My Geocaching Page (Ally's Pak)

Geocaching is an entertaining adventure game for gps users. Participating in a cache hunt is a good way to take advantage of the wonderful features and capability of a gps unit. The basic idea is to have individuals and organizations set up caches all over the world and share the locations of these caches on the internet. GPS users can then use the location coordinates to find the caches. Once found, a cache may provide the visitor with a wide variety of rewards. All the visitor is asked to do is if they get something they should try to leave something for the cache.

You can access the Geocaching FAQhere.
 
 

First cache of the day (MIki's Birthday Hidden Oaks Nature Center )  We found this one easily. It was just Ally and Dad out this evening. Great weather today. The high was in the mid 70's (not too bad for early march) The cache was about 100 feet from the parking area. If this isn't a 1/1, I don't know what is. But it was still lots of fun.  Everything in the cache is in good shape. We left a Hotwheels ATV (which we got from the Vermont Veterans Cache), and took the Mystics necklace keychain.

Date:        Monday 03/08/2002
Who:         Ally & Eric
Where:       Springfield VA

Second cache of the day (Stepping Stone Cache)  Found it.  Two for Two today. not bad for a friday evening, after work in early March. Fantastic weather this evening, and nice little hike through the park. The stream crossing was wetter than I was expecting. I had high top waterproof hiking boots, and they kept me dry for the crossing. But if there was a significant rain, it would make a dry crossing unlikely. Found the Cache in good shape. It was quite full. We took the wheresgeorge bill, and Hotwheels ambulance. We left a deck of nascar 2000 playing cards.

Date:        Monday 02/27/2002
Who:         Suzy & Eric
Where:       Killington Vt

First (and only) cache of the day (Lost in Paradise)  Well, this one has us stump'd. We found the park entrance...Found the coordinates realtively easily, (they even went along with the clue but we searched for over an hour and came up with nothing. There's a bit of snow on the ground, but not enough that it would have covered the cache. I don't want to say that it's not there, but if it is still in-tact, it's very well hidden.

Date:        Monday 02/26/2002
Who:         Suzy & Eric
Where:       Killington Vt

First cache of the day (Between a Rock and a Hard Place)  We found the designated parking area.  Garman GPS III Plus put us just over 2 miles from the cache.  We began hiking.  Found the trail 2/3 covered with ice and snow.  Most areas were easily navigated...but there were some challenging areas of slippery ice.  1/2 mile from the cache, we were faced with a fork in the trail.  This fork was not mentioned in the Geocaching log...so we took the high road.  1 and a half mile later, we determined that we had taken the wrong fork.  We backtracked to the fork, and tried the other leg.  This leg took us directly to the Cache coordinates.  We were in awe by the falls for several minutes, before noticing the empty ziploc container on the stream banks.  We made some attempts to find the cache in it's hiding spot, but we were unsuccessful.  We are fairly certain that this empty container was once the Cache.  We filled the cache container with several medium size rocks, and placed it in an inconspicuous location near the falls.
Even though, we couldn't find the cache (in-tact), we were not at all disapointed with this journey.  I would recommend that the cache owner change this to a "Virtual" cache, and eliminate the container all together.  (At this time of year, the ice and snow on the falls was spectactular)
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No time to complete the second scheduled cache for the day.

Date:        Monday 02/25/2002
Who:         Suzy & Eric
Where:       Killington Vt

Weather was in the high 50's.  Two caches on the agenda for today (our first day vacationing in Killington VT.)  Allyson was spending the week in Allentown, keeping warm with her grandparents.  We had a nice country drive to the starting point of our first cache (Bunk-er Hill).  Suzy started with Mike's brand new snow shoes for this hike.  Our GPS showed about 1 1/2 miles to the cache from the parking area.  We started hiking at 11:15AM.  We hiked for 75 minutes, covering 2 miles of trail, and 2000 vertical feet elevation. The Summit, marked by a large flagpole, and rickety overlook platform gave us some awesome views, although they would have been better if the weather had been clearer.  We rested for several minutes before beginning our search for the cache.  When we started searching, we found ourselves hiking through 3 feet of packed snow.  Suzy's snow shoes did a nice job keeping her on the crust of the snow.  Eric wasn't quite as fortunate.  He found himself theigh deep in snow several times during the search.  We found the cache hidden high in a yellow birch tree (as advertised)  We took a Killington Baseball cap, and left a really ugly green scarf!   Uneventful trip back to the car, and off to the next cache (Vermont Veteran)

Second of two caches today (Vermont Veteran.)  This one was childs play compared to our first one (Bunk-er Hill).  We parked at the memorial park entrance.  Our Garmen GPS III Plus showed that we were .20 Miles from the cache (a welcome relief, from our 2 mile hike to bunk-er hill.)  We hiked toward the coordinates, and soon crossed a snowmobile trail.  Found some footprints in the snow, and followed them directly to the cache.  The cache was in good shape.  We took a hot wheels ATV (to take home to Allyson)  and a Vermont Post card.  Left a deck of playing cards.

Date:        Monday 02/18/2002
Who:         Ally & Dad
Where:       Springfield VA

Weather was in the high 50's.  We didn't have too much time, cause Ally decided to nap until almost 4:30, but we headed out anyway.  Only 1 cache in mind today.  "Childs Play" was the cache name.  Ally was a real trooper.  She walked almost the whole way from the car to the cache.  She kept singing some song about going on a treasure hunt.  I didn't recognize it, so I think it was something that she just made up.   The cache was about 1/4 mile from the car.  We found it with no problem.  Ally's big concern was "getting her shoes dirty" while crossing the stream. At the cache, Ally traded a Stuffed Teddy Bear, and a little book for an American Flag Sticker, a seashell necklace, and a Dollar Coin.  We then found our way back to the car, where the adventure really began.  The car keys were no where to be found.  We searched around the car for a while, then trek'd back into the woods, looking for keys.  We found the cache again, emptied it out, but still found no keys.  With a quick emergency call to Suzy's Cell phone, we arranged for her to pick us up.  By this time, it was getting dark, and kinda cold.  We were glad when we finally made it back home.

UPDATE:  02/22/02 - Found the lost keys! Thanks Suzy!  She found them among the leaves on the trail.

Weather was in the Low 60’s.  Beautiful day for a hike.  We had 3 caches in mind for today.  We started with “Race Car Cache”  We found it pretty easily.  There were lots of cool cars there.  Took a McDonalds Station Wagon Drag Racer, and left a wind-up Army SUV.  After finding the cache we stopped at the nearby school playground to swing, and slide.  Then it was off to “Hermione’s Hideout.”  As we approached the Cache site, we discovered several other explorers.  A dad, and 3 young boys.  They were also searching for the cache.  They informed us that they had been there for about 15 minutes before we got there, and they welcomed our help.  After spending over an hour searching, we were just about ready to give up.  However, we remembered that the website had a picture of the “hiding Place”  The other explorers used their cell phone to “call for help”  After a few minutes, the helper on the other end of the phone had downloaded the picture, and was trying to verbally describe the hiding place to us.  After 15 unsuccessful minutes on the phone, we decided to call it a day.

UPDATE: Checking back to the cache’s website, we discovered that the cache had been declared “MISSING” (by it’s owner) 2 hours before we arrived for our search.

Another Beautiful weekend.  It wasn’t quite as warm as last time, but it was still in the 60’s (not bad for mid Feb)  We started todays adventure with a cache named “Jones Point”.  This is near Old Towne Alexandria.  Great little park.  There were lots of puppies for me to pet.  And we had a great view of the new Wilson Bridge Construction.  I found a cool Hot Wheel’s Helicopter, and left behind a “Poky Little Puppy Book.”  From there, we were off to the “Arlington Movie Cache.”  This one took quite a while to find, mostly because we took the long way around.  But we got there eventually.  We traded Cinderella VHS, Fugative VHS, and Traffic DVD for Lethal Weapon 4, and The Mexican DVDs.  Third and final cache of the day was named “Happy New Year”  This cache was pretty weak.  There was just a worn out Plastic Baggie… No log book, and not much worth finding.  We took a Kids Shareware CD-ROM, and left a Teddy Bear.  Although the cache wasn’t very nice, the nearby park was GREAT.  There were some really cool slides, and a huge Sandbox.  We played here for quite a while before it was time to go home for a nap!

This was our first “geocaching” adventure.  Kirsten and Brian were down for the weekend, and they wanted do some Sight seeing.  It was an amazing day, the weather was almost 70 degrees.  About 30 degrees above normal for this time of year.  Anyway, it made for a great day of exploring.  The 3 Caches that we found today were all “virtual caches” (Click here for explanation) (they were named “So we will remember them”, “Who am I”, and “Capital View”.   Two of the three Caches took us to the Vietnam Memorial, from there, we tried to find one that was located on the East side of the White House. Unfortunately, the gates were closed, and we could not get close enough to find this Cache.  We moved on to the Capital, where we found our third Cache.  By this time, I was quite tired, so Dad and I stayed behind in the car.  I took a nap, while Mom, Kir & Brian found the cache.  From there we ventured out to Roosevelt Island.There weren’t any caches there, but it was a nice walk around the island anyway.