Family caching!

It's been so hot here in Florida lately, I haven't wanted to do anything outdoors including geocaching! I was surfing around geocaching.com this morning and found a nice little pocket of caches just north of the toll bridge south of Milton. I figured if we geocached early enough, we could beat the heat. So, I got everybody up and going, even woke up the wife early on her day to sleep in... just so we could go geocaching. I had nine picked out, thinking we'd only hit 3 or 4 before it got too hot on us. We got going and started with one cache named "$150.00." Sometime part of the fun of geocaching is finding out why a geocache is named what it is. Check it out! It was right behind the sign...look closely!

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Up the toll bridge and walked through a nature trail. Which started out nice and open and then got thicker and thicker like a jungle. That's no good for the wife who hates all the bugs in the summertime. I have to agree to a degree... I hate the bugs buzzing around my ears, but love the outdoors! I credit my Dad for that. I enjoy being outdoors more the older I get! Can you see us? Usually, we pass on looking for micros because there is no treasure inside, just a log to sign. Trale likes treasure, but this time we found them and Trale enjoyed it too! We took a break at McDonalds along the way and as kids do... they have accidents. Mason had a pretty big one. He was standing on the chair (like daddy told him not to) and as he took a step to turn around, he fell... hard! He landed against the wall, but on the way down his face and nose slammed, just right, on the molding (a sharp piece of wood.) I thought he broke his nose the way it bled and the way he screamed. He turned out to be ok, but it was pretty tramatic for Mason and daddy too! Not the last injury of they day though. We stopped by one cache just outside a bowling alley, Trale reached to pull out the cache and pulled out some big ants with it! He got a few bites on him. I had some good stuff in my geo-bag to ease the sting. We'll we got to the part of the day when it was getting pretty darn hot, but not before we logged all nine geocaches... a family record number of finds for one day! We had a ton of fun, the kids were great, and the injuries were at a minimum! Can't beat that! Cache On!

Meeting of the cachers...In a Flash!

What's cooler than geocaching?... geocaching with about 30 other people who geocache! Panama City was holding a "Flash Mob" Event cache. The concept? Walk around like nothing is going on then at an exact time, everybody meets all of a sudden, sign the log and scatter in 15 minutes or less! The event took place at a wonderful park just outside of Panama City. (We played at the nearby park until the said time to meet) Even though it was about 50 miles from home, we wanted to go since it was the closest event and it would be our first event geocache. Most of the geocachers there were from the Panama City area, but there was a group we know in Destin, the Redneck Rebels, and even a crew from Tallahassee. You could tell we were there because of our rowdy boys, who were present! We spent more time corralling them than chatting, but we were only there for a little while since it was a Flash Mob Event. So they didn't do too much damage! This was a ton of fun, I even walked away with a great swag bag that I won in a drawing. Can't wait until the next event in Alabama... it's three days long! We'll have to see about that one when we get to the end of September!

Cache on!

Micro Mania !!

The kids love geocaching, but they like the big treasure more than the micros. So there are dozens of micros we have not found. So while the kids were at daycare, the wife and I snuck away from work to hit a few micro geocaches! We stayed in the urban jungle since Holli is scared of the bugs in the woods. She's a girlie girl!

Micros are, as the name suggests, are very small: from old prescription bottles that might hold a small coin or trade item to a custom made cache no bigger around than a dime that holds only a log.

Holli found this nano under the fire hydrant. It was very small, you can barely see it in the picture. The water sprinkers were turned on in that field, but we managed to stay dry. Behind me was Target!

We stopped by a little park we have visited before while in Destin and always said we should put a micro here. Come to find out, there was one there! ...and it had been there for a long time and we didn't even know it. That's the cool thing about geocaches, you pass by one everyday and don't even know it sometimes! We logged five micros for the afternoon. It was like a mini-date for us, and we went geocaching! Cache on!