We had a great day logging four EarthCaches!

We started the day early along our nearby coastline learning of striations, which are the gouges and grooves on the surface of sedimentary rock. These gouges were created by ice-borne debris collected at the base of a glacier about 25,000 to 14,000 years ago. Apparently the glacier acted like a giant bulldozer tearing and scraping anything in its path.

Next we learned about Karst topography which is a landscape feature that is characteristic of highly soluble bedrocks like limestone and evaporite deposits like gypsum and anhydrite. We found that the ground, though rocky, is quite crumbly. Not a scientific description but it was pretty cool!

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An early morning dawned crisp and clear as we stepped out of our home. It was a great day to snag those elusive local caches that we had avoided for so long. It is not that they are hard, at least we never expect them to be, it’s that we often leave the ones closer to home for a day like today, a day to saunter, a day to ’smell the roses’. As we walked towards the park trail a startled deer took off across our path without a backward glance. A good sign for what the day would bring.

We turned on our GPSr and because of the clear sky it quickly locked on to the orbiting satellites. Once again we were connected.

As we walked we talked of how Geocaching had changed our lives. In the short time that we have been involved we have been to places we didn’t know existed, seen breath taking views, now share a new camaraderie with nature and have met countless of new friends.

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Now that the hunting season is upon us it is time to be thinking of making ourselves more visible while Geocaching.

Safety orange, or blaze orange, commonly referred to as hunter orange, is worn by hunters to increase their visibility and to reduce their potential for being mistaken for game. Hunter orange was originally developed for the transportation industry and is the color usually used for traffic cones. Because of its high visibility, as a contrasting color of a natural background, it was adopted by hunters. The majority of states and provinces now recommend or require hunter orange clothing for most kinds of hunting activities.

Although there is no law requiring Geocachers to wear this color it is recommended that anyone entering the woods during hunting season does so.

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We had the opportunity to attend a local Geocoinfest yesterday and had a great time!

GeoCoinfest is an international event that is put on to get Geocoin collectors together to meet and trade. The first Geocoinfest was held in Temecula California with over 400 people attending. Since then it has been taken up in various cities of the world. A quick search on GC showed 24 scheduled events in the US, Canada and New Zealand.

Our local event was attended by more than 50 people and spirits were high. Great conversation and laughter filled the room throughout the course of the afternoon. A silent auction was held that led to quick bidding as closing time drew near. There were also lots of great prizes donated by various sponsors.

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An EarthCache is similar to a Virtual Cache in the way that there is no traditional cache container or a log book, but because of their purpose they differ greatly.

The purpose of an EarthCache is to share information about a particular geological feature of our planet Earth, and the object is to learn something about it. When you visit an EarthCache, you learn something interesting about the geology of the area. Usually the information is freely given but you have to do a bit of investigative work to answer proposed questions in order to claim the cache.

EarthCaches are created by Geocachers who have knowledge of geoscience and like to share it with the world.

The Geological Society of America administers the listing of EarthCache sites around the world and offers a ‘Masters Program’ where you can receive a pin as a reward for learning more about the Earth. There are four EarthCache Master Program levels:

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Today was a glorious fall day so we decided to take some time off and do a bit of Geocaching. This gave us the chance to release a couple of Travel Bugs we had held captive for the past two weeks.

While we were Geocaching in British Columbia a couple of weeks ago we picked up a couple of Travel Bugs and brought them across the country with us. We were finally able to release them and send them on their way again. Both had a simple goal of seeing the world.

In addition to the ones above we had picked up another Bug while we were in BC that was promoting diabetes awareness and it’s goal is to travel to Ezhou, China. Since we were on the West Coast, much closer to China than the East Coast we decided that instead of bringing it home we would release it in a nearby cache.

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