Passover with Fugads... or how I managed to get almost all my relatives to go geocaching with me.

Passover has always been the big family holiday for my family. Ever since we were little, my family would drive (or alter fly) to Baltimore where my grandparents lived, where we would join up with uncles, aunts, cousins and the like for a big Passover Seder. As a kid, I wasn't so fond of these annual family gatherings. I was made to wear an uncomfortable starched shirt and clip-on tie. The reading of the Hagadah before the Seder meal seemed to take forever, and for a fidgety kid, having to sit patiently at the table for long periods, smelling dinner in the room just next door, but not being able to eat any of it was just short of torture. But the older I got, the more I appreciated these rare family gatherings. And this so even more so since it was the first Passover gathering I've been able to attend since 2011.

What does any of this have to do with geocaching? You see, that last Seder I was at was right after I started geocaching but before I had become really nutty about it. But now, a visit to a new geocache rich area gets me all fired up. So many parks to explore, puzzles to solve, new stats to earn, challenges to complete. The thing is to try to get some of this enthusiasm to spread to other members of the family. A challenge indeed.

The first geocache foray of our Passover trip was on the Saturday right after we arrived. My youngest went down for a nap and my aunt had just left to pick up my sister (and family) from BWI. That left uncle Rob, cousin Jessie my son and me with a free afternoon. Uncle Rob suggested going to what they call the "Mink House", aka Meadowside Nature Center. Not only do they have a great visitor center with tons of kid friendly activities, but they also have some rescued raptors in an outdoor aviary, an obstacle course and nature trails. I brought my GPSr "just in case" and we made the short 10 minute drive over. After enjoying the visitor center and seeing the rescued raptors, I turned on my GPSr "just to check: and what do you know, there was a cache only 0.1 miles away. Of course my son wanted to go find it, and Uncle Rob and Jessie seemed game as well so off we went. Turns out it was a bit longer walk, down a meandering trail, but soon enough we were at GZ. I had given the GPSr to Jessie and she was trying to hone in on the elusive GZ. Treecover and the hillside made it jump around somewhat. Levin and I immediately went towards a downed log over some rocks, thinking that would be the most likely spot, but as we were searching all over, Jessie yelled out. She had found it on the other side of the trail. The cache turned out to be a decent size and had a bunch of fake spiders in it, fitting since it was named Arachnaphobia. Jessie was pretty buoyant about finding the cache and was game for finding another one (only 1/4 mile away!) but Uncle Rob's knee was giving him trouble so we opted to head back up to the car. On the way, we passed an obvious plastic toolbox at the base of a tree that had the words "Official Geocache" written on it. We of course investigated and found that it had been placed by the park staff and contained some rough tools for determining the height of a tree (a straw-and-paper inclinometer and tape measure. We measured the nearest tree, which was fun but Levin was more interested jumping across rocks in the nearby stream.

The next geocaching adventures were not even initiated by me. The park near my Rob and Kay's house hosts a nice playground, tennis courts a toad pond and... tons of caches. We visited mainly for the former, but on one of our trips Milo stopped by to find a few of the caches. Once he had found them, and the kids heard about it they had to go see them too. So the cache at Norbeck Meadow saw quite a bit of traffic. On Wednesday, I even got Alden and Levin to hike 1/2 mile with me to the cache Elephant's Trunk, which was disappointingly a micro. The trip their was awesome though, with Levin and Alden helping to figure out the best way to cross the creek without getting wet (I slipped and got wet on the return though, and almost took Alden in with me).

Our most fruitful Geocaching foray came on Thursday when I took Levin, Sarah and Kay out for a hike. The nearby Lake Needwood had a cache that had piqued my interest, one that used Geodesy and Godzilla. How cool is that! Turns out it is a nice park for a stroll as well. We were treated with a nice large geocache complete with Godzilla stuff in it. Riding the high of such a nice cache, we decided to strike off for the next nearest one, less than a 1/4 mile away. Unfortunately, that short walk involved steep loose slopes and a stream crossing, and Sarah was increasingly concerned that Aunt Kay's knees would give out (Aunt Kay stoically said she was fine though). We did manage to get to the coordinates for the cache though. I spotted it right off, but it took the others a bit more looking, since it was up high in a tree. I own a cache similar to this one, they make for fun finds.

Everyone who found some caches seemed to enjoy it, and Jessie and Sarah even talked about doing it on their own, but I'm not convinced that they will. I kept getting the feeling that they were all quietly amused at how much I get into this strange little hobby. I mean, can't I just enjoy going someplace without having to find something? I used to... but now I just can't resist that sirens call.

Levin at the National Zoo. Guess what, it's right near the GZ for a virtual cache. Surprise surprise huh?