Geocaching

Jon came home from school one day and told me about something he had heard about called "Geocaching", and said he wanted to try it. I had heard about it a few years ago when we lived in South Dakota, but had forgotten about it, because I thought we'd never own a piece of technological equipment so advanced as a GPS device!
Fast forward five years, and here we are with GPS on our phones. So being the high-tech family we are, we could now give it a try! For those who don't know, Geocaching is basically a big treasure hunt. People hide containers, called geocaches, outdoors and put the coordinates online for people to find. Here's the website we used to look up where to go:  http://www.geocaching.com/
We had grand visions of finding great treasures and exploring vast caverns, monolithic mountains... going places no one else had ever seen (except, of course, the people who hid the Geocaches there)! Then reality set in, realizing we had only two hours and three kids under the age of six. We wrote down a few coordinates to find and set out for our high adventures in Lehi, Utah!

We traveled down the road to a field behind the Elementary School. Following the map on Jon's phone, we came to the location where the Geocache was to be hidden. And find it... we could not. We searched high and low. Under rocks, behind bushes, on telephone poles. So we decided to try another one. After a couple locations of unsuccessful hunting, we found ourselves on a dirt road by the Jordan River in west Lehi.

Fun on the dirt road

Averee and her Daddy

Taking Time Out for a Kiss

Ahhhh... Fresh Air!

Skippin' on Down the Road

Gathering "Treasures" (flowers)

Brynn, so proud of her findings

 

Carolee wanted to pick every flower she saw

As we were walking, we came to a torn down old house near the river. After doing my motherly duties of warning the girls of critters that could be lurking in the rubble, I sent them on their way to explore.

The crumbling sidewalk around the pile of debris

This would be a great location for our next house!

After disturbing the ghosts who, I'm sure, thought they were at peace in this remote location, we figured out that we were on the wrong side of the river. So, instead of doing as I suggested (crossing over it with the kids on our backs, leaving all else behind.... just like the pioneers), we went back to the car to drive around it... Where's the fun in that? Just kidding... I'm sure I was the first one to get to the van, and relish in the cool of modern day air conditioning. I'll leave the crossing of rivers to the pioneers.

Safely on the other side of the river, we found a bike path to follow to get to our ever-elusive Geocache. The path led us near the river, which held lots of wildlife for us to enjoy.

 

A gorgeous black and yellow bird perched on a reed

 

Fish splashing in the water

We saw a lot of fish in shallow water near the edge of the river. After much excitement watching the fish, we continued our hunt. We consulted our GPS and went to the exact coordinates our hidden treasure was to be found. Again we searched high, low and everywhere in between. NO LUCK! Seriously, those things are really hidden! Someday maybe we'll find one and there will be rejoicing and feasting and all sorts of celebration. Until that day however, we will keep making memories like we did this, the first day of our geocaching adventures!