The+Dynamic+Duo+Goes+Caching!

Our great Geocaching adventure began on our way home from practicum one sunny afternoon. We were determined to find 3 caches on this new journey and had set our waypoints the night before in our trusty GPS. As we barreled south down Main Street we plugged in our first waypoint: a park and grab off of Kivett road. The miles inched down to mere feet as we pulled over by the cross-country course. We followed the compass, 16 feet, 13 feet, the feet continued to rapidly decrease as we neared a large boulder painted with Campbell pride. However the compass on the GPS became confusing. We climbed through brush and into the forest, it declared we were right on top of the cache but with one sly move an inch or two off it would say we were suddenly 16 feet away. After digging through trash and debris we did not find a cache but rather a good service project: road side clean up of Campbell property. Determined not to be let down by the first failure we headed to Marshbanks, luckily not for a meal, but rather towards the fountain. We had decided our next caching mission would be the “Fountain Walk.” We had written down the clues and plugged in each of Campbell’s 3 fountains waypoints into our GPS and were ready to roll! Our GPS lead us to the Marshbanks fountain where we learned that Dr. Clayton loved youth and education, clue number one for the final mystery waypoint. The number of things he loved was one of three missing coordinate points! Next we headed to the Lundy fountain, and lastly the fountain outside of Carter gym. At Lundy we discovered that there were 4 stones with the same dedication year (part of the second clue) and at Carter we learned that the fountain was dedicated/donated in 2010 (part of clue). We plugged in our new waypoint for the final location and headed out towards the hidden cache. We walked all the way to University Manor Apartments and our GPS was still telling us to go farther. We double checked our waypoint, cleared it, put it back in, and were still being told to go farther and farther away from campus. After about an hour we decided that this could not be correct and decided to try to master our third and final cache: the camel statue cache! We knew that the camel cache had been a challenge for many but on the website it had been found by someone just 24 hours prior to our search so we were up and ready for the excitement! The clue told us it was not on the statue itself so as we inched closer to the convocation center the range on our GPS decreased. The closer we got to the camel the farther away our GPS read, we searched all around the camel, the gym, the bushes, the light poles, and alas could not find the cache. While this caching adventure was not successful we did not lose faith in our caching abilities. We cached successfully in class when we put in our own waypoints and are both very comfortable and now very familiar with the technology and the process. No need to fear this dynamic duo will rise again and conquer the cache!



Check it out: You too can create your own caching adventure through a fabulous LESSON! If you are teaching your students about the branches of government check out this great introductory activity. Have kids cache for images and try to create a connection between the images they find to begin teaching them about the three branches of government!