Father Son Caching Day

SOME MILD SPOILERS BELOW, READ AT YOUR OWN RISK.

Lately I've been doing most of my geocaching with my daughter or on my own. When on my own I go after hikes that the kids/family would not enjoy, but I absolutely love. Caching with my daughter happens because I'm a stay at home dad right now and am with her every day. My son though, has recently become envious of his little sister. I will pick him up from school and Ada will show off on of her new toys she traded from a geocache, and Levin asks, "did you get anything for me?". Sometimes I we do, but usually, not, and he is left feeling grumpy that he doesn't get a new toy. So to make up for this, we decided to to a father-son caching day, just the two of us, searching out caches in Knox county.

I used to cache with Levin quite a bit, especially before Ada was born. We'd go on long caching hikes, drives around the desert, and we scored so many toy cars that we have a bin full of them now. Toy cars are still one of his favorites but he is also interested in other stuff that can be typically found in geocaches. Today our plan was to cache our way from Oak Ridge, through the town of Karns and then down south to a geocaching event in Farragut I call it Farragut, but is really just a giant zone of strip malls and big box stores surrounding Interstate 40. I'm not even sure where the real town of Farragut lies. The challenge would be to find regular sized caches, there are not that many of them i this area. But there are enough that I thought we'd have a good time.

Our first stop was at Melton Hill Vista, which was actually just an evil micro, but I thought it would be fun since it involved some rock scrambling up to a nice viewpoint. Sure enough, Levin enjoyed the scramble up and down, and helped find the cache in no time. On the way down, he decide he was an orangutan and brachiated his way down the steep treacherous slope. So far so good.

Levin shows off the evil cache hide

That's cactus! In tennessee! Who would've thought?

Our next group of caches was at the Knox County Sportpark, where there is a nice 3-cache tribute to one of the local geocachers. I mistakenly thought that all three of these were regular sized caches, but it turned out that the final was a micro. Oops. Levin did get a trade item in the first cache though. Unfortunately, the cold started to get to him while walking on the soggy fields between these caches, and his enthusiasm for finding was diminished. I really enjoyed these caches because they incorporated a really nice puzzle. I had seen something similar before, but there was an extra twist on one of them that was new to me. I really appreciate a nice field puzzle.

A nicely done field puzzle, right up my alley

Walking on soggy fields

We continued driving south and east, picking up a couple P&Gs, and warming up in the car. Our next two regular sized caches were TB Graveyard and The Treasure of Good Sam Saints. These were ideal caches as far as my son was concerned. They were both only a short distance from a parking spot, 100-200ft, had relatively easy to find containers, and were loaded with toys for him to rifle through, and pick out a trade. He traded a fishing bobber for a tiny plastic rat in one, and his spiderman puzzle for a few plastic lizards in the other. He's really into the small plastic animals right now, so I suspect we'll ahve a bucket of them soon. Caches like these are not so common it seems. They require a bit more effort to maintain, and often get muggled or have other problems that make them totally junky. Plus they are under-appreciated by what I see as the main geocaching demographic. Most adult cachers could care less for trading toys, and are more interested in simply adding there name to a log to prove that they indeed found the cache. Because the cache itself has little appeal, it is the process of finding the cache that gets respected. Creative hides and camo, interesting puzzles, worthy destinations. And this makes a ton of sense, kids aren't the main geocaching demographic, why should caches appeal to them? I am as guilty as anyone, of my 47 hides, only one is really geared towards kids. The funny thing is, I cache with my kids all the time, and I lament the fact that there aren't more kids friendly caches. I suppose I should do something about it and hide some more.

Warning near TB Graveyard

There were a couple cool sink-hole/cave things near the TB Graveyard cache.

Levin shows his white rat

Trading puzzle for LIzards

Our final stop was at Fudruckers where we joined a huge group of geocachers for burgers. I used to be really shy about attending events, but now I am starting to really look forward to them. I really get into talking shop about who is hiding what and where, what cool trips people have been on, what interesting caches have been found. There is a really friendly group of cachers around here, for which I feel pretty lucky. The burgers and social made a fine end to our geocaching excursion. Some final stats: 17 finds, 1 attended, 1 DNF, 3 toys traded, 1 TB picked up, 1 happy kid, 1 happy dad. A good day out.