Roukema's+Angels

Lesson Plan The Great Caching Adventure of Ashlyn and Nicole At 2:00 October 21st, Nicole and I adventured out into the great world of geocaching. We were ready to take on Campbell University with a positive mindset, until we got outside. We realized that we had no idea what we were doing. We sat down in the middle of the bricks to brainstorm. We downloaded the geocaching apps to our phones, this would help us on our hunt. From there we got our locations and were ready to go. We found three different locations who were possible candidates for our hunt: the cache near Kivett hall, the microcache near the camel, and the cache in Saylor Park. We only needed two caches but wanted to conquer them all. Nicole looked at me and asked, "are you ready for the adventure of a lifetime?" I turned to her with big smile on my face and said, "heck yes I am!" It was now time to geocache.

media type="file" key="IMG_6521.3gp" width="300" height="300" align="center"

Our first stop was in front of Kivett Hall. Our GPS took us straight to the tree. We looked around the tree, we looked on the ground, in the branches, and inside the hole of the tree. We did not find anything. Frustration was starting to take over us. A man passed by on a bike and asked, "are you guys geocaching right now?" We told him that we were and he said, "good luck" and road off. After much time had passed, we were surprised to find out that someone had stolen the cache and left us with nothing to find. We were feeling defeated. We went back to the drawing board. After much deliberation we decided to go full force ahead and look for the microcache. Little did we know, this would be the mother of all caches.

In the hot boiling sun we headed to Gore Arena. Once we reached the front of the building, we began by climbing the camel. On goers gave us confused looks as we were climbing and observing Gaylord. Nicole looked at me and asked, "how crazy do you think we look right now?" I laughed out loud because I knew that we must have looked insane. Five minutes later we realized that the cache had to be somewhere else, but in the same relative location. We started looking in the window sills of Gore Arena, outside the main entrance. We found nothing at all. Then I had the brilliant idea of using the GPS (which should have been the first thought in our minds all along…brain fart!) At this point we were hot, exhausted, and hungry. Three things you do not want to be on a long journey. Finally, we had narrowed the search down to the last bench nearest the roundabout. We were observing the bench when all of a sudden it hit us…..it must be magnetic. We had found the cache. It blended in with the screws on the bench. We were convinced that it must have been the smallest cache in the world. We were feeling like champions at this point. We had one more cache left to find. We knew that anything after this would be a walk in the park.

media type="file" key="IMG_6525-3.3gp" width="300" height="300" align="center"



Eager for our next adventure we traveled to Saylor Park by foot. Nothing could stop us now. As we approached the park, Ashlyn had slipped on the slimy mud that was covering the grass. She screamed, AHHHHHHHHH! Nicole rushed to her side and pulled her up with a valiant heave. Now it was time to get serious, because we needed one more cache. We were not leaving until we found it. We scurried across the grass. The GPS was telling us to head toward the light pole waiting on the other side. As we were approached the light pole, our GPS said only 30 feet away. We realized that we must be close. To our dismay the cache was hiding in a very obvious spot. In a little box on the light pole. Ashlyn looked at Nicole and said, "wow that was easy." After a long expedition we had finally found our two caches.



On our way back to reality we really thought abo ut the journey we had just experienced. It had taught us how to use the GPS correctly, and to not stray away from it, like we did when we were looking for the microcache. We learned how to work collaboratively with one another, and to motivate each other when we were feeling discouraged about our hunt. It had finally taught us and showed us how we could incorporate geocaching into our own classrooms.