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Geocaching with families


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32 minutes ago, Justin Of Terrytown said:

Does anybody else Geocaches with family?

 

And my family, my mom and I both Geocache (we have separated accounts).  Sometimes we do it together and sometimes we geocache by ourselves.

 

Now my oldest niece and nephew have Geocache with me on occasions and have geocache with my mom on occasion.  But they don't have their own accounts yet. 

We have fun pics and great memories geocaching with the family!

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7 hours ago, Justin Of Terrytown said:

Does anybody else Geocaches with family?

Not usually.  One of the reasons I hike and geocache is to relieve cabin fever/being around people 24/7. 

 

I've always enjoyed hiking, climbing, and just "communing with nature".  Not so, my Muggband.  For him to enjoy to the Great Outdoors, there must be skis or a ball in play.  Very rarely (such as on a trip), I will take him with me to a non-hiking cache that promises to be creative/inventive/sneaky.  He's a great story-teller, and enjoys regaling friends with discovery tales.  "You won't believe where we found this thing ...."  He becomes a walking commercial for geocaching.  :)  He doesn't have - nor does he want - an account.

 

Upon rare occasion, my daughter accompanies me to find 1/1, 1/1.5 caches, just for an afternoon "adventure" or if we're early for an appointment.  Many of those are micros, so I have a separate logbook for her to sign & I note the GC code for each signature. (She can't see where to sign, and her writing is rather large.)  She does enjoy discussing ideas for creating new caches.  She doesn't have an account, either.

 

I do plan on dragging a couple of my siblings to some caches along the Banana & Indian Rivers when I visit next.  Mainly because they have kayaks :D and I know they'd love the paddle anyway ... but also to get them "hooked", so they'll go to some others that I really shouldn't hunt alone. (Waders and gators in swamps, oh my!)

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Rarely. My son does geocache under his own name, but he's moved away. My grand kids are too young to have their own accounts, but will sometimes tag along. I have to find caches with swag to keep them interested. My wife will tag along on some road trips, if the locations are interesting.

 

My style of geocaching is often incompatible with having a group. I will go after specific caches, and will often drive long distances. I will drive get up at 5:30AM, geocache and drive until 2:00AM, and eat at irregular intervals. If I'm doing a lot of driving, I will often only have one meal a day. I've gone almost a week on trail mix and BLT sandwiches. I will sleep in the car in rest areas and city parks. That all changes when bringing along the family. 

 

So, maybe the wife will tag along on a trip. With the rest of the family along, it is day trips, usually no more than 6 hours in duration.

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14 hours ago, Justin Of Terrytown said:

Does anybody else Geocaches with family?

 

We do!  Our son began in 2004 or 2005, late teenage years.  He met his (now) wife in 2014, at a Geocaching event.  They now have 2 children, with geonames and accounts, and now that they are back closer to us, we've attended several events together, or they have surprised us by showing up at an event!  While visiting them when they lived a day's drive away,  we did some geocaching together that hubby and I probably would never do on our own (a geo-art in the desert, Arizona's oldest cache - we used son's Jeep Rubicon to off road to these!)

 

Hubby and I began geocaching on our own when he retired, primarily to be able to find and then help check on and maintain our son's hides while he was out of the area.  We found out we enjoyed finding, as well as creating hides for others to find.  It's also interesting to meet people who have known our two kids in a way that we are only now getting to know them - as fellow geocachers.  It's added another dimension to the way we can relate to kids and grandkids!  And it's a hobby we enjoy doing together in his retirement.  We each have our own account, most of our finds have been recorded together, but we do go out on our own at times, or with other groups and have different finds as well.  And we each place caches in our own name - different styles but with a lot of collaboration.  He builds my gadgets and specialty caches, I generally do the cache page write ups for both of us.

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I often end up going solo, since I enjoy longer hikes than our 6-year-old daughter.  But whenever I can make it a family affair, I do.  She stuck with it for a nice hike this weekend that included 10 caches - I think that's about the limit of what I can get away with.

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My son is 10 1/2, has been caching since 3 1/2, finished his DT grid before he was 10*, got his 4100th cache yesterday. He's still growing into caching - yesterday on a 3 mile walk he was doing the tree climbs, and over the last year he's done several all-day (8-mile +) walks and mountain bike rides. 

On 31/12 I noticed my total for 2019 had gone down on the previous 3 years but his was up by a few. For many years his finds as a % of mine were 60-68%; in 2019 it was 83%! Really pleased with that stat. I can only think of a handful of days when I went out caching solo in 2019; many of the ~180 I got alone will have been on business trips. 

*there's one or two where someone else solved the puzzle or did the final retrieve - but he's been kayaking several times and underground on at least 6 occasions I can think of, half of those involving running water.

There may well be a teenage time when he grows out of it, who knows? Meanwhile we have a lot of fun together. Most of the medium-size walks are in the company of Mrs OS, who found more caches than me yesterday. Siblings, nephews and nieces pretty much expect a meet-up with us to involve some caching.

 

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Most of my caching is with Beth (5) and sometimes Katy (2). I think it's so exciting for them and much better to be out stomping around in the mud then sitting at home eating crisps in front of the TV.

 

In fact, as nearby caches decrease, we've bought an electric scooter so we can zip out to some of the caches that aren't accessible by pushbike.

 

I've enjoyed it so much I'm in the process of creating five new caches, each by the five paediatric wards at the NHS hospital I work at. The idea is that patients will help create the cache, and then the play specialists can use them to help engage kids and get them outside. I hope that over time it may introduce many more kids to Geocaching.

Edited by daddybeth
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On 1/2/2020 at 5:45 PM, BethDaddyKaty said:

I've enjoyed it so much I'm in the process of creating five new caches, each by the five paediatric wards at the NHS hospital I work at. The idea is that patients will help create the cache, and then the play specialists can use them to help engage kids and get them outside. I hope that over time it may introduce many more kids to Geocaching.

 

I love this. When I was hospitalized for a few days last year...my geocaching son sent me links to caches hidden nearby the hospital to find when I was released. lol 

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26 minutes ago, HunterandSamuel said:

 

I love this. When I was hospitalized for a few days last year...my geocaching son sent me links to caches hidden nearby the hospital to find when I was released. lol 

 

I created one about 10 years ago that was next a little known trail that follows a creek.  The trails starts just behind our local hospital and has a sign at the start of the trail indicating that it should not be used without a physicians approval.  I called it "Ask Your Doctor" [if Geocaching is right for you]

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25 minutes ago, NYPaddleCacher said:

I created one about 10 years ago that was next a little known trail that follows a creek.  The trails starts just behind our local hospital and has a sign at the start of the trail indicating that it should not be used without a physicians approval.  I called it "Ask Your Doctor" [if Geocaching is right for you]

Very creative! 

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Yep 3 of my kids have accounts. Their interest waxes and wanes, and I don’t push it. It can be a pain logging a find on all the different accounts. It was a “major project” when 2 of my kids completed a geocoin challenge last year and we found 28 or so caches in 1 day. I’ve gotten adept at using different browsers on the desktop, one for each cacher, with URL copy/paste.

Edited by Korichnovui
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1 hour ago, Viajero Perdido said:

 

Shouldn't it be their reward / responsibility?


The 7 year old can barely read. But sometimes he helps come up with something to say. And it’s still sometimes an ordeal for the kids to make the logs as we only have 1 device and a desktop. Logging in and out, finding the cache, etc.

Edited by Korichnovui
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12 hours ago, Korichnovui said:

Yep 3 of my kids have accounts. Their interest waxes and wanes, and I don’t push it. It can be a pain logging a find on all the different accounts. It was a “major project” when 2 of my kids completed a geocoin challenge last year and we found 28 or so caches in 1 day. I’ve gotten adept at using different browsers on the desktop, one for each cacher, with URL copy/paste.

10 hours ago, Korichnovui said:

The 7 year old can barely read. But sometimes he helps come up with something to say. And it’s still sometimes an ordeal for the kids to make the logs as we only have 1 device and a desktop. Logging in and out, finding the cache, etc.

 

We know a few families that have a single "family account", but use trackables signed to that account, one for each of their kids to "Visit" .

Only one log, and simply include the trackables in your inventory that match.  :)

Years later, if they want their own account, it's easy to just back-date all the caches visited  by their trackable.

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19 minutes ago, cerberus1 said:

We know a few families that have a single "family account", but use trackables signed to that account, one for each of their kids to "Visit" .

Only one log, and simply include the trackables in your inventory that match.  :)

Years later, if they want their own account, it's easy to just back-date all the caches visited  by their trackable.

 

Now that is an awesome idea B)

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On 9/26/2019 at 11:02 PM, Justin Of Terrytown said:

Does anybody else Geocaches with family?

 

And my family, my mom and I both Geocache (we have separated accounts).  Sometimes we do it together and sometimes we geocache by ourselves.

 

Now my oldest niece and nephew have Geocache with me on occasions and have geocache with my mom on occasion.  But they don't have their own accounts yet. 

 

Yes! That's how I became a geocacher! Our son, a geocache addict, took us out caching one day and I became hooked. It was an amazing experience. We found four caches that day and when I became a member, I logged them as finds. 

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