Am+I+going+the+Wright+Way?

Am I Going the Wright Way? //Where in the world was I headed? What were all the people around me thinking as they saw a crazy person searching all around a pole in an open field? Most importantly, was I even going the WRIGHT way? //

As I set off on my geocaching adventure, I was not even sure what direction to head in. I convinced my friend Emily to join me for the adventure, but still knew that we were in for some serious searching. I plugged in my location into the Geocache App that I had downloaded onto my phone, found the closest way point, and set off. I began closely following the directions on my phone. 1 mile. 750 feet. 500 feet. 100 feet. 50 feet. I followed the little arrow on my phone as I got closer, closer, and closer to the way point but where was this leading me? An open field. “Where was a geocache going to be hidden in an open field?” I thought. I threw my hands up in surrender and just began looking. I got as close to the “0 feet away” on my GPS as I could and found myself standing beside an electrical pole. Emily and I began to search for this mysterious “treasure chest” but could not find it anywhere! We felt like we were on a playground carousel going around and around and around. After a couple minutes of looking, I noticed on my phone that there was a hint that said “EGGE 412” on it and I knew I had just seen that right around me somewhere! Then I saw it! There was a small outlet looking box on the electrical pole that I hadn’t even paid attention to before, but when I opened up the box, I found the treasure! There was a small tube in the box that was full of lists of the people who had found this geocache before. I’ve driven past this electrical pole so many times and was never even aware that “treasure” was hidden right there waiting for people to find it the whole time.

After this exciting find, I decided that I wanted to look for one more geocache! My phone told Emily and I that there was one really close to where we were, so we decided to continue on in our trek. We walked across the field, across a parking lot, and across a sidewalk. Following my GPS this time led us into the gazebo that is located right beside one of Campbell’s freshmen girls’ dorm. After spending so much time searching for the first geocache, this one was a lot easier to spot. I immediately noticed it peaking over the top of one of the rafters in the gazebo. Although it was a little bit too tall for me to reach, I managed to get it down and found some really cool things in it! I even saw that a lot of my classmates had already been by and found the same geocache!



Though I was a bit skeptical at first, I was able to search for and find the geocaches that we had sought out to find. Some geocaches were harder to find than others, but the geocaches that we found were in neat places and I was so excited when we actually found them! Luckily, throughout this adventure I had my handy-dandy GPS to guide me the WRIGHT way.

**Want** **to know how to incorporate a geocaching adventure into your classroom? CLICK HERE to see how I used Geocaching into a Third Grade Social Studies Lesson Plan!**