Swimmingly+Searching+for+Caches

Swimmingly Searching for Caches

My dreary, blustery Sunday started off with endless amounts of homework and studying for a dreaded midterm on Monday. When finally I couldn't take it anymore, I called on my trusty sidekick and roommate, Maggie, to go out and get some fresh air and geocache! I must admit, I was very skeptical, yet excited, about going geocaching. Maybe it was just the weather, but I was doubting my ability to find an actual cache container. However, I dutifully downloaded the geocaching app on my iPhone and used that as a compass to point me towards the nearest cache on campus. The first cache we went rummaging around for was called "Camel Cache: Bell Tower" and was located only .3 mi away from our humble abode in Faculty Memorial Apartments. Facing the dark, shadowy clouds, we headed outside and onto our first geocache! The geocaching app took us down Harmon Road and across the traffic circle, behind the church on campus and led us to behind the bell tower. As we approached closer to the bell tower, the app told us that we were getting close to the cache! We raced up the stairs and swung open the gate to the promise garden, underneath the bell tower. Walking through the promise garden the numbers kept going down, 112 ft, 83 ft, 78 ft.... until they didn't. All of a sudden, the numbers rose, going back up to 123 ft! We left the promise garden confused, and looked at the tips and hints the app provided for us about geocaching. Thankfully, there was a hint given for the cache! The hint was "This is a GRATE place to hide", knowing this, we walked around the outside of the promise garden's red brick walls, searching for a grate that might hide our microcontainer that we were desperately searching for. Out of the corner of my eye I spotted a storm grate outside of the promise garden! Looking at my handy dandy compass, I realized that the numbers started to go down again! Near the storm grate, we were 8 feet away! We searched and searched at that storm grate, the tree hovering over, and the other storm grate attached to the curb in the parking lot, however, no cache container was to be found. Not giving up hope of actually finding a cache, we searched on the app again to find another location nearby. The next one we picked was Camel Cache: Saylor Park, only .3 miles away! My trusty companion and I trekked our way across campus and towards Saylor Park, getting more and more excited and motivated that we were GOING to find this cache, no matter what. We had read in the tips and hints that caches can be hung from trees, so our first guess was that our container was going to be hiding in a tree. But, the compass was still at 800 ft when we passed through the trees in Saylor Park, so on we continued through the park and watched as the numbers dropped lower and lower. media type="custom" key="24099340" Finally! We found a cache! As you can tell, we were pretty excited about finding this one! Even though, all we found in the cache was a log book, we were still extremely excited! But, we had forgotten to bring a pen along to sign the log book! So we raced to Pat Barker Dorm (formerly New Dorm) to visit our beloved freshman swimmers and borrow a pen from them to sign the log book. When we arrived at Pat Barker, one of our other friends on the team, Rachel, let us into the dorm and we travelled upstairs to meet not only the freshman, but a few sophomore swimmers and their recruit for the weekend. We excitedly told them about the adventure we had just been on and showed them the video of our find. Emily, Lily, and the recruit were so intrigued that they decided to join us on our final geocache of the day, one entitled "Rocky". After signing the log book and returning the cache to its rightful place, we headed out to find Rocky. The geocache was .7 miles away, our farthest one yet. I was feeling very nervous because I didn't want to disappoint Emily, Lily, and the recruit, and not find the cache we were looking for. We set out for Kivett Road, where Rocky was said to be hidden. After walking for several minutes, and finding a small friend along the way, we were finally getting closer to the hidden cache! After passing the cross country course and reminiscing about mornings spent running that course, (wait aren't we supposed to be swimmers??) the geocaching app alerted me and let me know that we were getting close to finding our treasure! Once again, the numbers started dropping, 534 ft, 267 ft, 181 ft, and my heart rate sped up in anticipation of finding the last cache of the day. media type="custom" key="24099866" We found our second cache of the day! And this one was much better than the last because people had left things inside! The broken pen, flower brooch, penny, and tag had all been previously left in the cache; and we contributed a label that means "snow cozy" in Swedish and a black bobby pin. After signing the log with all 5 of our names, we returned the cache back to its hiding place and headed home after a very successful day of geocaching.

=Here is a helpful 2nd grade lesson plan including Social Studies and ELA standards for geocaching:=