thisdoghunts

As newbies, my son and I were on our second day of hunting in our home town. It was a cache called "watering Hole". This one had a double meaning as it was located at a bar & grille with an outdoor patio which had a water feature next to landscaped areas. There is a bench right up against the water feature and almost always someone is on it. At the same time, patrons on the patio are facing directly toward you while enjoying their suds & spuds. My son and I managed to dig around in the bushes, under the rocks, along the water feature and nearby light poles and such with people staring directly at us. I did not try to conceal the GPS, but rather entertained the small crowd by staring at it and scratching my head, then rifling through the bushes some more. I instructed my son with one rule..."If you find it, don't announce or act surprised. Move on somewhere else, and then we will have to find away to slip it out, sign the log, and return it with no one seeing it." We had a guy sitting on the same bench with us when I found it. My son was looking directly at me when I found it and still didn't beleive me when I told him I had. We sat there for a moment just chatting, but stealthly waiting until all eyes were turned another direction. I grabbed the cache and since no one knew what we were writing on, we signed the log in plain sight, then waited a moment to slip it back. On another hunt at a very busy road and grocery store, I noticed the more time we stood around staring at the ground and surrounding areas, the more looks we got. But once we dove into the landscape, people apparently thought we were landscapers and hardly even noticed us.

I have a Verizon Wireless internet card for my PC. Because I use it at work all day with the power cord, it is always charged and ready to go. Generally I use the printer friendly feature if I'm planning a few caches to find. But I place my laptop in the car so I can reference clues, coords, etc. if I need to. I very recently started geocaching with my teenage son who learned about it through his cousin's friend. My son and I will go someplace to eat, set up the laptop while we are eating, search and decide on caches to hunt, enter the coordinates into the GPS, and hand write the coordinates and clues for reference. We browse the the logs for any helpful information and jot down notes that may help. Yes, this can be time consuming, but for me, it's about reconnecting and spending time with my 15 year old son who otherwise has little in common with me. For us, it's not about how many caches we can find in a day, but rather enjoying one another and the geocaching experience to the fullest. When we decide to do a day hunt or a trip, I suppose we will need to spend some time planning in advance, but will have the internet ready laptop available for quick reference. After we find our planned caches, we sometomies flip open the laptop and choose another one or two to hunt if we have extra time. I usually have my son do most of the online preparation and handling of the GPS. He loves anything that requires ciphering and deciphering. Just watching him work and discussing the process is very satisfying to me as a parent. We are using a Garmin 48 that my ex-wife bought for my birthday about 8 years ago. I had only used it maybe twice for any practical purpose until now. In june, my son reminded me that his birthday is July 4th and asked me to buy him a GPS, not knowing I already had one. I was puzzled because he never leaves his room or strays too far from his X-Box. I have tried to introduce him to countless activities that will get him out of his room and into the real world. When he began to describe geocaching, I knew instantly we would be spending more time together. We placed our first cache last night in the rain and are waiting for approval from our local reviewer. The cache will be listed under his screen name "Irregardless" and is called "Full Court Press". His screen name is a reflection of his anal retentive nature. He despises the uselessness or redundancy of things. Thus, the prefix in irregardless is useless because it would mean the same thing "regardless". I've rambled enough and look forward to meeting other cachers in person so I can learn and further discuss our new hobby. Thanks for listening.

oops! my bad!