Caching!

Last year, I wrote about one of our favorite hobbies, geocaching, in this post.  This year my family traveled to Galena, Illinois for the week between Christmas and New Year, and had the opportunity to find several geocaches in the area.

This was particularly fun and special because we had 4 generations working together.  Matt located 8 caches on geocaching.com and split us into two teams: (Great) Grandpa, my Dad, Matt, my brother Hans and Matias were on one team, while (Great) Grandma, my Mom, my sister Hannah, Violet and even Baby Bea were the other.  That's right- boys versus girls!

We had 2 hours, 4 caches to find each, a GPS or phone per team, and instructions to meet for lunch at 1pm downtown Galena.  Both teams found all their caches, and we got to see some treasures of Galena that we never would have found otherwise- mansions, natural springs and historic firestations.  If you haven't geocached before, you really must try it!  It is fun to do around the area you live (there are a dozen just in our town), and a great way to discover a new place as well.

Here are a few pictures from our caching!

After using a sign to get our final coordinates, we discovered a large cache tied under a bridge.

Then we discovered how to get to it!

The natural spring we found.  Yes, that figure deep in the woods is my awesome Grandma!

Found a tiny micro cache attached to a bench.

Inside was a tiny rolled up piece of paper to write your initials on.

We never would have seen this beautiful home if we hadn't been caching.

We found this one inside the sleigh.

Caches often contain little trinkets.  Violet traded a chocolate coin for a rubber bouncy ball.

Even Beatrice got in on the action!

I will add some pictures from the boy's team when I get them!!