Geocaching Part 1 - Planning

Geocaching Part 1 - Planning

I promised awhile back to write a more extensive post about geocaching with kids. However, I don’t want to overwhelm with a super long post, so I will be dividing the process up. So here is part 1: planning your geocaching outing. Spring and Summer can be a great time to try out geocaching if you’ve never tried it before. We went out today and found three caches. I’m going to give an account of what we did as an example of how geocaching works. I’m going to do my best to avoid including any details that might provide hints about the location of the caches we found so I don’t accidently share any caching spoilers.

First, I visited http://geocaching.com and pulled up the map of the Regional Park we planned to visit, to see what sorts of geocaches were there. What I consider when planning a geocaching outing with my kids:

-          The difficulty rating for the cache. While 3 and 4 star difficulty caches are very rewarding for me to find, my kids usually lose interest in searching well before I do. I stick to 1 and 2 star, maybe 2 ½ when they are caching with me to keep it fun.

-          The terrain rating. For this I stick to a 3 ½ star rating or under, even on my own because I’m not all that fit. I don’t want to have to do any climbing or other difficult maneuvers to reach a cache. There may be a 3 or a 3 ½ I won’t be able to get to, but so far those have been obtainable for us even if slightly tiring if they are up a steep hill or something similar.

-          The size of the cache. The kids love the cheep silly ‘swag’, or treasures that are available for trade inside some geocaches. Micro caches are often to small to hold any swag. I try to make sure most of the caches we will be searching for on an outing are ‘small’ or larger. Sometimes a hide is so clever and fun on its own they enjoy finding it just for the sake of finding it (as I do) but usually, they want the swag.

-          The hike involved. We are tackling longer hikes as time goes along and they grow, but I still have to consider a hike length that will keep things fun for them. Sometimes we will skip the hike all together and focus on finding ‘urban’ caches. These are ones that are hidden in parking lots, or neighborhood playgrounds, or sometimes inside local businesses. We found one on the bookshelf at our library! The downside to urban caches is that they tend to be small because it is harder to hide a geocache in a busy area. It can also be harder to search in a high traffic shopping center, for example, without strangers wondering what you’re up to.      

           

For your first geocaching outing consider looking for a ‘beginner’ cache. When you visit http://geocaching.com and  under the “Play” tab pick “Hide or Seek a cache” then enter the area you want to look in, you will be shown a list of caches in that area. Caches that the hider thinks would be good for a beginner will be highlighted in green.

Next time I’ll go over what to take with you on your geocaching outing.

Letterboxing – Fun Stuff to Do Anywhere

Letterboxing – Fun Stuff to Do Anywhere

After last week's introduction to geocaching, I thought this week, I should introduce geocaching's low-tech predecessor: letterboxing.

Geocaching and letterboxing share a lot in common. The idea for both is to go out into the world, often into nature, and find the hidden container. In geocaching, there will be a logbook, and possibly some swag for trade in the container. In letterboxing, there will be a logbook and a stamp. You can bring your own stamp to mark the logbook with, or just write your name, and you can use the stamp in the letterbox to mark your own book to show you made the find. You should not trade or take anything from a letterbox.

The benefits of letterboxing is that no special technology is required (other than looking the letterbox up online before leaving home.) Instead of GPS coordinates, letterboxing uses landmarks and more old-fashioned treasure hunting terms. For example you could be instructed to find a particularly noticeable tree, and go ten paces to the north, then turn right, and so on.

The downside of letterboxes is that there are far fewer of them around than geocaches. The website we've used is www.letterboxing.org, but we've only found two letterboxes. If you are an experienced letterboxer, and have other online resources you can share, please do so in the comments.

Geocaching – Fun Stuff to Do Anywhere

Geocaching – Fun Stuff to Do Anywhere

I've wanted to write a post about geocaching for a while now, but couldn't decide where to put it. I can certainly be done almost anywhere in the Bay Area, but I think it could deserve it's own full review like the Thursday activities get. So, I decided to do both.

This week will be just a quick introduction to geocaching, and in a future week, I'll write a more expansive post with ideas to take you deeper into the hobby of geocaching.

Basically, geocacaching is a treasure hunting game played with a GPs device, and the website geocaching.com. There are other websites as well, but this is the main, and most popular one as far as I know. The website offers a few different ways to search for nearby caches. You can enter an address and get a list of geocaches close by. I personally like the 'search on the map' function. It gives me better information about where a cache is than just how many miles from the entered address.

Not all geocaches are kid or family appropriate. There are a number of different attributes that can be added to each cache listing to describe it. For your few outings, you may want to look for caches that are labeled as "kid friendly" or listed as "beginner" caches. I've hunted for caches along busy roads and other places I wouldn't have wanted to take my children. That's another reason to check out the map on geocaching.com before heading out to your hunt – make sure it is an area you'll all feel safe.

Luckily, most are very family friendly. If you have a popular walking trail near you home, or park, or regional open space, there are great odds there will be several geocaches there for you to find.

What my kids like best, is the swag. If you are looking for a cache labeled 'small' or larger, then there may be small toys, coins or other little items inside. If you bring small items to trade, you can put in your item, and take some other trinket out of the cache. My kids have traded for things like beads, rubber bouncy balls or matchbox cars. Try to keep the trades fair, so the next kids to come along have something fun to pick out too.

We have a hand held geocaching GPS, but you can geocache with just a smartphone ap if you don't have a GPS. (Car GPS devises don't work well for geocaching). Geocaching.com has their own ap that costs $10, but I have used and like c:geo, and it is free. You do need to go to geocaching.com and sign up there for an account first to use c:geo and some of the other free geocaching aps out there.

If you're ready to get started, the geocaching.com website can walk you through finding your first cache. Otherwise, I'll be back with even more geocaching fun for you and your family another week.

Take a Hike – Fun Stuff to Do Anywhere

Take a Hike – Fun Stuff to Do Anywhere

Before long it will be too wet to spend much time outdoors here in the Northern California Bay Area. Take advantage of a sunny day and get out for a walk with the kids. If you’re really ambitious and want some serious nature time, you can visit the East Bay Regional Parks website and find your closest park to visit. Be warned however, that even if there hasn’t been any recent rain, the trails can be muddy and slippery this time of year.

Even a walk around the block in your own neighborhood can be a lot of fun though. Have the kids see how many different types of birds they can spot along the way. Or, how many different types of animals – and dogs count!

Markham Nature Area in Concord

Markham Nature Area in Concord

The Markham Nature Area is a hidden little treasure. It's one of those places we stumbled upon by semi-accident and was amazed that we had not known about it before. Plus it's free.

There are three distinct areas or features of the Markham Nature Area:

The Tree Walk – this is an easy dirt walking trail. Along the path are various trees, many of which are marked with numbers. At the beginning of the trail you can pick up a map that will give you the name of each numbered tree.

I was surprised how much my kids liked the tree walk. They loved carrying the map, finding the tree numbers, and looking up the type of tree from their map. Honestly, I think if I took them back today, they wouldn't be able to remember a single tree name, but they still had fun. Plus, my preschooler had been confused about reading two-digit numbers; she tended to read them backward. By the end of the Tree Walk, she was an expert in reading two digit numbers because she wanted to be in charge of the map so much.

The International Garden – This is a shorter walking trail that passes through a garden that has been planted with plants from around the world, and arranged by region. The international areas include: Australia, Asia, South America, Africa, California, the Eastern U.S., the Mediterranean, and Europe.

My kids were less excited about this part of Markham Nature Area than the Tree Walk, but there were enough strange and interesting plants to hold their interest for a quick walk though. I liked that each plant had a little plaque with its name on it.

The Nursery – While a visit to the Markham Nature Area is free, they still need to pay for maintenance and other expenses. One way they do this is through plant sales at the plant nursery. The Nursery is open on Tuesdays from 9:00 to noon. They are also open on some Saturdays, but their Saturday sales appear to be done for the rest of 2012. If you'd like to know when the next Saturday plant sale will be you can visit their website here. 

Tilden Park in Berkley

Tilden Park in Berkley

Tilden Park in Berkley is a very big place. The first time we visited for a hike, we could have easily come and gone without ever knowing what other fun places there were for kids and families to visit there.

The hiking alone in Tilden Park is wonderful. It is a wooded area, and tends to be fairly cool compared to many other places around the bay. Our preschooler didn’t have any trouble with the trail we hiked, but since we have only hiked twice here, I am sure there are places with much more challenging trails. However, if you want to hike with little ones, you won’t have trouble finding a good place to do so in Tilden.

In addition to the lovely hiking trails, Tilden Park also has a small train that can take you for a short ride through the woods, and even smaller trains that can take kids for a ride around the miniature train yard. The train runs on weekends only and parking is fairly limited in the lot right by the train. The trains open at 11:00 am, and it is best to get there a little before they start if you want to park close by.

There is also an Environmental Education Center. Inside there is a room-sized model of the Bay Area, and a few other displays to look at. Naturalists also occasionally bring out some of their educational wildlife ambassadors and give short talks about them. We were fortunate enough to get to see a small snake and a tarantula on our visit.

Right next to the Education Center, is what they call the “Little Farm”. It’s basically what it sounds like, a small area with farm animals. There are cows, sheep, goats, chickens and ducks, and rabbits. It isn’t a petting zoo, but if the animals happen to come up to the fence, they can be touched.  When we last visited, guests were allowed to feed lettuce or celery that they had brought from home to the animals. My kids were a little sad that we had nothing to feed because we didn’t know ahead of time. I know from experience that the feeding rules can change at these places depending on the health needs of the animals, so if you bring something, please make sure to check the posted signs to make sure what you brought is safe to feed before you give anything to the animals.

While we have never visited it ourselves, there is also a merry-go-round, a botanic garden, and something called the Brazil building at Tilden. We hope to go explore these other area soon. Most of these attractions are not grouped together, but spread around the park, so we haven’t been able to see more than one or two areas at each visit. To see a map to plan your trip, and check hours of operation and costs, you can visit the Tilden Park page of the East County Parks website.