lord Baden-Powell's wife, and is interesting in Scouts and Scouting. How fun to have a group of Cub Scouts pick her up. We've debated sending her to Webelos encampment with M next month, but we don't think there are any geocaches at the camp, so she may go to her next cache home on our vacation to Ohio.
posted by owlfan at 11:06 AM
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