Table of Contents

Cover Page

Vacations, Kids and Caching

Finding "Magna's Masked Midday Marauders"

Caching Along a Route

An Interview with SirGerald

Regular Features

Chuckles

Credits

Feedback

Back Issues of the UTAG Magazine

"It was the best of times, it was the worst of times."

Although Charles Dickens famous beginning to A Tale of Two Cities refers to the French revolution, it could just as easily be used to describe many family’s summer vacations.

We spend weeks, even months, making plans and preparations for our family vacations. We envision the joy and happiness in our children’s eyes as we sing songs, tell stories and enjoy one another’s laughter and company in the fun-filled car ride to our ultimate destination. We see our vacation as having the potential to be the ultimate family bonding experience.

That only makes it all the more disheartening when reality strikes and we find the much anticipated family vacation turning into something entirely different when, instead of the children singing and sharing stories with us, we hear things such as "I’m bored", "He hit me", "I have to go to the bathroom" and the infamous "Are we there yet?" Even after stocking the car with videos, snacks and other items to occupy their time and attention, the end result has tended to be the same. Instead of traveling with the happy, angelic children we imagined, we find ourselves trapped in a car for hours with someone entirely different.

Okay, I admit I may have overstated the negatives, but the truth of the matter is that children are not the most patient travelers in the world. Their attention span is so short that it makes it very hard for them to travel calmly and peacefully for long periods of time. Without something to capture their attention, they are going to resort to complaining, fighting and other forms of misbehavior.

"Would geocaching help?"

Geocaching may well be the perfect solution for family vacations and trips. Instead of keeping the children confined in the family car for hours on end, a well planned caching trip can break a long, tedious drive into a series of short, exciting adventures.

We recently put this plan into action when my wife and I took a vacation that included traveling from Denver to Salt Lake City with our 13 year-old daughter and two grandsons, ages 3 and 4. We used the new "caching along a route" option from Groundspeak that allowed us to plan a route on Google Earth and then run a pocket query for caches within a certain distance of the road. Since we didn’t want to venture too far from the highway, we kept the search to caches that were within a half mile of the road and had a terrain rating of two or less.

As I was excitedly getting all of the coordinates loaded into my GPS, my wife put things into perspective for me. She carefully explained that this was NOT a geocaching trip. Rather, it was a trip in which we would be doing some geocaching. What’s the difference? On a geocaching trip, we would stop and grab EVERY cache on the route. On our family trip, we would ONLY stop if we thought that the children needed a break or if the cache was educational. Since the children’s attention span was relatively short, it still meant that we would be stopping every 15 to 30 minutes.

After our first few stops, we learned another important lesson about caching with young children: There is no such thing as a quick grab. Each time we stopped, we had to unbuckle our grandsons from their car seats, help them out of the car and then slowly walk to the cache with them. Once we found the cache, they had to look at every single item in the container. With two preschoolers trying to decide on a trade, we sometimes spent a very long time at the cache site.

We quickly learned that the selection of the cache type was also important. The preschoolers didn’t think much of micro caches. A tiny container that only holds a piece of paper doesn’t do much for a three- or four-year old. On the other hand, a regular-sized cache can contain numerous treasures and, in their opinion, is well worth the stop. They also seemed to like virtual caches, however since they can’t read or understand much of the history, I’m not sure why. Maybe its just because they like their pictures taken.

As children get older, their involvement in the process can increase. My 13 year-old helps plan the trips, reads the maps, reads the web pages, operates the GPS and finds the caches. Come to think of it, the only reason she needs me along is to drive the car.

When children become actively involved in the caching process, it not only keeps their attention and eliminates many of the negative behaviors associated with traveling, but it also helps them in other ways. In addition to the obvious academic growth in reading and math that comes from reading all of the caching pages and operating the GPS, there are also other, more subtle, benefits.

One of the benefits of caching is its ability to teach lessons about local history. Virtual caches do a great job of helping our children learn about the significant historical events of a community. I also believe that the short personal stories that accompany many of the traditional caches provide their own unique insights into the history of the area. For example, there are several virtual caches outside of Helper and Price that tell us about the important events that happened there. Stopping and visiting these sites is useful in teaching our children about the major "textbook" history of the area. However, just up the road about five or six miles is a traditional cache, Train of Thought, placed by Lyonden_Ut that teaches a different kind of history lesson. Although no significant historical event took place there, Lyonden_Ut tells us about his father who lived in this area as a child. After reading his personal story about his father and the importance of this area to him and his family, both my daughter and I felt a greater closeness with the location. Through the process of seeking out the cache, we not only added another cache to our totals, but we also had a learning experience of the heart.

Both caching and family vacations provide our children with numerous opportunities for growth and learning. Caching can be an enjoyable experience for everyone in the family. It can take us to places that we would otherwise never have visited. Just don’t make the mistake of allowing the finding of a cache to become more important than our children’s growth and happiness.

Perhaps the greatest benefit provided by caching and family vacations is the opportunity it gives us to get away from the responsibilities of home and work and spend uninterrupted, quality time with our children. Those walks or short hikes that we take from the car to the cache location, regardless of their length, gives us one-on-one time with our children and families that is irreplaceable.