Caching in April

April saw us add 100 new caches to our total! Thankfully it was the Easter Holidays for BabyDippy so we got to cache quite a bit. We completed our first series of 8 caches, took in some caches on a weekend away and cached 24 days out of the month!

We found some very interesting cache containers, yes, these are all caches that contain a log book of some size!

Well I never....

For the past 7 years we have driven past the village bus stop on an almost daily basis. Who knew that a cache had been hidden there for years?

Our next few caches

The following weekend we headed out with our new GPS unit. The name of it is a Garmin Trex. To DaddyDippy and myself, we read this as 'trex'... as in trekking. BabyDippy, in her dinosaur obsessed state reads the name as T-rex! Our GPS is now known as the T-rex.

We found 4 caches in a nearby village. Again, the caches were well stocked plastic boxes. We left little dinosaurs in place of whatever BabyDippy took. This was our first encounter with 'Muggles'. Muggles are non-geocaching people. Caches can be 'muggled' or discovered by people who do not know what they are. Some caches can go missing as they are discovered by people 'not in the know'. Care needs to be taken by each cache to avoid the hiding location being given away and therefore 'muggled'. We waited until the 'muggles' had passed before moving in and searching for the cache.

Our first cache

The date was March 20th. Having discovered there was a cache located just under a mile from our house we decided that that would be our first one. It was drizzling and not overly warm but we wrapped up well and set off. We had a rough idea of where the cache would be located so we walked up. We then turned the mobile on to get a reading of our co-ordinates. After a bit of a search, we found our first ever cache. It was a large Tupperware box that contained a log book and some swappable goodies. BabyDippy took a toy dinosaur and left a toy dinosaur. We discovered that the cache was first hidden in 2005, it has been visited by 62 people so far. We signed the log, then replaced the cache and headed home. Once home we logged our visit and then we ordered a fancy GPS unit!

How and why did we start Geocaching?

We (DaddyDippy and myself) were looking for something new that we could do together. Our evenings were becoming repetitive; our weekends were uneventful. A local, free parenting magazine had an article on the new 'geeky' sport of geocaching. It looked ideal. Both DaddyDippy and I have always loved being outdoors, we like a bit of technology and we both enjoy being fit. We've also happened to breed a small mountain goat who goes by the name of 'BabyDippy'. She is 5 years old and her idea of heaven is living in a tent, on a beach and eating olives. She just loves to be outdoors. We recently added 'TinyDippy' to the family. He doesn't get much choice in where he goes as he is pushed about in a buggy.

We signed up on the geocaching website; we had to pick a user name so we picked the name that BabyDippy had been calling herself for a while. She is currently obsessed with all things dinosaur! Daddy became DaddyDippy, I am constantly known as MummyDippy and TinyDippy, well... tiny is a word that one could never describe him with!

We were then all set and ready to go apart from a small oversight- a GPS device. Luckily there was a basic one on my mobile phone. Now we were ready!

What is Geocaching?

Geocaching is the sport/hobby of using those billion dollar satellites positioned round the Earth to help find small plastic boxes and containers hidden here there and everywhere!

You need a GPS system to help take you to the co-ordinates, once at the 'ground zone' you then hunt for a hidden container. The container can be a large ammo can or a tiny 1cm nano. Caches can be hidden in both urban and rural areas. Currently there are 60,000 caches hidden in the UK and nearly 1.1million around the world. Once you have found the cache then you log your find in the log book, swap 'treasures', re-hid the cache in the exact location as you found it and move on to the next one. You then record your find on the geocaching website.

A new blog

Now that I am thoroughly addicted to Geocaching, I feel a blog about our Geocaching adventures was needed!