My birthday was last Friday. Throughout last week, I kept debating about what I might want to do that day. We usually have standing dinner plans for our birthdays, but I did not know what I might want to do with the rest of my day.
Big problem to have, right?
A late July birthday is a blessing and a curse. On one hand, I never had to go to school on my birthday as a student (minus for my final semester of library school). Also, as a working person, employers usually understand if you want to take a day off in late July. It’s kind of lazy time of year.
The curse is that by this time of the summer, friends are often so far dialed into vacation mode that they might not be around. Additionally, at this point in the summer, I am sometimes starting to get a little bored of everything that I have already done all summer long. Formerly, exciting things, like visiting a pool, start to feel rote (boo-hoo right?)
There! I said it. Sometimes I get tired of going to the pool.
This sounds like such a first world problem, being tired of visiting a swimming in a clean pool. Also I get tired of coming up with summer activities, but the boys start to climb the walls if we stay home too much.
Also, I know that I am lucky to be not working and home with my children on a Friday. I do not work very much during the summer so that I can be with my children. I recognize my privilege.
I did not want to squander my birthday. A Friday birthday. Fridays are gold. They are not like Tuesdays or anything. The weather was scheduled to be beautiful. Sunny with temperatures around 80 degrees with low humidity. You could not have asked for a better day in July.
I debated how the boys and I should spend the day. I had myself almost convinced that we should just go to our local pool like we do on many summer days. The boys probably would have enjoyed that, and I could have brought a book to read. However, the crowd has been a little thin at the pool lately and everyone in our party has more fun if the boys have someone to play with. So, I decided to think of a different idea.
I have been hearing from scout parent-friends talk recently about geocaching with their families. Last spring, I put geocaching on a mental list of things to try out.
Geocaching is like a treasure hunt in the real world where you follow clues and maps to find a cache. Geocaches usually have a log of some type inside where you can make your mark. You also log the caches that you find on the geocaching app and earn digital rewards. Geocaches can be as large as a 5-gallon bucket or they can be nano caches the size of metal bolt.
The way that most people do geocaching these days is that they download the Geocaching app onto a smartphone. This makes it easy to get started.
The app has a free version with limited capabilities and a pay version that costs $39.99/ year.
A small aside: this is not my first foray into the idea of trying geocaching. I used to work in the environmental education field in the early 2000’s we had a geocache on site. (Libraries that I have worked at also think it is fun to hide a geocache in the collection) Some of my environmental education coworkers at the time purchased GPS units so that they could geocache in their free time. But it always seemed too complicated to me. At that time, you had to download maps and get it set up on your own and GPS units were pricier than just downloading an app to your phone.
At that time, I wanted to spend my money on music CDs and weekend trips to Montreal to go clubbing.
What can I say? I have an undergraduate degree in geography-adjacent discipline, and I had a GIS (Geographic Information Systems) internship, and I still have some confidence issues in my ability to follow directions. But I know a cool Jewel CD and fun weekend getaway when I see one!
Long story short, I knew about geocaching for a while, I just didn’t think that it was for me.
But I was hungry for a new adventure. Also, we may have taken the boys hiking too often during the pandemic years and I needed a new way to make hiking exciting again.
I downloaded the geocaching app on my birthday morning. I decided to get the pay version on the app because I was pretty sure that this was something that I wanted us to do. I also had decided that we would go on our geocaching adventure at one of my favorite places, Hickory Run State Park.
I found that the app was easy to use. Mr. Man, who is 10.5 years old, had few problems during the app to navigate us to area where the geocaches were hidden.
We tried a practice geocache that we saw on the app. It turned out to be less than ¼ a mile away from our home at a church that we never pulled into before. The first geocache was easy to find and gave us confidence in our ability to find future ones.
We drove to Hickory Run State Park, which was about an hour away from our home. We love Hickory Run and were excited to have a new way to explore the park.
We stopped at the visitor center to get papers with directions to find our destinations around the park and a few pamphlets about geocaching in the park. We found our first park geocache before leaving the parking lot in our car. Score! We were really doing it. Finding geocaches was easier than I imagined.
We packed a picnic lunch and ate it at a picnic table at the beach. I loved this aspect of my birthday because it reminded me of the past. The smells of grilling and the happy sounds of families brought me back to childhood birthday picnics at state parks with my family. This was how we usually celebrated my birthday until some point during my teenage years. My grandmother and aunts would usually meet us at the park that my father worked at, and he would visit while patrolling during his summer park ranger job.
Then the boys swam at the lake beach. Hickory Run was less crowded than it usually was because we were visiting on a weekday, as opposed to a weekend when we usually visit. So, the beach was more chill than we are used to. We all got a treat from the concession stand before we got dressed in our clothes and left to look for some geocaches.
By the end of time at the park, we ended up finding four geocaches. The hunt for most of them was fairly straight forward. One cache was challenging and took us off trail into a thickly covered brush area.
Here is a picture after we found the challenging geocache.
We found a grand total of five on our first foray into geocaching.
I had a great birthday, and I am glad that we decided to give geocaching a try.
Since Friday, we have found an additional two geocaches on small little expeditions around town. I have confidence that we have found a new way to make adventures out of everyday experiences. That is what this blog is all about!
Looks like so much fun. Those boys are going to have the best memories. Great adventure.
That sounds like a great way to spend your birthday!!