Monday, March 3, 2008

Geocaching at Cove Hollow


Sunday was an absolutely beautiful day (though sadly the temperatures dropped suddenly and drastically by Monday and has snowed/rained/iced on and off since then), so we went out geocaching for the first time in about two months. If you're not familiar with geocaching, check here http://www.geocaching.com/faq/ Basically, people hide "caches" all over (it's wordlwide) and post the latitude and longtitude coordinates online to geocaching.com. You then use a GPS to find the cache, which usually consists of a small waterproof container with a log book to sign, and various trinkets and things that other cachers have left. You can take something from the cache, but you also have to leave something.
I received a GPS unit for Christmas and our geocaching journey had begun! I was (and am still) amazed at how many caches there are, just in my area. Some of them I have passed dozens of times and never had a clue about their presence. Some of them are even in high traffic public area. There are half a dozen caches hidden on campus at the University in places where hundreds of people walk through every day-- every hour even. The fun part about caches like this is the secrecy with which you must act. You can't let non-geocachers see you with a cache. Most cahces, however, are in natural area where there are fewer people around. Geocaching is so much fun, and I would highly recommend it to anyone, especially homeschooling families. There is no area of study that you can't address with geocaching.



Anyway, so we went geocaching today, as I said, for the first time in months. In fact, it was the first time that we had been out in the woods at all for a few months, and BOY did it feel good! We went to a place called Cove Hollow, a beautiful area only about a 15-20 minute drive away. Cove Hollow is one area of a loop trail that circles Cedar Lake, just southwest of Carbondale. There are several points at which to access the trail, and I still have yet to see much of it. At Cove Hollow, the trail starts up high and winds down to beautiful scenic overlooks from high rockly legdes. The trail follows the ledge, leading toward the lake via a rockypath downward. Dudo is very cautious in such areas, and I never worry about him when climbing, but our little dog, Burundi, is a different story. It scares me to death to watch her strutting, apparently without concern, along high ledges.

wishing you many adventures,
mama randa the explorer

1 comment:

Lizz said...

Ah, wilderness!

You and your small guy look just like each other.