Geocaching Family Album

[+TheThunderbirds]

My kids and I go Geocaching almost every Saturday. Mom gets to sleep in and we go out for donuts and treasure hunting. We have 475 finds. My kids are 8 and 5 (6 and 3 when we started).

 

About a year ago, I started to put an album together on our adventures. It's really just a large 3 ring binder. Ok, its now 2 binders.

 

We have several sections of information:

 

1. Cache page of each found cache (printer friendly view (1pg)).

2. "goal" page of each travel bug we take

3. Caches we OWN (printer friendly view)

4. Travel bugs we own.

5. Geocaching articles of interest

6. tips, tricks (e.g. GSAK, plucker instructions)

 

In sections 1 & 2, I write down the date and our find #. I also fill in any clues or notes about the cache that need answered or are of interest. If I take digital pictures, I will print and attach them. I have some great shots from Christmas Geocache Events.

 

I have shown this to family members, it is a great conversation piece to show off some of the historical sites, virtuals, of our area and country. We have cached in about 10 states from various vacations or my company travels. The kids love it and so do I. With hundreds of caches, it is easy to have all the fun times blur together.

 

Does anyone else do this or something similar?

 

Any additional suggestions for my album?

[+protocoldroid]

my girlfriend makes handmade books, and she made one for us to start our own personal geocaching log. we find the cache, and we make a log in the cache, and also we make a log in our own personal geocaching journal.

 

of course you don't need a handmade book... maybe just a couple extra pages in your 3-ring-binder or the standard spiral bound notebook. it's kinda nice to have a little verbage to go along with the pictures and cache information to look back on the caches.

 

we had been keeping journals of our hikes, and our backpacking trips... so we figured it'd definately be a fit to have a journal for geocaching.

 

edited to add: really like the three ring binder idea... i've been putting the cache pages on my PDA, and... it just doesn't have the tactile value that the paper has, especially for showing the whoel famn damily. think i should compile one too to compliment the journal.

Edited April 25, 2004 by protocoldroid

[Leoness]

Yes! I have a large ring binder (lever arch file) in which I keep a single (A4) sheet of the printer friendly view of each cache I have found, filed in the order in which I found them. I have dividers every 50 caches so I can count them easily. Each sheet is back-to-back with another sheet (to save space) and then slipped into a clear plastic wallet.

 

I only have one 1 TB so don't I bother to keep paper info on him as I check his progress on his web page. Similarly, I have only hidden 2 caches so I keep track of them on the web page too.

 

Also, on my computer's HD, I have photos of most of the caches I have been to as around here, they tend to be hidden at places of scenic beauty and there's a good opportunity to take some nice photos.

 

Occasionally, I collect a card from a cache which the owner has left there to take as a "trophy" of the visit which I slip into the plastic wallet with the relevant cache page. Also, when I visit a cache at a church, there are often postcards of the church for which I make a small donation and I slip that into the cache page wallet too.