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.

Pleasant Hill Park – Pleasant Hill

Pleasant Hill Park – Pleasant Hill

Pleasant Hill Park is located just off highway 680 on Gregory Lane in Pleasant Hill. Pleasant Hill Park has some great features that make it one of our favorites to visit if we're in the area.

There are three structured play areas. One is for older kids and has a traditional jungle gym, and a few other spinning sorts of pieces of equipment. There is also a separate gated off toddler play area with smaller equipment for the littler ones. In between these two areas is a sandy play area with a strange sort of low climbing tunnel structure that my kids love. There is also a digging contraption in the sad area, but of course you can bring your own sand toys to enjoy there as well.

Even when I had a child that was young enough to use the toddler play area, we didn't use it much. It is great if you only have very young children, as the fence will keep them from running off when your back is turned, but if you also have older children, it is very difficult to see the other play area well from the toddler area.

In addition to the play structures, there is a good amount of open grass, and sidewalks. There is usually some biking as scootering going on along the sidewalks when we visit.  Also, some basketball courts, and swings are available some distance from the rest of the playground.

In the summer, I like that there are lots of mature trees all around the Pleasant Hill Park, so finding a shady spot to sit and rest is not a problem. There are three reservable picnic areas, and two open picnic areas. We did do a birthday party at Pleasant Hill Park once and were able to claim one of the open areas to set up for cake, etc. without too much trouble, but availability will vary every weekend I would expect.

There is street parking available right on Gregory Lane, but when that is full, there is a parking lot adjacent to the park where I have never failed to find a space.

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.

Book review: Come Back, Cat by Joan L. Nodset

Book review: Come Back, Cat by Joan L. Nodset

ComeBack, Cat by Joan L. Nodset is darling books that both kids and cats will love. There are few words, but the story involves a little girl who wants to play with a cat she meets. However, her attempts to catch and cuddle the cat are met with fear and aggression from the object of her desire. Through the story she learns how to move slower, and speak more calmly in order to win the cat over, and allow it to trust her enough to come near.

Kids often let their excitement about animals override their other judgments about how the animal is responding to them. This is a very simple reminder for children to pay attention to the reactions they get from a cat to help avoid frightening it, or getting bit or scratched themselves. My kids have checked this out from the library more than once, and really love reading it over again. The message seems to be working its way into their brains too, but sometimes excitement still gets the better of them. 

North Bay Athletic Association – Gymnastics Lessons in Vallejo

North Bay Athletic Association – Gymnastics Lessons in Vallejo

It has been many years since my kids took gymnastics classes at North Bay Athletic Association, but they still remember it fondly. They offer a variety of ages and levels of classes, and options about how many classes a week you would like to take. There is also a small sibling discount. When we attended, we didn’t have any difficulty with availability of the times and days we wanted, and the classes we a nice size so that each child could get a good amount of individual help.

Because North Bay Athletic Association is a non-profit, their classes were less expensive than some other similar gymnastics studios, but I wouldn’t call their prices dirt cheap. For the high quality of instruction we received, however, I do feel it was an extremely good value.

There are also more advanced programs for kids who want to take gymnastics to a more serious level, or perhaps start toward competition. The instructors watch for kids who may be capable of more, and will invite these families into the advanced programs if they are interested.

While our family is not athletically gifted, my kids ha d a great time. In fact, I think they had so much fun with a handful of the activities that they almost didn’t notice that they don’t really like gymnastics that much. When we left, they missed their instructors the most.

While I’ve had friends tell me that they have had great, and awful instructors at North Bay Athletic Association, all the ones we had, and we had about three and a handful of substitutes, were all wonderful. Like most classes, there is probably a personality fit that needs to be found between instructor and student. As I mentioned before, though, since they have so many class offerings, it isn’t hard to move to a different time or day if you want a different instructor. 

Pumpkin Patch Review: Clayton Valley Pumpkin Farm

Clayton Valley Pumpkin Farm

We like the Clayton Valley Pumpkin Patch partly because it is not too far from us. Even so, it is a very nice pumpkin patch, with lots for kids to do.

The Clayton pumpkin patch seems to have expanded somewhat this year since our last visit a few years ago. They have two separate play areas for kids now instead of the one they had at our last visit. With a separate charge for each one, although they do offer a combination charge that saves you all of $1 if you do both. We decided against going down to the play areas this year due to the cost. It felt overpriced the last time we were there to me, although the kids loved it.

There is also a very small train ride for a smaller cost that makes a loop around the upper patch area. We did take a train ride this year, and it was what one would expect for that type of ride, although there were some cute decorations set up along the route to look at and even a tunnel to go through.

Even without spending much money, there was enough to keep our kids busy and happy for the hour or so we spent at the Clayton Pumpkin Patch. There was a small hay tunnel that they went in and out of over and over and over again with enthusiasm. I understand there is a much larger version of this in the pay-to-play area.

There are also a few farm animals to look at. Two pigs and two goats that we could see the day we visited. While the kids can't go in with the animals or touch them, they have a neat contraption for the kids to feed them with. It is sort of a stationary bike connected to a pulley. They can buy animal feed for a quarter, put the food into a can, and then peddle the can up where it will tip over the fence into a bowl before coming back down. My children were a little disappointed that the animals were not interested in the food pellets they peddled into their bowl, but not disappointed enough to keep them from asking to do it again.

Then there are the pumpkins. They are divided into piles by size. They even have piles of the more exotic green and white pumpkins some folks like. There are wheelbarrows in the pumpkin area to load up your pumpkins to take to the payment counter. The wheelbarrows are small and easy enough to handle that I never touched it, my 5 and 9 year old kids could maneuver them on their own. My husband learned that they don't actually grow the pumpkins there at the Clayton Farm; they are brought in from other places in California.

They also have a shop with other nice fall items, such as gourds, Indian corn, and Halloween decorations. The prices were not the lowest I've seen, but they are reasonable. The workers were all very helpful, and did their best to keep anyone from waiting for help.



We visited in mid-morning, and never had to wait in a line except for the train, and then not more than maybe 5 minutes. However, by the time we left, parking was very full, and I noticed that the train line was easily 5 times as long as when we had taken our ride. So aim for an earlier visit if you want to avoid the more crowded parts of the day.

Fun Stuff To Do For Kids Anywhere

     To help fill in some of the lag time between posts, I'm starting a new feature of "Fun Stuff To Do For Kids Anywhere" that will not be about a specific Bay Area location or attraction. Instead it will be an idea for something families or kids can do for fun at home (or near home).

     Maybe it will be a craft project, or a game, or an activity that isn't location dependent. It won't always be something exciting, or even all that original. It'll probably be something you could have thought of yourself. Just something to get kids and families doing fun stuff together. Because that is important to me. And sometimes we just don't want to have to go someplace to do it.

     Today's suggestion: Build something with Legos together.

     Put on some fun music and dump your legos on the floor (or other building block things if you don't have legos) and build with your kids. This is fun for toddlers (with toddler safe blocks obviously) up through teens and adults. I remember my dad giving me a small $6 set of legos when I was 28, and we still had fun putting it together together.

     Have Fun!

The Habitot Children's Museum

Habitot Children's Museum is an indoor play area for babies, toddlers and preschoolers. It features an art room, a play store/restaurant, a water play area, wiggle wall (a tunnel that kids can crawl and climb through), a baby play area, a short riding toy space, and an area for a changing exhibit - currently, a recycling center.

The cost to get into Habitot is $7.00 for children, and $6.00 for adults. Multiuse passes are also available. They offer occasional free entry days or evenings. We visited on such an evening. Their website lists free entry days for January of 2008, but we visited much later than that. It may be worth a call to ask about upcoming free admission days before scheduling your visit. The phone number is 510-647-1111. We had a good time, but if I'd paid $20.00 for my two children and I to get in, I would have been disappointed.

Habitot Children's Museum is located at 2065 Kittredge Street at Shattuck Drive in Berkeley near the Berkeley BART station. Street parking is available, but tricky to find. There's a parking garage across the street, which is convenient, but adds to the cost of a visit.

Read the full review here.